ICT

Why businesses should develop robust gamification strategy

27 Apr 2015 - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

By Madu Ratnayake

The average millennial spends 10,000 hours gaming by 21 years of age. So, game-like processes and applications are of great attraction to the present generation.
Taking the above point forward, gamification can also improve an organization’s core processes. Since gamification brings a “fun” factor to the application, service or the process, users will tend to be more engaged and active on some of the traditional processes. Hence, implanting such game elements in core processes, organizational products and services makes them much more interesting, especially for the younger employees.

Not a magic solution
The concept of gamification by itself is not a magic solution. It’s more of how you use game elements to solve the business problem. The typical gamification solution might include Points, Badges and Leaderboards, but having them in products or services doesn’t make them engaging. It’s all about how you use such elements to build a user journey.
A gamification strategy is solely capable of solving the major part of the problem but the real icing on the cake is how you use other millennial-friendly technologies alongside your gamification strategy. One such strategy uses social elements to bring concepts like Sharing, Likes, and Friends in to consideration. This way, the end users of the gamification platform can always compare their achievements with their friends.

Big data
Another contributor is big data. Big data can predict your game and help you achieve your target based on user activities. Organizations with large amounts of data collected from various systems, can use it with game mechanics like Scaffolding, to drill down in to personal records and peer records to provide personal feedback on how to achieve target step-by-steps. For example, sales reps’ games can use personal sales records, personal pace of wining deals, along with data of friends to analyze how to perform better in the game. Games can also show what types of activities have helped the particular individual win deals, giving them personal feedback.
The sales rep can now use these intelligent actions to perform better in their next deal. This is a more successful way of integrating a gamification strategy compared to having a standalone strategy.

For effectiveness
Considering all of the above, it’s clear that a gamification strategy is vital for implanting a successful gamification solution within an enterprise. The strategy should include the business problem and the state of the problem, in order for gamification to be a solution for it. It’s also important to understand what drives each process and what motivates employees to be engaged. A successful gamification strategy will build upon this knowledge to build a strong user journey that will keep the user engaged and motivated over time without being bored. Proper game elements and reward schemes must also be used to achieve it.

(Madu is Senior Vice President and General Manager at Virtusa. He is the head of the company’s Sri Lanka Advanced Technology Center. He is a core member of the Management Team at Virtusa from its inception and plays a number of leadership roles in multiple areas including the Global Head of Quality for Virtusa. He is also the co-founder and General Secretary of SLASSCOM. He plays an advisory role in a number of government forums and represents the IT industry on a number of Boards of leading Universities as well. He is a board member of the Sarvodaya Fusion Organization, which is the ICT Development arm of Sarvodaya. A Chartered Engineer, Madu holds an MBA from the Postgraduate Institute of Management (PIM) and an Honors Degree in Software Engineering from City University, London.)

ICT

Why businesses should develop robust gamification strategy

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