28 PUBLIC GAMING INTERNATIONAL • NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2024 patterns indicate that consumers purchase additional draw products with $5 scratch, a lottery can run a promo that offers a specific draw game product with the purchase of a $5 scratch ticket. IGT is also looking to leverage these correlations between purchases to support the ability to generate next-best offer (NBO) recommendations on LVMs right at the point of purchase. This unique Market Basket Analysis tool is available to U.S. sites with connected IGT machines. Daily Out-of-Stock National Reports: Getting Actionable LVM Information to Retail Locations Faster Data on LVM performance has long been available to lottery back-office employees, but it’s the employees at individual retailer locations who can best take immediate action to ensure the LVMs are full and available. The newest process to address out of stocks (OOS) leverages IGT’s ability to deliver real-time data from the company’s selfservice equipment. The automated Daily Out-of-Stock National Report is facilitated by and being piloted on IGT’s Lottery Data Cloud, which captures the number of out-of-stock bins at each national retailer’s location within a participating state. The report is designed in such a way that national retailers can share the OOS information immediately with managers at the individual store locations, enabling each location to take action and address any out of stocks. The Daily Out-of-Stock National Report is already being used by 22 national and local retail chains in North Carolina, covering about 86% of the LVMs in the state. The Report logs information by each store’s number, enabling retailers’ staff to quickly convert it into an email and get the information directly out to the locations each morning. “When it comes to out of stocks, immediacy counts,” notes Steve Desautels, IGT Director Sales & Marketing Execution, who led the report’s development along with Craig Hall, IGT Senior Manager Software Engineering and Data Strategy. “With the Report drawing on the remaining machine inventory, it’s a real-time snapshot – retailers can see the true out-of-stock status of the machines, share that information, and take action. It's a huge step forward that other retailers and lotteries can now take advantage of — and yet another reason for a lottery to be in cloud. “For years, retailers have had access to historical out-of-stock data and lost-sales estimates, but this new Report helps them to prevent lost sales in the first place,” adds Desautels. “Lottery category managers at the national level, who might be responsible for 2,000 or 3,000 stores, can’t get insight on every location. Until now, there’s been no way to do that — especially given that each jurisdiction has its own calculation for what it considers ‘out of stock’ to mean, and both chain retailers and lotteries have their own preferences for how data is formatted and reported.” By simply focusing on “Is that bin empty right now?”, the matter becomes a simple yes or no question, and the Report allows retail locations to fill those bins and be ready for the day’s business. “Our group within IGT is dedicated to forging partnerships with retailers and lotteries to help identify opportunities that will increase operational efficiencies at both the national and store level,” says Gina Easley, IGT Senior Manager National Retail Accounts. To that end, IGT’s Daily Out-ofStock National Report provides consistent formatting across jurisdictions for ease of use by executives such as lottery category managers. IGT has been tracking the Report’s effectiveness in addressing out of stocks and improving sales following implementation in North Carolina. The trend data from recent months shows that the retailers sending the report out to the locations daily — and using the information to change behaviors — are seeing decreases in the number of out of stocks each day, which should help increase sales while improving consumer satisfaction. Cashless Payment No discussion of LVMs would be complete without a consideration of cashless payment, which, where permitted, is another important aspect of optimization because it provides consumers with the convenience they expect. A cash usage survey in September 2024 conducted by IGT with more than 2,000 adults residing in the U.S. found that 45% of consumers in the study carry less than $20 cash when shopping and 28% of the total sample carry no cash at all — a lost opportunity for any sale where cashless is not an option. But the benefits of cashless go beyond consumer payment choice.LVM cashless functionality also allows a lottery salesforce to obtain more data that they can use to make better business decisions related to product offerings, promotional opportunities, and more. IGT’s Connected Play solution, which allows a player to pay for their lottery purchases with their lottery eWallet,
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