Welcome to the
North American State and Provincial Lotteries (NASPL) Standards Initiative
Web Site for Collaborative Development
The NASPL Standards Initiative is a collaborative development effort with participation from the lotteries, gaming vendors, and retail associations in the development of standards, best practices, and certification programs for the lottery industry. The Open Group is working with NASPL to provide the collaborative development infrastructure and manage the collaborative development processes for the NASPL Standards Initiative.
 Formal Review of Version 1.6 of the NSI XML Retail Accounting Reports (XRAR)
The Formal Review of Version 1.6 of the NSI XML Retail Accounting Reports (XRAR), begins on November 21, 2008 and runs through December 12, 2008. The review and comment system for the Formal Review will be available through December 12th for submitting review comments. However, it is recommended that you first download the PDF version and review it off-line. A PDF version of this file is available for downloading now.
The Formal Review is performed by a Review Board made up of:
- NSI participants, including participants in the Best Practices Working Group, the Technical Standards Working Group, and the NSI Steering Committee
- The NASPL membership
If you are a participant in NSI or a member of NASPL and already have a user name and password, please login using the link in the left-hand margin. If you have forgotten your password, please use the link in the left-hand margin to have your password re-sent to you.
If you do not yet have a user name or password, then please join the NASPL Document Review Group using the link in the left-hand margin.
The Formal Review will constitute a final and formal review and approval process. For details on the Formal Review and Approval Process please see the NASPL Review and Approval Procedures.
If there are any questions please contact the Review Manager, Norm Day, at n.day -at- opengroup.org or the NASPL Project Manager for NSI, Andy White, at awhite -at- nasplhq.org.
Why Does the NASPL Standards Initiative (NSI) Exist?
By Andrew White, NSI Project Manager
With so much change occurring in the industry, you may not know why the NASPL Standards Initiative (NSI) exists.
1996 Results of NACS Lottery Study
In 1996 the National Association of Convenience Stores (NACS) commissioned a study that was conducted by Ernst & Young. The purpose of the study was to:
- Understand the relative profitability of the lottery customer
- Identify areas where improvements could be made to lottery processes and practices; and
- Identify where further analysis and study might be warranted
The results of the survey highlighted the need for lowering the costs associated with selling lottery products. Below are some of the survey results:
- Lottery customers spent more and visited more frequently than non-lottery customers.
- Lottery customers in our survey contributed more to gross profit than non-lottery customers.
- Lottery availability is important to convenience store customers.
- Lottery did not have a significant effect on shrink in the stores studied.
- Store Managers indicated that lottery could negatively affect customer service.
- After including total process costs, convenience stores earn considerably less on a lottery customer-shopping basket than on a non-lottery customer-shopping basket.
- The average total costs of processing a shopping basket of goods for a lottery customer is higher than a non-lottery customer.
A good survey not only identifies the problems, it offers solutions or ways to solve them. As part of the 1996 NACS Lottery Study the following areas of improvement were presented:
- Implement accounting information system that generates all necessary store and lottery accounting reports once information has been polled from the store.
Benefit – Reduces manual entry of information and FTEs required to handle store and lottery accounting processes.
- Transfer settlement information through either EDI, or at the least, electronically to retailer head office, rather than on paper.
Benefit - Reduces manual entry of data and conversion of disks and tapes, and reduces errors in reconciling lottery account.
- Implement reliable emergency order system allowing high volume lottery stores to receive tickets as needed outside of their regular delivery cycle.
Benefit - Better inventory management. Reduce out of stock, storage, and accountability/security problems resulting from having too many books to deal with.
- Provide head office with 'useful' activation and shipment data (i.e., activated packs by store/wk, $ value shipped to store/wk).
Benefit - Reduces burden of managing inventory. Allows chain to better understand and reduce time in reconciling lottery account.
- Improve the terminal's scanning capabilities.
Benefit - Improved transaction time, customer satisfaction and employee efficiency.
The study concluded that next steps should include focusing on the highest cost areas (e.g., the sales transaction), apply best practices and design improved processes, and identify and quantify costs of implementation.
NASPL Standards Initiative
In October of 2002, NASPL enlisted The Open Group to facilitate this process. The Open Group is one of the world's leading organizations in Consortium Management, Standards Development and Certification.
To formally identify areas of work, surveys were conducted. The first query highlighted Quality Assurance of Product Development, the Request For Proposal (RFP) process, XML Retail Accounting, and Instant Ticket Bar Codes as areas that NSI should begin work on.
In 2005, NSI finalized its first deliverable by launching the Quality Assurance Best Practice certification program. Towards the end of the same year, the next area of work, Core Retailer Web-Based Applications, was selected by survey participants.
In 2006, NSI launched the Bar Code Technical Standard, completed work on the XML Retailer Accounting Technical Standard, and continued work on the Global RFP Best Practice and the Core Retailer Web-Based Applications Best Practice.
How Does NSI Address the 1996 Results of the NACS Lottery Study?
Focusing On The High Cost Areas Of Retailers
There is more to selling a ticket than a customer handing a dollar bill to the clerk. Recording individual sales, accounts receivable sweeps, reconciliation, theft, validating, and inventory management can be the nemesis of business development in the lottery industry.
The NSI Technical Standards and Best Practices were created for the purpose of making the sale of lottery products easier.
The Quality Assurance Best Practice, if followed, helps lotteries and vendors define and release a game concept on time. QA eliminates errors in development and testing, thereby reducing or eliminating costs. Retailers, Lotteries, and Vendors have a mechanism to offer innovative products faster.
The Bar Code Technical Standard offers retailers uniform sales and distribution information for instant tickets across multiple jurisdictions. It also enables a UPC system to scan lottery products utilizing the retailer's Point-Of-Sale (POS) system. An integrated lottery and UPC bar code prepares the ground for the possibility of a single scan being used for both retailer and lottery purposes.
The XML Retail Accounting Reports Technical Standard provides a common reporting format across all jurisdictions via Extensible Markup Language (XML). It offers a reduction in cost of unique jurisdictional reporting for large retail chains while allowing lotteries to use the same data elements and 'definitions' for their non-XML reports, satisfying independent retailer needs.
The Core Retailer Web-Based Applications Best Practice allows retailers to utilize a more robust technology without having to utilize the sales terminal. Remote managers or financial controllers can directly access the business functions without requiring remote stores to forward terminal reports. Larger retailers benefit by having consistent communications with lotteries across multiple jurisdictions, while smaller retailers will have more information available to help them effectively control their inventories and meet the financial requirements of the lottery.
NSI is improving the Quality and Integrity of the Lottery Environment by Providing Increased Efficiencies resulting in . . .
Reduced Costs and Increased Revenues for:
- Lotteries
- Vendors
- Retailers
Putting It All Together
By implementing NSI Technical Standards and Best Practices, lotteries can offer retailers a lower cost of doing business.
If NSI Technical Standards and Best Practices are used, a lottery customer can buy the newest and latest game on time from a retailer who can scan the purchased lottery product using its current UPC system. A store manager or large retail chain can track and reconcile that sale electronically via XML and uniform lottery websites. Because of NSI, the findings of the 1996 NACS Lottery Study have been addressed and the industry now possesses the tools to further its business development.
For more information on NSI, visit http://www.opengroup.org/naspl/ or contact NASPL headquarters.
For more information on NASPL please visit the web site at: http://www.naspl.org. |
