Singapore pools was established in 1968 to provide a safe and trusted betting platform for the public to counter illegal gambling activities. The company also provides a variety of sports and arts related initiatives that promote and support the local community. Singapore Pools is a not-for-profit organisation that returns a significant portion of its revenue to the Tote Board, which in turn funds a broad range of community projects and charities. The company is also the sole legal bookmaker for association football and motor racing betting in Singapore.
During the past financial year, the company collected close to S$9 billion in total lottery and sports betting revenues. Out of this, 72% was returned to winners in prize money, 22% was collected as tax revenue and 5% was channelled to the Tote Board for redirected to charities and causes. The remainder of the revenue was used for operating expenses.
The company has a wide range of betting products, including 4D and TOTO. The former involves picking four numbers from 0000 to 9999, while the latter requires more complicated picks and is drawn every Monday and Thursday. In both cases, you can purchase tickets at any Singapore Pools outlet or authorised retailer for TOTO. The most popular choice is QuickPick, which costs SG$5. Many people believe that winning more prizes in TOTO and 4D is easier if you visit outlets that are “blessed by the Fortune God” or have good fengshui. These claims are unsubstantiated, however, and you should only choose an outlet based on its popularity and the frequency of winning numbers from official sources.
Customers can deposit and withdraw cash in three ways, through a bank link, through eNets or by making cash deposits at Singapore Pools branches. They can also keep track of their bets online and use the mobile app to manage their account. Customers can also contact customer support agents through email and telephone to get help with any issues they may have.
In order to improve operations, the company has migrated its on-premise applications monitoring system to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI). This has allowed them to improve the availability and performance of their systems, minimize outages, and reduce troubleshooting time by half. The system also provides automatic alerts for system anomalies and performance degradation, which helps them to take proactive steps to prevent outages before they affect customers.
The company has also incorporated an enabling framework to allow employees to work with the right tools and processes, so they can be more creative and come up with better ideas. To this end, the company partnered with Collective Campus to deliver two one day tech crash-courses for 40 employees, covering ideation methods and innovation theory. Collective Campus’s courses enabled the participants to quickly understand not just the emerging technologies available in this era of disruption but how they can be applied to their specific work areas. The company is confident that this has made them a more innovative and productive organisation.