Case Study of a Lottery Project Won in West Africa

The Dusane team had established a contact with a key gaming consultant in this West African Country as part of its ongoing business development campaign. A strong relationship nurtured with the Consultant in a short frame of time and engaging him in discussions to explore potential in the markets that he covered, brought a very large potential case for converting an existing paper-based lottery operation into an online electronic format, through the deployment of Dusane’s BATS based solution.

A communication channel was established with the customer based on the introduction by the Consultant and Dusane’s Team headed by Sajan Nair got down to understanding the current operations of this national-level Operator in a West African Country. Discussions were also conducted on the pain areas and perception of real and felt limitations, which the current operation had, and how the Operator hoped to address these by upgrading to an online lottery model from his existing paper based operations.

Some of the issues identified with the existing paper base lottery operations were: Lack of transparency, huge efforts involved in introducing more draws, inability to activate quick setting and frequent revising of commissions and credit limits for Agents and Retailers, need for flexibility in assigning sales and credit limits to different channel partners based on potential and credit history and extracting multiple detailed reports with a high level of accuracy.

The game of 5/90 is an extremely popular one, especially in West African countries such as Nigeria, Ghana, Niger, Chad, Cameroon, etc. Dusane’s team has a good understanding of the game, game rules and the way the prizes are structured for the 5/90 lottery game. Based on such experiences gathered in the West African markets, the team also understands the typical structure of relationship between the Operator, his Agents and their Retailers and Runners who sell the tickets through their retail network. Dusane’s 5/90 Lottery software solution can create various relationship levels; access to reports and features based on the same and enable the Operator to control his cash flow through tight control on payouts of winnings and commissions. Creation of multiple draws on a daily, weekly and monthly basis is made quite easy on the 5/90 offering from Dusane. Creation of varying commission and credit levels for different categories of Agents and Retailers, based on their criticality as expressed by the Operator is possible too.

The approach taken by the Team was completely consultative in nature and was geared towards exploring all the avenues where support could be extended to the client’s team. This was highly appreciated by the client as the Team delved deep and helped them with designing their Data Centre set-up, Telecom bandwidth sizing, power requirement estimations, etc.

The Team even went the extra mile by speaking to and negotiating with local vendors to ensure that the Client was not left alone to fend for himself in a scenario where he was not having domain expertise.

Design and development activities were tuned in line with the client’s requirements and frequently changing needs for different functionalities and reports. Field trips were conducted along with the client’s Technical team, including to remote villages to test the functioning of the Handheld Terminals loaded with the lottery software. Provisioning for an embedded resource during pre-launch phase was also an effective and appreciated step taken by the Team. This ensured that the client always had a Dusane Resource locally at their head-end location to help them out immediately during the critical launch phase that determines how the channel partners feel and accept a new way of working; especially one that uses technology to which most of them had not been exposed to earlier.

A successful launch followed by a gradual expansion of the online lottery’s Terminal network, has encouraged the client to now start preparations for a nation-wide expansion. Dusane’s Team is coordinating with the Customer’s team in these initiatives and contributing to further enhance and grow the initial success achieved by the Operator.