Public Gaming International May/June 2020

53 PUBLIC GAMING INTERNATIONAL • MAY/JUNE 2020 The crisis just caused you to leapfrog into the future and start using it now. Other examples of this: Lots of people had not ordered groceries online before and start- ed in the past few weeks because they wanted to avoid going to public places like grocery stores. They too would have adopted the online ordering behaviour at some point in the future even if this crisis had not happened. The number of people using the self-serve lane in grocery stores was increasing before the crisis and would almost certainly have continued to in- crease regardless of the crisis. But these behaviours are now being adopted much more quickly than they would have been had there been no COVID-19. As an indus- try, we need to recognize this reality and be prepared to movefaster than we ever have before. Social Distancing will be a more promi- nent part of our mind-set going forward. That is a direct result of the pandemic crisis and would not have been a part of the “new normal.” But let’s deconstruct the specific impacts of the crisis and this new thing we call “social distancing”. How exactly does the desire for social distanc- ing manifest itself in behavours and the products that enable those behaviours? I would say that nothing has really changed – the products we need for social distanc- ing are already available, we just need to be ready to deploy them. Self-serve gam- ing kiosks and in-lane checkout, cashless currency and paperless ticket technolo- gies are just some of the products that enable social distancing. Those products and behavioural trends were already pick- ing up steam before the crisis and would have continued into the future with or without the pandemic. Again, the crisis is accelerating the mass-market adoption of these behaviours, and that is a critical dif- ference and impact. I think we – retailers, lottery operators, and technology partners – should work hard to be ready to meet the increased demand for rapid deployment of new products, new games, new technolo- gies and we need to innovate in the “pro- cess engineering” space. Since the tech- nologies already exist, we should be quite capable of fast-tracking the deployment of the products and services that will smooth the pathway for rapid mass-market adop- tion. Most importantly, though, is for our clients to know that we are here to support them and their own agenda and in their own timeline. INTRALOT’s only agenda is to best serve our clients. The top priority is the physical health of everyone along with a return to economic stability for everyone. Describe some of the character- istics of Digital Transformation. Technological innovation all starts with the player. It was six or seven years ago that we framed our player-centric mission as being to create the Universal Player Expe- rience. That preceded the global transition from multi-channel marketing over to om- ni-channel marketing. Now, it’s no longer about marketing through channels of dis- tribution and communications media. The Universal Player Experience is achieved with a full integration of the technologi- cal tools so that the player thinks of it as a singular user-interface that enables everything he wants to accomplish. The integrated player ex- perience enables a seamless migration across all distribu- tion channels, com- munications media, and game categories. The technological platforms and play- er-interface become integrated so they all feel like one universal player experience. In- store gaming kiosks, TVM’s, the shopper’s Mobile phone, the retailer’s in-store digi- tal platform, the lottery’s website and iL- ottery platform and the customer-facing functionality are all connected and inte- grated to make it one singularly fabulous and intuitive player experience. The Information Age was about the cap- ture and broadcasting of information. Digi- tal Transformation is about the conversion of massive amounts of data into useful, actionable business intelligence. It will in- form and transform the whole process of developing games and promotions while enhancing the whole player experience. Think about the way Amazon focuses on delivering more value. A collateral impact of the COVID-19 crisis and its aermath is that retailers, lotteries, and lotteries’ technology partners will have a similarly sharper focus on that simple but profound objective. We all still want to minimize risk and optimize the ROI on capital invest- ment. But we now have a crystal-clear un- derstanding that holding onto status quo methods of operation guarantees that we will fall behind our competitors and the trending expectations of the consumer. Doing that clearly represents the highest risk and lowest ROI. Let’s work together to build the future that will excite and engage our stakeholders and players.