Last month Maxima Compliance debuted its latest technical compliance tool, with Complitech designed to simplify and speed up the process of rolling out products in new markets.
Emphasising the necessity of speed, the aim of the tool is to ensure technical requirements can be seamlessly met – regardless of the active operational jurisdiction.
What were the aims when designing Complitech? And what industry shortcomings does the tool aim to address? Antonio Zanghi, managing director of Maxima Compliance, explained: “Over the past few years, suppliers have had to become far more conscious of technical compliance when developing and rolling out their products.
“An ever increasing share of the European market is now regulated on a dot country basis, so operating across multiple jurisdictions has never been more challenging. But at the same time, industry consolidation has made scale extremely important.
“This adds up to a real challenge for suppliers who want their games active in Spain, Italy, Sweden, the UK and many more markets, but can spend months gathering conflicting requirements.
“Complitech centralises this entire process, providing a single database from which users can pull relevant requirements, conduct gap analysis and ensure their games meet the specifications for the markets they wish to enter.”
Before moving on to address the aforementioned ambition of aiding entry into new markets: “Ensuring games and content are ready to roll out into new markets from a technical compliance perspective can be a time-consuming process,” he says.
“Speeding up and simplifying the technical compliance process is the core value proposition”
“It involves pulling the requirements (sometimes they are not available in English), conducting a gap analysis to highlight the areas where new processes may be needed and then implementing the changes.
“If you are looking to enter a new market, the last thing you want to be doing is spending months ensuring your product meets the requirements. You need to get live before your rivals. Complitech smooths this process by providing technical compliance requirements from 20 online gaming jurisdictions in a single database for the first time.
“With a few clicks, you can pull the requirements from Denmark, Colombia, Sweden, Italy, Spain and many more markets. You can also conduct automated gap analysis, to instantly highlight what needs to be addressed if you games meet requirements in, say, Sweden, but you now wish to enter Spain.”
Complitech’s design process saw a team of experts compile the latest technical compliance requirements from more than 20 online gaming jurisdictions, which are to be regularly updated to ensure changes are never missed.
Simplicity and speed are also two factors persistently highlighted across verticals concerning a number of issues, but just how important are those two concerning issues related to Complitech: “Speeding up and simplifying the technical compliance process is the core value proposition of Complitech,” Zanghi continues.
“Ensuring a product meets technical compliance requirements has traditionally been a time-consuming and expensive process. Requirements often change, can be opaque and are tough to gather.
“For too long, compliance has been considered an afterthought or irritant”
“When you start looking at multiple jurisdictions, it becomes a real headache. We’ve talked to countless suppliers hugely frustrated by the process and how it was distracting them from their primary goal of creating fantastic content. We want to ease technical compliance concerns and let these content providers focus on what they do best: delivering games.”
Compliance is to form a central theme at the second CasinoBeats Malta conference later this year with a discussion session entitled ‘The enemy of innovation’. Zanghi gave his views as to why the opposite is in fact true: “I couldn’t disagree more with the idea that compliance is the enemy of innovation. If anything, finding innovative solutions that meet compliance requirements will be what drives forward this industry over the coming years.
“For too long, compliance has been considered an afterthought or irritant by the online gaming sector. But a shift in the way our sector is regulated means that we now need to think about these issues in a very different way.
“Compliance is now integral to every aspect of online gaming operations, whether that be product development, marketing or broader business development. There is no point talking about innovation without considering compliance. It will be the companies that recognise this that succeed in highly-regulated markets over the next few years.”
Concluding with how the ever changing regulatory landscape is impacting upon casino operations: “It has been nothing short of a transformation over the past few years. Greater political and public scrutiny on our industry has forced companies to take compliance far more seriously. But I see this as a genuine opportunity to build a stronger, more sustainable sector. Both operators and suppliers are now beginning to think about compliance in a more holistic fashion.
“Whereas compliance teams were once siloed away, there is now an expectation that every business area of a gaming company has an understanding of the way these issues will impact upon their day-to-day. Some have made the transition more smoothly than others. And going forward, it will be those who fully understand how to upskill and fulfil compliance requirements in an innovative way who enjoy the most success.”