Camelot stakes future on IT

National Lottery operator Camelot is putting technology and interactive services at the heart of its bid to win the contract for the next lottery licence.

The company is planning to use technology to create new games and drive sales through interactive channels to help its bid for the next licence and to cut operational costs.

Camelot says technology has allowed it to develop the most efficient lottery in Europe, largely thanks to a standardisation project and a recently installed enterprise resource planning system from SAP.

‘IT is fundamental to our business: it runs the National Lottery,’ said Tim Newing, Camelot’s IT director. ‘The business is vastly more complicated than when we launched, which creates more complexity in terms of technology.

‘Over the past three years we have moved towards standardisation of our hardware platform, software tools and languages so that as the complexity of the business has increased, the cost of IT hasn’t suffered.’

The company announced this week that National Lottery ticket sales hit £5bn in the last financial year, and interactive sales grew by more than 145 per cent.

Newing says the launch of new channels has significantly increased Camelot’s overall sales, but he says it has made the business very complex.

Whereas previously Camelot had different call centres for retailers, players and interactive products, it now has one system able to cope with all calls.

Camelot must submit its bid for the next licence to run the National Lottery by 1 December.

Newing says he is dealing with the ‘very large section in the draft invitation to apply that is all to do with technology’.

Camelot is also planning to extend its Fast Pay technology used in Tesco stores to other large retailers. Fast Pay integrates with retill systems, bypassing the need to install separate terminals.

‘We use technology in innovative ways. Fast Pay prints lottery tickets on p aper in electronic point of sale devices and sends transactions over a private network. Everyone else uses bespoke paper and dedicated devices for security,’ said Newing.