Tabcorp’s Casinos Division bets on SumTotal to strengthen compliance, enhance customer service
SumTotal Enterprise Suite selected to train 8,000 employees, saving time, money and resources
Mountain View, Calif. – June 15, 2006 – Tabcorp’s Casinos Division, part of Tabcorp Holdings Limited, is building upon its strong culture of compliance by using the TotalLMS 7.1 product from SumTotal (Nasdaq: SUMT) to save time, money and resources in the training of staff and new recruits about the Responsible Service of Alcohol and Responsible Gaming, as well as other training initiatives.
Meeting strict regulatory obligations is a critical business imperative for Tabcorp’s casinos and the company believes SumTotal will help it achieve faster compliance and substantially better learning outcomes than with traditional methods.
SumTotal’s Learning Management System (LMS) will be initially implemented at Sydney’s Star City Casino as part of a comprehensive learning strategy that is the first of its kind in Australia’s gaming and entertainment industry.
Tabcorp believes the new system will provide online delivery, assessment and reporting on key learning requirements necessary to meet casino regulatory obligations as a Registered Training Organisation (RTO), as well as regulations from the NSW Casino Control Authority and, in the future, Queensland Office of Gaming Regulations.
Compliance training subjects developed, delivered, tracked and managed through TotalLMS will include Occupational Health & Safety, Code of Conduct, Equal Employment Opportunity and Preventing Workplace Harassment, among many others. Tabcorp also plans to deliver, manage and track pre-employment training for new recruits.
Tabcorp plans to deploy the 8,000-user system at all its casino properties over a three-year period. Its first phase, Star City, will be followed by implementations at Conrad Jupiters on the Gold Coast, Conrad Treasury in Brisbane and Jupiters Townsville.
SumTotal solution “the most flexible”
“We knew of SumTotal’s strong track record in Australia and New Zealand, and found that, of all the solutions we looked at, SumTotal’s TotalLMS was the most flexible. It easily integrated with our back-end systems,” Tabcorp’s General Manager for Human Resources in the Casinos Division, Bruce Mulligan, said.
“As a result of implementing TotalLMS, we believe our staff will be better trained in the Responsible Service of Alcohol and Responsible Gaming, and we will spend less time, money and resources to achieve substantially better outcomes,” he said.
Other key benefits of the solution include:
- Standardisation and consolidation of training efforts. TotalLMS allows Tabcorp casinos to develop courseware that can be shared across the enterprise. As well as facilitating delivery of the same message for all corporate policies, this also establishes a framework for managing the casino’s learning materials and the educational requirements for each and every employee.
“SumTotal’s ability to support multiple domains lets us cater for casino-specific business rules and workflows, all in a single application. This will ensure consistency and cost-effectiveness across all our casinos. And by centralising the management of learning outcomes, we can ensure uniform training and homogenous results,” Mulligan explained.
Tabcorp feels the new system will reduce its dependency on external trainers, and the resources needed to develop, deliver and update online content, while the casinos’ many manual databases, used to record employee training within departments, will be consolidated for added efficiency.
The SumTotal solution also gives Tabcorp’s casinos the opportunity to expand its use of RTO-accredited programs.
- Improved reporting, analysis and audit-ability. Key to the new LMS’s value is its ability to provide Tabcorp with auditable records and certifications as required, and because it comes from a single data source, improved accuracy. This can result in dramatic improvements in training reporting and analysis across the division – whether internal monthly reports or external reports to bodies such as the Casino Control Authority.
“Being an RTO, our standards need to set the benchmark in our industry, and our reports must be clear and transparent,” said Mulligan. “SumTotal’s LMS reduces the risk of regulatory non-compliance by automating the certification process. It will also centrally track and report on all compliance activities.”
Casino managers will also be able to easily create their own divisional reports, further reducing time and effort.
- Reduced operating costs. The SumTotal LMS reduces training administration and the time to compile reports. This means more time and resources can be applied to adding value to learners within the training environment.
It can improve cost control over the development and management of online learning content, reduce classroom time (and therefore time away from the workplace) and eliminate costly external hosting costs.
The new system also provides Tabcorp with a cost-effective and easily scalable solution that can expand as needed to other casinos, or across other divisions of Tabcorp Holdings, without additional hardware costs.
Con J. Kittos, CEO and chairman of SumTotal Australia & New Zealand, said, “We are extremely excited to be working with Tabcorp and with Star City, which is leading the way in a very robust, competitive industry.
“Star City’s adoption of e-learning is recognition not only of the efficacy of technology-enabled learning – particularly in meeting regulatory obligations – but also, and more importantly, the value Tabcorp places on its employees in realising its corporate vision to become Australia's premier provider of leisure and entertainment.”
About Star City
Star City secured the licence to operate Sydney’s only casino in December 1994. The company has a 99-year lease on the 3.34 hectare site. This includes an exclusivity clause to operate the only casino in New South Wales until September 2007.
Star City cost $876 million to build. An additional $376 million was paid to the New South Wales Government for the casino licence.
A temporary casino opened near the existing Star City site in September 1995. It operated until the Star City complex was ready to open in November 1997.
Star City is owned and operated by Tabcorp, an Australian company, which is now one of the five biggest gaming companies in the world. Tabcorp also operates three casinos in Queensland, the totalisator wagering systems in Victoria and New South Wales and nearly half the gaming machines in Victoria.
Around 3,000 people are employed at Star City, most of them on a full-time basis.
Star City attracts around 8 million patrons a year. On an average day, Star City attracts around 20,000 visitors but this can rise to 40,000 during peak holiday periods.
The seven restaurants serve about 5,000 meals a day and more than 280,000 people stayed in the 480 hotel and apartment rooms last year. About 700,000 people attended shows in Star City’s Lyric Theatre and Showroom last year.
Star City pays about $160 million a year in salaries and wages. Since inception, the company has paid more than $700 million in gaming taxes to the New South Wales Government. A further $80 million has been paid to the Casino Community Benefit Fund, which is used for problem gambling research and counselling programs.
The Star City complex comprises a main gaming floor, private gaming room, seven restaurants, seven bars, ballroom, hotel and apartment blocks, retail arcade, nightclub, 2,000-seat Lyric Theatre, 1,000-seat Showroom theatre and conference facilities.
About Tabcorp Holdings Limited
Tabcorp manages leading customer brands in Australia, including the Star City and Jupiters casinos, TAB, Tabaret, Keno and TAB Sportsbet, serving millions of customers every day.
Tabcorp was listed on the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX) in August 1994 to acquire the wagering and gaming businesses of the former Victorian Totalizator Agency Board. In 2004, Tabcorp celebrated 10 years as a listed public company.
Tabcorp acquired the Star City hotel and casino, a major entertainment complex in Sydney, in 1999. In 2003, the company merged with Jupiters, the owner of hotel and casino complexes in Brisbane, Gold Coast and Townsville as well as gaming-machine monitoring. In 2004, Tabcorp completed the acquisition of Tab Limited, the New South Wales based wagering, media and gaming company.
Tabcorp’s major business units of Wagering, Gaming, Casinos and Media employ approximately 12,000 people in all States of Australia.
Tabcorp has more than 230,000 shareholders and has a market capitalisation within the top-30 listed companies on the Australian Stock Exchange.
Tabcorp’s brands include:
- TAB in Victoria and New South Wales
- Tabaret in Victoria
- Footytip
- TAB Sportsbet
- Star City hotel and casino in Sydney
- Conrad Jupiters, Gold Coast
- Conrad Treasury, Brisbane
- Jupiters Townsville
- Sky Channel
- Radio 2KY
- Trackside
- Club Keno
- Jupiters Technology
- Townsville Entertainment and Convention Centre
- Jupiters International
- AWA Technology Services
- Gold Coast Convention and Exhibition Centre
- Jupiters Gaming Services
- Jupiters Machine Gaming
About SumTotal Systems
SumTotal Systems (NASDAQ: SUMT) is the largest provider of talent, learning and business performance technologies and services. SumTotal deploys mission-critical solutions that align talent and knowledge with business goals to generate significant bottom-line results. With more than 17 million users worldwide, SumTotal has helped accelerate performance and profits for more than 1,500 of the world’s best-known companies and government agencies including Accenture, Aetna, Cendant, DaimlerChrysler, Delta Air Lines, Harley-Davidson, Microsoft, Novartis, PNC Bank, U.S. Army, U.S. Air Force, U.S. Navy, U.S. Coast Guard, U.S. Bancorp, United Airlines, Vodafone, Wachovia and Wyeth. SumTotal has offices throughout the United States, in London, Paris, Singapore, Sydney, Tokyo, Hong Kong and Hyderabad, India. For more information about SumTotal's products and services, visit
www.sumtotalsystems.com.
SumTotal and the SumTotal logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of SumTotal Systems, Inc. or its affiliates in the United States or other countries. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.
Safe Harbor Statement/ Forward-Looking Statements
This press release contains forward-looking statements. These statements represent SumTotal Systems' expectations or beliefs concerning future events. These statements are not historical facts or guarantees of future performance or events and are based on current expectations, estimates, beliefs, assumptions, goals and objectives, and involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results to be materially different from the results expressed or implied by these statements. Readers of this press release are cautioned not to place undue reliance on any forward-looking statements. Additional factors that could cause actual results to differ include, but are not limited to (i) unknown errors or bugs in SumTotal TotalLMS 7.1; (ii) the inability to fix in a timely fashion unanticipated bugs, errors or defects that materially impact the functionality or usability of SumTotal TotalLMS 7.1; (iii) the acceptance of SumTotal TotalLMS 7.1 and future product offerings; (iv) the ability to successfully implement SumTotal Systems' solutions; (v) the ability to successfully integrate SumTotal Systems’ solutions with Tabcorp’s back-end systems; (vi) the ability to successfully achieve efficiency gains from the implementation of SumTotal Systems’ solutions; (vii) changes in Tabcorp’s casino regulatory obligations as well as regulations of Australia’s New South Wales Casino Control Authority and the Queensland Office of Gaming Regulations; (viii) the ability to successfully develop and manage growth internationally; (ix) significant current and expected additional competition, and the need to continue to expand product distribution and services offerings; and (x) other events and other important factors disclosed previously and from time to time in SumTotal Systems' filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the annual report for fiscal year 2005 on Form 10-K filed March 28, 2006, the quarterly report for the quarter ended March 31, 2006, filed on May 10, 2006, and Form 8-Ks. The forward-looking statements contained in this release are made as of June 16, 2006, and SumTotal Systems does not assume any obligation to update such statements to reflect events or circumstances occurring after the date of this release.