JLC to provide virtual phone cards

The Jamaica Lottery Company (JLC) has formed an alliance with one of the new telecommunications players in Jamaica that will result in the introduction of the country's first "virtual phone card".

While declining to name the company with which the JLC has struck the alliance, the company's managing director Eugene Ffolkes declared that the card would "revolutionise the way that communication is delivered" because each card would be produced instantly on demand and at the value required.

Speaking at a June 28 meeting of the Rotary Club of Kingston, Mr. Ffolkes said this latest initiative - which moves the JLC closer to its objective of becoming a full Gaming, Currency and Communications (GCC) company - was undertaken at a cost of some US$6-million. Funding was accessed off-shore.

Mr. Ffolkes noted that formal announcement of the deal would be made shortly, but revealed that the initiative would allow the Jamaica Lottery Company to further optimise the use of its technology platform to deliver a compatible service that would be accessible through the Jamaica Lottery Company's 700 outlets across the island.

Growth

During his presentation that looked closely at how the JLC had managed to experience five years of double-digit growth at a time when the economy as a whole often registered negative growth, Mr. Ffolkes declared that the strategies his company had applied to make this possible could be used by any business.

The strategies included a review of the company's organisational structure and the decision, made in 1998, to decentralise the company to make it more "customer-connected". Essentially, he said, the JLC empowered its regional offices to make decisions that allowed for problem-solving at a regional level - thereby creating a much closer relationship between customers and the organisation.

"But although all of this sounds very good, I want you to understand that it takes a lot of hard work to make sure that it happens," he told his audience.

A second strategy the company employed involved the creation of a learning organisation, with cross-functional teams, in which information was shared freely at all levels of the company.

Critically, also, the company committed to investing in the use of technology to enhance service delivery. "We recognised, however, that our behavioural practices had to dovetail with the technology in order to ensure that we reaped optimum benefits and so the constant reinvestment in both staff and technology was an important part of our growth process," he said.

He urged businesses that were looking to expand not to limit their horizons, but to instead seek to optimise use of both people and capital assets in offering complementary products and services.

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