The Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians in southern California’s Coachella Valley is using profits from its casino to help fund a two-year old software development firm called Fusion Resource Solutions.
The company provides apps and other software to help hotels and casinos manage information.
The tribe’s CIO Bill Oliver says the new firm is in its “infancy” but that it hopes within five years to be firmly entrenched. “I’m hoping that our local market grows with our local partnerships, and we help local businesses grow,” he told the Desert Sun last week.
The company was sparked by a conversation that Oliver had with a tribal council member and Tribal Chairman Jeff Grubbe, who are both involved in information technology. They realized that the tribe had a chance to develop solutions to help it deal with information from its two casinos and hotel—and then extend that service to other tribes and businesses.
The fledgling business now has 40 employees, including seven full-time software developers, four business systems analysts plus support staff, according to the Sun’s report. Many of the developers are freelancers.
The company creates apps for Apple, Android and Windows according to specifications from casinos and hotels, which tell them what information they need to extract. For example, tracking members of a casino loyalty program. The result of such a conversation was “Fusion Tracker,” that compiles a database on customers that includes what restaurants they patronize and what games they play when they are at the casino.
