Control freaks: keeping track of your machines' progress is becoming more important these days of increasing competition. Danielle Green looks into the latest developments in the arena of remote machine management.(Feature)

TO know your machines is to know your business and to know your business is to take a significant stride on the path to improving your bottom line. We all know amusement machines are potential data banks, rich in information that holds the key to unlocking profitability. And with ever more sophisticated remote machine management systems hitting the market, opportunities to capitalise on that data exist like never before.

To date, market leaders Leisure Link and Gamestec have led the remote machine management field with their proprietary Onlineplus and Midas applications respectively. But that is not to say smaller operating concerns need be left on the sidelines.

Systems such as Honeyframe's CashMaster Connexus offer their own cost effective automated machine management alternatives, with different modules to suit different operator requirements and budgets. Meanwhile, mobile technology specialists, most notably Nokia, are making their own inroads into the remote machine arena.

A relatively recent development from Honeyframe, for instance, is its handheld remote data capture system which at 500 [pounds sterling] per year offers a cost effective halfway house between static EDC (electronic data capture) and full online connectivity.

Here, engineering and collection staff are equipped with a PDA type device which can be hooked up to a machine's "black box" from which it extracts information on income, payouts, machine faults and …