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

(15 June 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.”

For more information, contact us at email@sumtotal.com.au.