The global gaming industry is both competitive and complex. Millions of players engage with casinos and games every day, from mobile gaming to subscription-based services.
As the industry shifts towards subscriptions, live-service titles, in-game purchases, and recurring revenue, gaming companies are under increasing pressure. Teams must track high volumes of transactions across platforms (and across borders!), monitor player engagement, manage revenue recognition rules and maintain accurate reporting. All while meeting strict regulatory, tax and compliance requirements.
As such, many gaming companies are already at a disadvantage. Disjointed and legacy systems can’t keep up with the ever-growing demands and ongoing shifts in the sector.
That’s where Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems come in. ERP brings finance, subscriptions, compliance and business data all together in one platform, giving you real-time visibility, improved control and the ability to scale and evolve.
ERP is software that brings together all essential business operations in one unified system. This allows businesses to automate complex and/or manual processes and offers a single, reliable source of information and data for everyone in the organisation, speeding up decisions, making reporting easier and reducing manual overheads.
In the context of the gaming industry, this covers a huge range of areas, including:
Successful game development and distribution involve multiple business functions. Many companies still struggle with
ERP can help solve all of these problems in one fell swoop.
Here, we’ll explore in detail how ERP software can not only address the unique challenges faced by gaming companies in today’s market, but can also support them with ongoing growth and development.
Challenge: Multiple systems make decision-making difficult – between systems that don’t talk to each other, differing sources of data and the time lost trying to reconcile everything, you can struggle to get the data you need (and be confident that it’s correct), especially given the fast-moving, live-service nature of the industry.
How ERP solves this: The beauty of ERP is that it is one single, integrated system that underpins all business processes. At its core is a database, which becomes your single source of truth, consolidating data from all your departments.
Outcome: Faster decision-making, easier sign-offs, improved forecasting capabilities and better alignment across departments.
Challenge: Gaming companies often have multiple revenue streams and high transaction volumes, sometimes across multiple platforms. These need accurate, consolidated reporting, but it is often difficult to control, especially when revenue comes from different sources, such as subscriptions, microtransactions and partnerships.
How ERP solves this: With real-time dashboards and analytics, accessible to everyone, ERP systems provide automated financial management, including general ledger, accounts payable/receivable, and real-time financial reporting, all within a single platform.
Outcome: Finance teams gain greater confidence in financial data, improve cash-flow management, and deliver timely, accurate insights to support strategic planning.
Challenge: Gaming companies, particularly in highly regulated areas such as iGaming, must comply with ever-evolving UK (and international) regulations, tax and data protection requirements and reporting standards. And that’s not to mention the huge volume of customers handing over their financial data.
Looking after all this manually is time-consuming and increases the risk of errors and non-compliance.
How ERP solves this: Modern ERP systems are designed with this in mind. They automatically support multi-entity, multi-currency and multi-jurisdiction operations. They can automate tax calculations, maintain audit trails and apply region-specific rules across transactions and reporting. And as they’re centrally controlled, they ensure consistent governance, even as they support regulatory requirements for different markets.
Challenge: Subscription models, season passes and in-game purchases are common in gaming, but they mean complex billing cycles and revenue recognition requirements. Managing these manually increases the risk of errors and inconsistencies, not to mention missed revenue.
How ERP solves this: ERP systems automate subscription billing, invoicing and revenue recognition, all in line with accounting standards. They also allow you to track everything in one central system – recurring revenue, churn, lifetime value, delayed payments and more.
Outcome: All of this means that finance teams can be confident in their reporting, manage subscription revenue with confidence, reduce errors and cut the time spent on manual tasks and processes, allowing them to focus on business growth instead.
Challenge: In many businesses, gaming companies included, teams work in silos, using different systems, workflows and datasets. This often leads to a lack of alignment between finance, operations, marketing, development and leadership teams, which slows down decision-making, makes reporting more difficult and .
ERP Solution: Getting all teams on the same page and working from the same information is vital. ERP allows businesses to unify data and workflows across teams and departments, creating a “single source of truth” and making collaboration easier.
Outcome: Teams can work more effectively together. Designs can be signed off more easily, reports are consistent and cohesive, decisions can be made faster and the amount of time spent on reworking and manual processes is reduced, freeing teams up for greater communication and collaboration.
Challenge: Manual processes are time-consuming and can be prone to errors, especially in a fast-moving, high-volume environment. They take your teams’ time away from the activities that can really help move your business forward.
ERP Solution: Automation, automation, automation. ERP automates all your routine tasks such as invoicing, reconciliations, reporting, CRM, approvals etc, saving time, streamlining workflows and ensuring consistency across your whole operation.
Outcome: Your team spends less time on manual admin tasks and more time on strategy, development, improving productivity and reducing costs. Customer
Outcome: Gaming companies can expand internationally with confidence, reduce the risk of non-compliance, and simplify audits across regions. Finance teams have better control over global reporting, while leadership benefits from a clear, consolidated view of performance across markets.
communications are timely and relevant, improving customer relationships and loyalty, and errors are reduced, meaning less time spent on fixing these.
Challenge: Gaming companies can often experience rapid growth, market expansion or acquisitions. They may need to bring in new monetisation models, or look to acquire other studios and IP to strengthen their portfolios.
If you’re using legacy systems, they can struggle to scale as you grow, evolve and bring other systems into play. This leads to operational bottlenecks, limited visibility across teams and duplicated efforts.
ERP Solution: ERP is built for scalability. New business units, markets, teams, revenue streams and more can be integrated and supported with ease, and standardised workflows and processes mean that new teams and employees can be onboarded and aligned more quickly.
Outcome: With ERP in place, you can respond more quickly to change. Whether you’re entering a new market, launching a new title or integrating another business you’ve acquired, you’ll minimise disruption to your operations and maintain clear visibility across your whole business. ERP removes the legwork, allowing you to focus on growth, new product development, and player experience as your business evolves.
While implementing ERP may seem overwhelming, and it is a major undertaking, by working with an experienced ERP implementation partner, like NoBlue2, you can make the process easier and more manageable.
With proven methodologies, industry knowledge and expert support, an ERP partner will be able to look at your existing systems, data and processes and advise you on exactly what you need.
So, what does the future look like for ERP in the gaming and casino industry? Like many industries, AI and machine learning are likely to play a huge part.
Due to the fast-moving nature of gaming, we expect to see more companies in this sector move toward cloud ERP as they seek to reduce IT costs and improve flexibility and collaboration across teams that are often spread across the world.
As gaming companies continue to scale, diversify revenue models and operate across borders, day-to-day operations only become more complex. Subscriptions, live updates, compliance requirements and high transaction volumes mean that gaming companies need connected systems and automated processes.
Modern ERP platforms allow gaming companies to regain control, bringing together finance, operations, compliance and data into one single, unified system. The result is greater visibility, faster decision-making, stronger governance and the agility businesses need to grow in such a fast-evolving industry.
Whether you’re a studio looking to expand internationally, a live-service operator looking to better manage recurring revenue, or a multi-national gaming business navigating regulatory changes, ERP can hugely simplify your operations and help your business to grow.
By working with an experienced ERP partner like NoBlue2, you can ensure that your new ERP system is aligned to the unique challenges of the gaming sector – not just today, but going forward, as the industry (and your business) continues to grow and change, leaving you free to create exceptional player experiences.
