INTRALOT ignites industry-leading innovation with Azure employee upskilling initiative

“The courses have attracted people from all over the company. We’ve had more than 500 employees participating. Our people embraced the initiative and found the particular transformation project fascinating,” highlights Mrs. Areti Mairopoulou, Senior Learning Development & Talent Acquisition Manager at INTRALOT, as she recounts the company’s recent experience with the Azure training and certification program.

In pursuit of gaining the best technology skills and talent internally, INTRALOT wanted to cultivate a growth mindset in its employees. Its skilling strategy created opportunities for people to grow at their own pace.

“At INTRALOT we believe in continuous growth. Our people are our most precious asset. We want to have passionate people who are equipped with the skills needed to drive a culture of innovation and growth within a cloud environment. The challenge for the Human Resources department was to design and implement a training program that will enable its employees to work on cutting-edge Azure Cloud technologies, while ensuring the smooth operation of the company during the transitional period of this multi-month project. Our people acquired all the necessary skills and grew as professionals, ready to lead to the new era. Since the launch, 25 people have been Microsoft-certified,” says Mrs. Mairopoulou. “Plus, an additional 200 employees registered on the learning platform in several courses, well over our initial target of 50.”

Not just adapting, but thriving

Headquartered in Athens, Greece, INTRALOT is a global leader in gaming solutions and operations. It holds more than 300 patents and boasts an active presence in 41 jurisdictions worldwide.

Driven to provide the next-generation technology that today’s players demand, INTRALOT began harnessing Microsoft Azure’s potential regarding scalability, flexibility, big data analytics, and a personalized playing experience. For the gaming leader, it was important to equip staff with the tools to adapt to and thrive within the company’s new cloud-centric environment.

“Our products built on Microsoft Azure open the way for an unlimited set of opportunities for gaming operators,” says Mr. Athanasios Karakasiliotis, Group IT Infrastructure Director at INTRALOT, explaining the company’s choice to begin its journey with Microsoft Azure training and certification. “It was extremely important for us to help our people develop the skills needed to engage deeply with Azure cloud technology.”

One of the company’s main ambitions for technical staff was Microsoft cloud related certification, ensuring consistently top-quality deliverables backed by measurable expertise. “Given the migration of our main data center shifting more than 1.000 servers to Azure, we needed to empower our employees with in-depth technical knowledge in different key areas such as Systems, Network & Database administrators, Azure Architects, DevOps, Big data Analysts as well as Cybersecurity in order to fulfill our customer needs quickly and effectively,” says Mr. Karakasiliotis.

An adaptive learning approach

Empowering employees to successfully migrate systems to Azure and developing products using Azure technologies was the key outcome. The company wanted to upskill more than 400 employees without interrupting daily operations.

At the beginning, INTRALOT had to encourage its employees to get certified. Mrs. Mairopoulou explains, “To engage them, we designed a flexible training program followed by an internal communication campaign. It was tough to work out a convenient time for learning while projects continued to run, but we tried to make it work.”

Our Human Resources team designed a training program that was both flexible and targeted, based on each employee’s needs. Even during the COVID-19 pandemic, people could still access virtual training opportunities. There were multiple learning methods and employees could choose the learning path that best applied to their job roles. “Our goal was to build a growth mindset within the company, one where people both want to learn and have the right opportunity to advance their skills,” notes Mrs. Mairopoulou.

A personalized learning experience

Launched in March 2020, INTRALOT’s skilling initiative comprised of targeted online learning paths for technical personnel and online training with Microsoft partners for other dedicated teams. These included access to Microsoft tutorials from certified instructors and formal learning approaches to help people achieve their Microsoft Certification.

The first step in the journey was familiarizing employees with the Azure training courses. From there, 20 training sessions were organized. “Some of the sessions were targeted to specific teams, some were open. Soon, we also opened up the training program to more than 15 subsidiaries, organizing 17 training sessions,” Mrs. Mairopoulou notes. For people who needed to travel often, preparatory exams and pre-recorded sessions were made available online for self-paced study. “We also organized online instructor-led training sessions with Microsoft partners for dedicated themes,” adds Mrs. Mairopoulou. All INTRALOT employees were kept informed of the available courses per role on a monthly basis. Additional online sessions were also held to resolve any questions and share learning experiences.

Training attendance was optional for INTRALOT’s technical specialists. However, the company also witnessed an overwhelmingly positive response across the board. “Our employees truly embraced the upskilling program. It was amazing to see,” says Mrs. Mairopoulou. To date, more than 500 INTRALOTers  have participated in the program.

Unlocking new opportunities

Thanks to the workforce’s new digital cutting edge skillsets in Azure cloud, INTRALOT could save on the time and cost needed to manage an on-premise data center and physical servers. “Now, we are able to achieve a very high level of cost optimization,” says Mr. Karakasiliotis. “That means we are capable to provide high-end products and services to our customers by simply using the right level of resources that the staff need to accomplish their tasks, nothing more, nothing less. From our perspective, the new cost efficiencies, the increasing agility and acceleration of innovation are major achievements towards a sustainable growth of the organization and consequently of our customers.”