Alina Alexandru: Being modular gives us the best experience in each vertical

Alina Alexandru has a very intriguing role within the industry. As Group Chief Operating Officer at EveryMatrix, Alexandru oversees the technological and strategic objectives for the igaming supplier, which separates its products into individual business units.

Speaking to SBC Media, Alexandru outlined that EveryMatrix’s modularity – by which its products for casino, slots, sportsbook, affiliates and lottery are split into their own units with individual management and budgets – is one of its key strengths.

This is because Alexandru boasted that each of the members of management across those business units are experts in their respective areas.

She noted: “In their vertical, they are specialised and have the expertise. So for example, in my role, I don’t have to know all that goes into building a live casino type of product, or operating the product. It’s a great advantage that we can leverage this specialisation that goes into the business unit, but also being able to have a high level view from where we offer a support function when it comes to things that we want to deliver strategically, when there’s multiple views involved.

“My role is about mediating and facilitating these objectives which are strategic, in which our close view can actually be delivered.”

In such a high-level role, Alexandru is charged with making a lot of strategic choices to help EveryMatrix achieve its operational goals. So far, it has yielded positive results, as the company achieved record financials in 2023. Last year, it recorded significant growth in all business segments in Q4 with record quarterly net revenue of €36m, up 87% year-over-year.

But such growth yields operational challenges as senior leadership adjusts to the rapid scaling up of the business. The firm now has over a dozen offices and over 1,000 employees.

Alexandru outlined these challenges: “My role is kind of very closely tied with delivery. The challenges you can imagine are that we are a very fast growing company, growing very fast together. We just doubled our staff in the last four years, we doubled our transaction count in the last year. So it’s growing very fast.

“Being able to adapt to that growth rate is definitely a challenge which lies in the operational area of things. Fortunately, I don’t have to manage it all by myself. So Ebbe (Groes, group CEO) and each leader of business units have a role to play with it.”

While EveryMatrix has business units supporting online casino games, sportsbook platforms, affiliates and more, it is easy to imagine getting overwhelmed in making decisions on where to expand next.

But, Alexandru explained that the decision on where to expand next is down to data-driven insights and getting alignment between all members of the firm’s senior leadership.

“Our decision is commercially driven, so in that sense, it’s a good mix, because we have so many verticals, offering different kinds of products,” she remarked. “We can think of our strengths and actually find the right mix for the market that we want to enter. So, it’s a decision that comes from aligning the view of both our commercial and technical leadership, with commercial leadership so that we group towards the same goal. In essence, we have this mix of products that allows us to try something within the market, see how it goes and iterate on that.”

One of the newest verticals that EveryMatrix has entered is the lottery sector, aiming to help national lotteries bring their online gaming provisions up to the technological level of the 2020s.

The company has already secured a full-scale deal with the Hungarian National Lottery, providing it with its full portfolio of online gaming and sportsbook products. But the firm also uses its modular approach to offer other lotteries and build out specific parts of their online offerings. Like CEO Ebbe Groes told SBC Media, the agility and flexibility of EveryMatrix’s approach helps it to best serve each individual client.

Alexandru explained that entering the lottery market is the logical next step for EveryMatrix as it can leverage its own flexibility to help national lotteries speed up their slower and more laborious processes.

“Some of them might be more accustomed to heavy processes and heavy platforms that might be accustomed to having the platform offered to them as a product. They may be finding it very hard or challenging to operate such and with markets opening up with even more freedom to lotteries with the overall context of being online, having to offer players a good experience across channels.

“They also have to upscale their innovation so they are seeking platforms like ours for services that they can adapt to. We can offer our Software as a Service so we don’t just hand out things and leave it to run through. We maintain, we update and we stay involved throughout the whole site.”

The original version of this interview was published by CasinoBeats.