Public Gaming International Gaming July/August 2021

45 PUBLIC GAMING INTERNATIONAL • JULY/AUGUST 2021 LOOKINGAHEAD Some of the initiatives undertaken by the Michigan Lottery are structural changes that, once implemented, require monitoring, and most of them depend on each other for success. The wide range of enhancements and changes were designed not to achieve a one-time sales bump but to serve as the foundation for sustainable growth. Based on industry sales data between FY12 and FY20, the U.S. lottery that experienced the most growth in total instant sales was Michigan – by a large margin. “We knew some changes might make a big impact in a single year, but our focus was on changes that could make positive impacts year after year,” says WilliamGriffin, Michigan Lottery Deputy Commissioner of Sales. “No matter our customers’ circumstances, we can support them by providing data and information to inform their strategic choices,” says Monterosso. “In all areas, the customers are the decision makers. We closely examine their specific local circumstances and adapt our recommendations and their sequencing to those.” The teams have already envisioned other improvements to keep the growth trend going. The Lottery is scheduled to roll out new IGT retailer terminals and peripherals beginning in September 2021. And in the latter half of 2022, Michigan is due to receive a new IGT Aurora system and business applications. Aurora, IGT’s high-performance, high-reliability lottery central system solution, has open interfaces with a modern architecture to support Michigan in meeting all its needs today and enable the Lottery to respond rapidly to changing market conditions. Among the new IGT business applications, Order Wizard’s predictive ordering algorithm will help to ensure that retailers will be replenished with sufficient inventory to avoid revenue- draining stock-outs, while not over-stocking games that result in costly returns. Order Wizard also ensures that the retailers get the right games in the right quantities at the right time to optimize the instant ticket display at retail. The Michigan Lottery’s original request for IGT’s ideas to grow instant sales has evolved over many years to an ongoing day-to-day collaboration. One of the reasons it has worked so well is the Lottery didn’t pursue just one tactic or another. The Lottery took a broad view and made improvements that touched all parts of its instants business over time. n