Public Gaming International November/December 2021

45 PUBLIC GAMING INTERNATIONAL • NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2021 mission of the Nebraska Lottery, regard- less of whether the person is on the vendor or lottery operator side of the business. It’s my job to empower their efforts to gather information, test theories, conduct research, facilitate communications, and build alignment and a healthy culture of collaboration and mutual support. We take a multi-disciplinary approach such that our finance and legal staff are often part of strategy discussions about sales, promotion, product, and distribution. The experience of the last 18 months has put a premium on pooling our resources from all quarters, including the vendor, and galvanizing the whole team to focus on long-term and strategic planning. The Nebraska Lottery’s relationship with our primary vendor is not a “private manage- ment agreement”, but we do rely on the one vendor to perform a large range of business functions much like a PMA. For instance, IGT handles the sales force and warehous- ing. The Nebraska Lottery staff is 21 people, and the IGT has a team of 40 dedicated to the success of the Nebraska Lottery. Our governor introduced Lean Six Sigma to state government, encouraging work-flow analyses and business process engineering to optimize effectiveness. We apply Lean Six Sigma principles like managing by fact, and involving and equipping our people in the process. We work to see that everyone is engaged in understanding how the work gets done. It’s about applying a metric-driven analytical process to improve outcomes and add value for the customer. Are you invited to testify before the legislature about the benefits of iLottery or otherwise enhancing the ability of the Lottery to generate more revenue for beneficiaries (Education, the Environment, and the Nebraska State Fair)? B. Rockey: As a division of a government agency, we are not invited to advocate in that way. Our job isn’t to make policy. Our job is to execute the directives and the will of the people’s representatives in state government. When we are asked to testify, it is to inform the legislators about the facts surrounding areas that concern them. For instance, the Lottery regulates charitable gaming which includes bingo, keno, Pickle Cards, and raffles. We regulate those game categories but we do not engage in any active sale or marketing of those games. We have the same issues as many states have with the increase in gray machines gaming devices that are not properly licensed and not paying the appropriate fees to operate legally. We took steps to identify the questionable devices, clarifying the problem of separating them from traditional amusement devices like pinball machines. The legislature then established definitions and restrictions that led to regulations on which we created an action-plan to monitor and enforce regula- tory requirements. We have not been asked to provide input yet about formulation of policy like whether to allow iLottery. How else has the pandemic changed the way you do business? B. Rockey: Another impact has been to bring us even closer to our retail partners. Their business models are changing as a result of a changing competitive landscape and I think they appreciate even more now the important role that lottery can perform for them. We have always been invested in the overall success of our retail partners, but I think the last 18 months has prompted an even more creative approach towards helping them be successful. If we help them by driving store traffic and increasing the efficiency of inventory management, order fulfillment and settlements, then they will help us accomplish our goals of increasing revenues for good causes. n Applying a wise strategy informed by experience, continued from page 16 well when I served in a variety of sales and marketing positions with the Georgia and Florida lotteries. We were expected to produce results but it was more process- driven than MBO-driven. Then I went to the vendor side and was exposed to a completely different perspective of how you operate a business. On the vendor side you’re certainly there to support the customer and forge healthy and positive relationships. And you are expected to comply with process protocols, directives, and reporting. But you are also expected to produce results and sometimes that can require trade-offs; like deciding which results are mission-critical and which may need to be sacrificed in order to avoid breaking the budget or some other undesirable consequence. There is a constant balancing act to control costs while delivering the product and service to the customer’s satisfaction. Large jurisdictions like Florida and Georgia have a robust set of dedicated resources dedicated to them by the technology partner to ensure timely and effective service response. Smaller lotteries like Mississippi are typically in a shared resource pool. No complaints here as IGT has always done a fabulous job of supporting the Mississippi Lottery. But the reality is that the commercial environment is one in which everyone operates within strict budgetary constraints while under pressure to make sure the customer’s needs are always met. In a process-driven state lottery, if the employee can show they are performing their tasks as directed and are doing the best they can to produce the desired results, they have essentially fulfilled their responsibility. On the commercial side, especially the higher up you go in the organizational chart, the more uncompromising the expectation to produce results regardless of the obstacles. And you are accountable to different people who have different expectations, some of which may even be contradictory. So it can be a balancing act. I come from the sales side and must admit that I would commit to things that I was not sure how them could be accomplished and would then just work like crazy to make them happen. J. Hewitt: I am not sure I would recommend that approach, Paul. Funny that you say that, though, because it’s my job to recognize when something is being Working on both sides of the business has given me a respect for the challenges everyone faces.