Try as we might, it’s been impossible to get Tattersalls, NSW Lotteries, SA Lotteries, Lottery West or the QLD Casket office to agree to feed sales data to our Point of Sale system. In my own newsagency this means double handling. When I sell a lottery ticket I complete the sale on the Tattersalls terminal and then have to ring the same data up on the point of sale screen. If I don’t do this I have less control over the cash and I have no way of tracking what is sold with the lottery ticket – this basket data is crucial to any retailer. The lottery businesses cite security as the reason for not agreeing to a link. I say this is nonsense. All I want is a one way data feed of the sale value to save manual entry at the POS screen.
If such a link were implemented by the lottery companies, newsagents and others would have better cash management and better basket data – both leading to an improvement in business. Now why would our lottery suppliers not want those outcomes?