程阳：美国新泽西彩票，相信市场的力量

http://www.state.nj.us/lottery/home.shtml 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Jersey_Lottery

Almost 45 years old, the New Jersey Lottery belies its maturity, and recently entered a new era by outsourcing sales and marketing services.

 The nation’s third oldest lottery, having launched in December 1970, has gone from $73 million in sales that first year to almost $3 billion in sales during the last fiscal year. More importantly, the amount of revenue it returns to the state, on a percentage of sales basis, is one of the highest of any American lottery, thanks to efficient operation and a balanced product mix that isn’t overly reliant on instant games. In fiscal 2013, the New Jersey Lottery returned more than 34 percent of sales to its beneficiaries, education and institutions.

Executive Director Carole Hedinger is serving her second term at the helm, first holding the position Deputy Executive Director from 1994 to 2001, then Acting Executive Director until 2003 before returning in June 2010. In her first stint over nine years, she provided some stability at the top that allowed the Lottery to develop a strong five-year plan and to see it through with consistent leadership. She has always been eager to continue New Jersey’s proud pioneering tradition in the lottery industry. “I was hired to do a job and to do it right, and I can’t be afraid to do that job.”

She emphasized that while it is important to be innovative and take on new challenges, you have to employ a bit of common sense and understand the boundaries. “But you can’t be too worried about it, you have to keep looking forward to move the business. You have to be confidant that you can make things work.” Her favorite motto? “It is better to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission.”

Hedinger recently charted a new course for the New Jersey Lottery, implementing a services contract with Northstar New Jersey that outsources sales and marketing functions to that private company. The state received an up-front payment of $120 million upon signing of the contract, and of course hopes the deal will bear considerable additional fruit over its 15-year term. More on that later.

Highlights over the years

Since its launch, the New Jersey Lottery has never shied from innovation. One of its biggest claims to fame was the first computerized daily numbers game in North America, with a statewide network of clerk-activated retail terminals implemented in 1975. “This was a real game-changer for lotteries,” said Hedinger. “Just selling a static ticket like a raffle wasn’t going to do it. But when you could sell through terminals, then you could really cater to what the public wanted to play.”

New Jersey was also an early adopter of internet-based options that added value to traditional lottery games. In 2001, the Lottery offered the first second-chance drawing that accepted online entries with a game from Scientific Games. “That was another of the industry’s big game-changers, because it developed into a whole new way to attract players and also to give them another playing experience. We were always very proud of being on the ground floor of that.” New Jersey further enhanced that experience with Cyber Slingo in 2004, the first lottery scratch game in the U.S. to offer an internet play component.

On the retail front, Hedinger is happy to explain that New Jersey also was one of earliest lotteries to aggressively expand the retail network into new kinds of retailers and away from the standard convenience-store model. “We stepped away from the idea that lottery retailers somehow had an exclusive franchise, which was one of the early ways of looking at retailers. We started thinking of the product more as just any retail product. Our attitude was, wherever the customers are buying things, that’s where we should be.” So New Jersey was selling lottery tickets in “big box” types of stores long before it was common for lotteries to do so. These include very large multi-department supermarkets and wholesale clubs like BJ’s. It wasn’t always easy, especially 20 years ago when the customer service areas (where lottery tickets are usually sold) of these types of stores were hidden away in the back. As they evolved and placed customer service front and center, the environment became much more conducive to lottery sales.

Out of necessity, New Jersey was a pioneer in the live video streaming of lottery drawings. After losing its spot on New Jersey public television in 2011, and with the pricey New York and Philadelphia media markets being New Jersey’s only outlet, the Lottery had no fiscally responsible alternative to televise its draws. With a firm belief that lottery draws must be available live on some medium to maintain the integrity of the games, Hedinger and her team developed the industry’s first live internet streaming video of lottery drawings.

It wasn’t long after successfully meeting that challenge that – surprise, surprise – television stations came back to the Lottery wanting to show the drawings again at a much more reasonable cost. “I think TV missed us – there’s a whole audience out there that wants to see lottery draws on television. Some stations came around in their thinking and decided it wasn’t a bad idea to have a lottery drawing leading into a news hour or prime time.” And not only is the New Jersey Lottery back on television for the draws, it now has some added value with additional content such as web links and additional announcements during the day. “It’s a better relationship now – we add something to the TV station and they certainly add something to us.”

Carole Hedinger (right) welcomes the Wawa chain with Suzanne Keenan, the company’s Chief Information Officer and Senior Vice President of Information, Technology and Process Solutions.

A new era

The Lottery’s latest achievement is the implementation of a sales and marketing services contract with Northstar New Jersey. It is the third such outsourcing in recent years, following on the heels of Illinois and Indiana, although the Texas Lottery actually has had a similar operating model since its inception in 1992.

When Hedinger rejoined the Lottery in 2010, she knew the Governor’s office was looking at ways to make it as profitable as possible, and by that fall she was exploring what others were doing in the area of outsourcing. She was never afraid of outsourcing or using private companies to get things done, but she was still neutral on the idea first proposed by Gov. Chris Christie. However, once she began doing the research, she knew that outsourcing was the way to go for the New Jersey Lottery if for no other reason than obtaining new resources. She noted that there had been hiring freezes in the state and that government was trying to contract, so it was very difficult to hire personnel to properly service retailers and expand the business. “Lotteries are so different than other state agencies – we produce new money and need to be run as a business.” As such, they need stability in staffing, they need economic resources and they need modern technologies.

“So where I had been neutral on it, I became a real believer that an outsourcing contract for those services would produce the three resources we needed the most – human resources, economic resources and technological resources,” said Hedinger. “And it would do so over a stable future period of time.”

Given the already high-performing New Jersey Lottery, she knew the new services contract would never be a “get rich quick” scheme for the state, something that would turn night into day. “I saw it as a very intelligent approach to providing the kind of strategic thinking, planning and resources that were needed to grow a business. Something that a government is very challenged to do.”

Hedinger and a committee made up of individuals from a number of state departments worked tirelessly to develop an RFP that would attract multiple bidders, but in fact there was only one bid. Perhaps it was because it would be a severe challenge for anyone to come in and make the New Jersey Lottery perform much better than it already was. But even with only one bidder, the state proceeded to negotiate with Northstar New Jersey to develop a services contract.

One thing Hedinger’s research had shown her – there were pitfalls she needed to avoid so there would be no unintended consequences. Following the implementation in Illinois, she was able to learn from their experience and avoid practices that could lead to failure.

The contract was awarded in late 2012, and after surviving protests and negotiations, it was signed in June 2013, with the official transition scheduled for October 1, 2013. Lottery officials and Northstar worked closely together from that spring to start the process, making sure nothing one party was doing was contrary to the plans of the other. Probably the biggest challenge was working with the employees. “Our sales force and marketing department were obviously not going to remain within the state, and the employees were naturally very worried and anxious over what was going to happen to them. We tried to maintain a lot of communication to let them know what was going on. It was very important that they be as informed as possible so that they could make decisions about their lives.”

An outside consulting company was brought in to help affected employees learn how to deal with change and to assess their own abilities, in preparation for a transition either to Northstar, to another position at the Lottery, or to another employer entirely.

In the end, no one lost their job. Northstar hired about 30 of the Lottery’s employees. Some employees were entitled to state retirement, and took advantage of that (although a few of those also went on to work for Northstar). Other employees were hired for new positions within the Lottery – after all, if Northstar was successful in building the retail network and growing sales, there would be a need for more Lottery employees to handle retailer applications, prize claims and reporting. “We did a lot of planning, imagining what our own organization would need to look like after the transition in anticipation of growth.”

At this writing, Northstar has 123 employees, mostly in the sales area, and the Lottery has 100. Prior to the transition, the Lottery had about 140 employees. “So that’s a substantial increase in human resources supporting lottery activity,” said Hedinger.

 And everyone works together. “Since the transition we have worked nonstop to strengthen those ties that bind. We have a total commitment to make the two organizations work together as one. We are in charge, there isn’t any doubt about it, but we work together as openly as any two organizations possibly could. And we continue to invent things as we go along. I read long ago that the biggest cause of failure with mergers is the clash of each institution’s cultures. It’s important to recognize this and allow time for the organizations to blend into a cohesive whole.”

One point she emphasized – Rome wasn’t built in a day. It takes time to start running on all cylinders. “I don’t think you can judge contracts like these short of maybe a three year term. In year one you are sort of gearing up. In year two you start to see the fruits of your labor. By year three, you’d be fully implemented with your long term marketing plans, your promotional plans, your retailer plans. It takes a while to get things really going.” She added that it was too early to see the financial results of the first partial year of the contract – an audit was in progress at press time.

However, Hedinger was quick to point out some of the early accomplishments, such as the addition of about 500 new retailers, including 240 Wawa stores. “Wawa has become a very enthusiastic partner with us,” and Northstar worked closely with the Lottery to bring them on board. Other tangible benefits of the new regime are already evident, with retailer satisfaction being at the top of the list. Retailer incentives, employee incentives and player incentives have all been put into place. Retailers have been given new tools for keeping better track of inventory and for helping them sell, and the Lottery has new tools that help them work with retailers as well. “The retailers have really responded.”

Looking ahead

All of this has been part of a cohesive plan to grow the New Jersey Lottery, noted Hedinger. But the marketplace is changing, so the bigger question is where the lottery industry in general is going. “No matter how well we service our retailers, or how clever we are with our point of sale, do people want to buy lottery games? “We’ll be able to be quick, because they bring those resources now that we didn’t have before.” Are we going to attract those younger players? With mobile technology and the ever-increasing digital age, how are we going to stay the way we are, selling tickets out of terminals? Those are the big, big challenges we all face.”

Those big-picture issues aside, Hedinger is confident that the New Jersey Lottery will continue to grow. And it will do so with the continued emphasis on bottom-line revenues to the state by having a good balance between terminal-based games and scratch tickets. She’s also convinced that Northstar will keep lottery operations nimble, bringing in new games much faster than ever in response to consumer demands. “We’ll be able to be quick, because they bring those resources now that we didn’t have before.”

It’s not just about games and technology. Previously, the Lottery had a tiny marketing department with a very limited budget, and that task is now handled by Northstar. “What I see now is a much more concentrated and cohesive marketing plan, with the resources to make it work. 360 degree marketing that touches everything, from social media to print to out of home to radio/TV.”

As for other developments, Hedinger is looking forward to whatever the future will bring. But one thing for sure, she wants to make sure the contract with Northstar is an unqualified success. “I never want to walk away from the New Jersey Lottery thinking ‘I really blew that one.’ I was hired to do a job to run the Lottery as best I can, and that’s what I intend to keep doing into the future, whatever comes our way.”