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VOL 11 NO 3
2013
GamIfIcaTION
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Subu Goparaju
Senior Vice President
and Head of Infosys Labs
At Infosys Labs, we constantly look for opportunities to leverage
technology while creating and implementing innovative business
solutions for our clients. As part of this quest, we develop engineer-
ing methodologies that help Infosys implement these solutions right,
frst time and every time.
Infosys Labs Briefings
ABHRA DUTTA is a Principal Consultant with the Manufacturing Vertical of the
Consulting and System Integrations group at Infosys Limited. He can be reached at
abhra_dutta@infosys.com.
AMARDEEP SINGH RISHI is a Technology Lead at Product Engineering Group,
Infosys Limited. He can be contacted at Amardeep_Rishi@infosys.com.
ANIL RADHAKRISHNAN is a Senior Associate Consultant with the Financial Services and
Insurance unit of Infosys Limited. He can be reached at anil_radhakrishnan@infosys.com
ANUJ JAIN is a Senior Project Manager working with ADM Practice of Infosys Limited.
He can be contacted at anuj_jain02@infosys.com.
ARSHAD KARIM is a Project Manager with Financial Services and Insurance Practice of
Infosys. He can be reached at Arshad_K@Infosys.com.
DEEPAK MANDOT is a Delivery Manager with the Manufacturing Vertical of the
Consulting and System Integrations group at Infosys Limited. He can be contacted at
deepak_mandot@infosys.com.
ITIKA VYAS is a Consultant working with Infosys Limited. She can be reached at
Itika_Vyas@infosys.com.
NEELI BASANTH KUMAR is a Research Analyst with Infosys Labs, the research arm of
Infosys Limited. He can be contacted at Neeli_kumar@infosys.com
PRANESHKUMAR WAHIL is a Senior Consultant with Infosys Process and Domain
Consulting services. He can be contacted at Praneshkumar_Wahil@infosys.com.
RAJARAM VENKATARAMAN is a Principal Research Analyst with Center of Innovation for
Tomorrows Enterprise, Infosys Labs. He can be reached at Rajaram_Venkataraman@infosys.com
SAM FELIX PRADEEP KUMAR is a Lead Consultant with Consumer Banking Practice
at Infosys Ltd. He can be contacted at samfelix_k@infosys.com.
SARIKA ANGADI is Client Solution Manager with Infosys, Business Platform group.
She can be reached at sarika_angadi@infosys.com.
SHEETAL NAWALKAR is a Consultant working with Infosys Limited. She can be
contacted at Sheetal_Nawalkar@infosys.com.
SUDHANSHU HATE is a Senior Technology Architect at Infosys Limited. He can be
reached at Sudhanshu_hate@infosys.com.
SUMIT GOYAL is a Group Project Manager at the Product Engineering Group, Infosys
Limited. He can be contacted at sumitgoyal@infosys.com.
TEJASVI ADDAGADA is a Senior Associate Consultant with Consumer Banking Practice
at Infosys Limited. He can be reached at Tejasvi_Addagada@infosys.com.
VENKATAKRISHNAN BALASUBRAMANIAN is a Research Analyst with Center
of Innovation for Tomorrows Enterprise, Infosys Labs. He can be contacted at
Venkatakrishnan_B@infosys.com.
In the modern era of industries, the first wave of revolution embraced
IT powered process automation. It led to the establishment of core IT
infrastructure foundation. The next wave of transformation was innovated
through business process re-engineering that led to the greater business
value extraction from the processes and systems of the enterprise. While
technology and business processes continue to evolve with the modern
innovations, the next wave of transformation is beginning to emerge. This
wave is focused on the people in contrast to the previous waves that
were largely focused on process and technology strategies. The people
engagement as a business strategy will manifest in all forms of enterprise
eco-system customers, employees, partners and even the society at large.
Gamification is one of the emerging trends that bring the promise of highly
effective people engagement. analysts estimate that by 2014, 7 out of
10 large enterprises will have one or more Gamified applications in the
environment and the overall Gamification market is likely to grow to a
staggering size of $3+ Billions this is serious business!
fundamentally, Gamification is a technique of influencing the motivation,
which has over the years engaged people to solve complex problems,
perform certain actions, and have fun, on the way to building positive
organizational energy. What it also does incredibly well is induce voluntary
change in behavior, mindset or attitude in the desired direction; in other
words, it enables transformation.
There are endless possibilities for what organizations could do with this.
for instance, they could employ Gamification to generate customer loyalty
and advocacy, drive co-creation or improve brand penetration. Within
their four walls, they can use Gamification to break the productivity ceiling
or raise compliance benchmarks or employee retention.
In this first ever issue fully dedicated to Gamification, we bring forward a
set of papers that explore the relevance of the Gamification across various
industry verticals like healthcare, retail and financial services. This issue
intends to illustrate the possibilities and inspire the imagination of the
global business leaders. This is just a beginning and we hope this journey
of inspired innovation continues.
Happy Gamifying,
Guest Editor
Rakesh Kumar mishra
Authors featured in this issue
Infosys Labs Briefings
Advisory Board
Anindya Sircar PhD
Associate Vice President &
Head - IP Cell
Gaurav Rastogi
Vice President,
Strategic Global Sourcing
Raj Joshi
Managing Partner
Consulting & Systems Integration
Ranganath M
Vice President &
Chief Risk Officer
Simon Towers PhD
Associate Vice President and
Head - Center for Innovation for
Tommorows Enterprise,
Infosys Labs
Subu Goparaju
Senior Vice President &
Head - Infosys Labs
Gamifcation: Rediscover
the Power of Engagement
Infosys Labs Briefings

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VOL 11 NO 3
2013
Gamification - Engaming to increase loyalty
By Anil Radhakrishnan
The author discusses how Gamification can be a means to understand how the top performers
achieve success and also how it can effectively be put to use in training stakeholders.
A Framework for Designing Gamification in The Enterprise
By Neeli Basanth Kumar
Gamification can be implemented at varying levels of relevance. It works well when integration
with multiple activities needs to be achieved. The authors have proposed a gamification process
from conceptualization to implementation.
Getting Gamification Right
By Amardeep Singh Rishi and Sumit Goyal
Making the Gamification process purposeful and enjoyable by keeping the learnability factor
intact is what enterprises need to focus. This paper discusses how enterprises can achieve
their desired goals with the right amount of Gamification.
Gamifiying Software Development Process
By Anuj Jain and Sarika Angadi
One of the key challenges faced by these enterprises is of keeping these diverse team
motivated and challenged throughout the software development process. The paper
presents a methodology that helps address the multi-site and multi-platform development,
and diversity challenges through Gamification.
Gamification in ERP Enabled Business Transformations
By Deepak Mandot and Abhra Dutta
Gamification initiatives are increasingly getting used by large enterprises in ERP led business
transformations to drive some of the critical organizational decisions. These gamification
initiatives can help to keep the users engaged and encourage them to achieve the desired
outcomes of the transformation, opine the authors.
How to Make Healthcare Wellness Programs More Effective?
By Praneshkumar Wahil and Arshad Karim
Gamification can motivate individuals to stay fit. Gamification of wellness program can help
lower healthcare costs. However the gamification strategy needs to be carefully designed and
reviewed based on the employee demographics, conclude the authors.
Lending Transformation Through Gamification
By Sam Felix Pradeep Kumar and Tejasvi Addagada
At the core of banking is the element of customer satisfaction, which is the key to maintain
profitability, drive results and stay competitive. Adding fun elements to the banking channels
such as online or mobile can result in enhanced user experience and thus lead to customer
satisfaction opine authors.
Enterprise Gamification Architecture Strategy
By Sudhanshu Hate
Gamification is going to be important and integral part of enterprise business and
architecture strategy. This paper discusses how enterprises can have right technology and
architectural strategy in place to seamlessly absorb increasing penetration of Gamification in
the enterprise.
Campaigns for fostering Innovation A Case Study
By Venkatakrishnan Balasubramanian and Rajaram Venkataraman
Gamification is a powerful concept and most have been using it to improve stakeholder
engagement. Authors of this paper explain how Gamification can inspire enterprise
employees to innovate and raise the innovation bar.
Building Engaged Enterprises of Tomorrow
By Sudhanshu Hate
Gamified enterprises will be able to reap benefits from enhanced user motivation, and
the investments made in IT over the years will start yielding results on account of a more
engaged user base, opines our consulting editor.

Organizations need to look at their audience and
business objectives and only then should try to
gamify those aspects of their services that will
provide maximum opportunities for them.
Anil Radhakrishnan
Senior Associate Consultant
Financial Services and Insurance Unit
Infosys Limited.
Gamification is identified as one the
emerging technologies by leading researchers and
it has the potential to innovate key processes,
maximize infrastructure efficiency and
enhance value propositions.
Sam Felix Pradeep Kumar
Lead Consultant
Financial Services and Insurance Unit
Infosys Limited.
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VOL 11 NO 3
2013
Infosys Labs Briefings
Gamification -
En 'gaming' to Increase Loyalty
By Anil Radhakrishnan
T
he current era, where the customer is the
king, is all about engagement. Enterprises are
leaving no stones unturned to effectively engage
the customer. In the past the engagement came in
the form of loyalty bonuses, shopping points, etc.
Today these very enterprises are reaching out to
their customers via the social media, smart devices
providing the customer with an immersive
experience so that they can effectively engage the
customer. Effective engagement of the customer is
helping enterprises to understand customer needs
better and thus they are able provide tailor made
services suiting customer needs.
Recently Gamifcation is looked upon
as a tool to effectively engage stakeholders.
Gami f i cat i on has been seen t o benef i t
enterprises as it effectively engages customers
and employees. While its impact on improving
customer engagement is considered primary,
the impact that it has had on increasing
employee engagement is not far behind.
Enterprises are developing solutions
leveraging gaming principles. These solutions
are focused on making mundane tasks fun.
The fnance industry, coming out of slowdown
has taken notice of this and are making
attempts to incorporate gaming principles in
their services as well as internal functioning.
Though the acceptance in the industry has not
been universal.
GAMIFICATION THINKING BEYOND A
GAME
While most people in the business find it
diffcult to associate gaming with their work,
the fact of the matter is that they need it now
more than ever. Recently Clear performed a
brand survey involving 555 brands across
multiple industries, including fnancial brands
like Amex, Citi, HSBC, etc., revealed that
globally, fnancial brands were ranked lower
than other brands. It was also observed that the
data for most banks is the same [1].
Thi s survey was not onl y an eye
opener for the financial services industry but
for other industries as well. Most industries
f el t t hat t here i s a need t o i nj ect some
freshness in the way they go about doing
their business.
Gaming principles in software development
augment the team engagements
4
It is here, that gamifcation will be able
to make a difference. It can add a mixture of
spark and zing to normal and routine activities.
Not only will people take notice, they will want
to be part of it.
Gamifcation can be seen to :
Cut across generations: Gamification
has a potential to engage old to the
young equally.
Cut across l evel s i n organi zati on:
Gamifcation can engage everyone within
the organization at multiple levels.
Cut across stakeholders: Gamifcation can
equally engage customers, employees, etc.
The impact that gamifcation would have
on customers in terms of engagement is
evident, but the impact on the employee
engagement is also signifcant.
GAMIFICATION FOR EMPLOYEE
ENGAGEMENT AND PERFORMANCE
From an employer's standpoint, gamification
provides a means to not only improve employee
engagement and performance; but it can also can
help unearth the hidden talents of some. Essentially,
the four major benefits that gamification will
provide to improve employee engagement are:
Identifying the Top Performers
Gamifcation helps create an environment that
lets employees perceive the existing scenario
in a new way. It has the capability to convert
their normal and routine tasks into activities
that would improve involvement, while at
the same time ensuring that what underlies
the environment is still the very same core
principles of the company.
In a normal employee review process,
the employee would get reviewed based
on the numbers from her previous quarter.
Figure 1: Gamification Life Cycle Source: Infosys Research
Employee
Engagement
Using this
information
to develop best
practices for the
organization
Identifying
top
performers
and their
strategies
5
The employee is then presented with her goals
for the next quarter and goes about achieving
them. The problem with such a system is
that it breeds an isolated approach towards
achieving goals.
Gamifcation brings a better approach
to this. It introduces the concept of a mission
board, where the goals, the eventual rewards,
the incentive to work are displayed to all
and upon which the employees can interact.
Pursuits can be created for certain units or
regions or teams, which when completed, will
be provided to the employee by the company
with specific rewards, which are visible
to others.
This also creates an air of transparency,
where every employee is aware of the reasons
for the other employees success and what was
the reward that she got. This transparency in
effect can reduce the grievances that employees
might have with the organization as well.
In addition, gamification helps create that
natural competitive environment due to the
open display of the achievements of the other
employees, and the best part is that, since the
results are open and transparent, there isn't a
need to have to be an expensive reward; even
a small and simple acknowledgment will have
an impact.
How do Top Performers Achieve Success?
Gamification does provide the means for
managers to understand who are the top
performers and who are the ones who are
l aggi ng behi nd. But more i mport ant l y,
it provides a means for managers to understand
how the top performers are successful .
It lets them see the differences between the
top performers and the others, in terms of
how they spend their time, their attention
to various activities, the strategies that they
adopt and they can share this information
with other people in the team, which would
help improve the overall team performance.
This kind of a process, provides recognition
to the top performers, while at the same time,
it helps the managers to understand, the
reasons for their high performance, that they
can advise, other employees about the same.
Adoption of High Performance Techniques
I n addi t i on t o al l t he knowl edge t hat
gamification can generate, it also provides
a platform to disseminate knowledge. It lets
managers and other supervisors to introduce
best practices that are created based on
the knowledge that they obtain from the
employee engagement.
The platform then provides a stage for
the managers to provide this information to its
employees, in a way that encourages them to
adopt them. This in turn will help improve the
productivity of the company.
To Train Employees
Conventional training does not work all the
time and one of the areas where this is felt
the most is compliance training. Compliance
training is one of the most neglected areas in a
fnancial services company.
Through gamification, employees can
explore any situation that they might want
to, such as AML and that too at their time
and convenience. One of example, for this
is the company True Office which gamifies
regulatory compliance training, which creates
customized products for its clients through an
interactive environment. The employees are
given the freedom to learn and experiment,
which leaves a lasting impression on them,
something that conventional methods would
find hard to replicate.
6
Gamifcation thus plays a major role in
not only engaging the employees, but in getting
better results. The best part though is the fact
that, results can be directly co-related with
actions, thus providing a means to understand,
why a particular strategy works and who it
works for.
GAMIFICATION NOT JUST FOR
IMPROVING SALES
According to Gartner, by 2015 [2], more than
50% of organizations that manage innovation
processes will start gamifying those processes.
While engaging the employees to motivate them,
and engaging the customers to increase sales,
might form a major chunk of this, gamifcation
can be used to educate the consumer as well.
An example of this would be the fnancial
services industry where, the consumer is always
trying to understand the various products and
services that the bank offers. The bank may
try their best to explain, but at the end of it,
the customer believes more in something that
he can fgure out on his own. This is where
gamifcation can play a major role.
To put t hi ngs i nt o per spect i ve,
a gamifed version of a stock market, with the
various services that the bank offers, can be
a good start for people looking to invest in
the markets. The game would simulate the
trading environment, and people would trade.
At each stage, the bank would provide them
advice as well as lessons on how to trade.
This type of learning would not only be fun,
but at the same time, the gamifed environment
ensures that all that happened in the trading
session would stick to the minds of the people
using it. While the benefts it offers in terms of
educating adults is evident, gamifcation can be
an extremely useful tool for educating youngsters
as well, especially about money management.
With the kind of audience present
on social networking sites like Facebook,
introducing a gamifed application on top of that
channel would help make money management
fun and social for them. In the process of
educating people through gamifcation, banks
and fnancial services companies would have
the opportunity to make some customers for
life.
A prime example of this is Bobber
Interactive, a US company, which helps banks
attract youngsters to money management
through a gamified application, that is fun and
social and in the process lands customers for
life, or at least for a long time. To make such
an impact, gamification has to move beyond
what it is today.
5 KEY ELEMENTS THAT GAMIFICATION
NEEDS TO MOVE BEYOND HYPE
The present trends in gamifcation wont last
forever. The reward and rankings model,
however attractive it may be to users today,
has an expiry period. That is why, banks and
financial services companies who are using
game mechanics need to think beyond whats
existing today.
The fve key things that they might need
to keep in mind are:
1. Making it Social: Everything about
game playing is social. Gamification
should collaborate more with social
media channels. The reason being, a big
part of why games are successful is about
the interactions that happen between the
players. Interactions between players
(users/employees) can help banks
understand customer behavior, and in
the case of employees, could even act as
a good team building exercise.
7
2. Personalize it: Gamification provides
an opportunity for the employer to
know the employee better. At the same
time, it also provides an opportunity
t o cust omi ze t he game based on
individual employees.
3. Incentivize it: Employers should not
stop incentivizing the game. When done
in the right way, incentivization can
provide that extra bit to make the game
worth more to the employee.
4. Provi de Knowl edge: There i s no
pl at f orm t han a game t o provi de
knowledge. It works especially well,
when an employer wants to disseminate
knowl edge about ar eas t hat ar e
critical, but perceived as uninteresting
by employees.
5. Entertainment: An entertaining game
can garner more employee eyeballs
t han any ot her program t hat t he
company might resort to. Making the
game entertaining, would ensure that
more employees take to the game,
thus increasing employee engagement.
I f organi zat i ons woul d keep t hese f i ve
poi nt s i n mi nd, t hey wi l l ensure t hat ,
t hei r i nvest ment i n Gami f i cat i on pays
off, and they are able to obtain the result
they are looking for, that of employee and
customer engagement and more importantly,
retaining their customers.
CONCLUSION
Gamification works and is here to stay.
According to Gartner, by 2014, gamified
servi ces wi l l pl ay an i mportant rol e i n
marketing of consumer goods and also for
consumer retention, such that this will become
as important as Amazon or eBay [2]. Also,
predicted by Gartner is that more than 70% of
Global 2000 organizations will have at least one
gamified application [2].
This proves that, if done in the right
way, it provides organizations with an excellent
tool to engage their most important assets,
their employees. Organizations need to look
at their audience and business objectives
and should try to gamify those aspects of
their services which will provide maximum
opportunities for them.
Most importantly, they need to ensure
that Gamification goes beyond the reward
orientation that it has today. They need to
ensure that, that gamification has more to do
with real life situations and challenges. If they
can manage to do that, then the impact will be
tremendous. Gamification will definitely be a
game changer then.
REFERENCES
1. Clear brand desire survey , February 2012
Available at http://www.clearideas.
com/ourthinking/microsites/brand-
desire-2012.
2. Goasduff, L. , and Pettey, C. (2011),
Gartner Says By 2015, More Than 50
Percent of Organizations That Manage
Innovati on Processes Wi l l Gami fy
Those Processes, Gartner Press Release.
Available at http://www.gartner.com/
it/page.jsp?id=1629214.
3. MacSweeney, G. (2011), Gamification
Gets Serious for Financial Services
Compliance Training. Available at
http://www.wallstreetandtech.com/
regulatory-compliance/gamification-
gets-serious-for-fnancial/240006446.
8
VOL 11 NO 3
2013
Infosys Labs Briefings
A Framework for Designing
Gamification in the Enterprise
By Neeli Basanth Kumar
I
t is possible to engage users using simple game
mechanics like points, levels, statuses, etc.,
but there lingers dark clouds of uncertainty of its
large scale enterprise adaptability. The process
of Gamification is complex and it involves
multiple stages. One needs to understand the
objectives of the enterprise, evaluate challenges
in achieving the objectives, and motivations
of employees in reaching the objectives. The
gamifcation process needs sustained efforts
to achieve these objectives, challenges and
motivations. To manage such a complex
gamifcation process a framework is proposed
to guide the process from conceptualization to
implementation and improvement.
THE NEED FOR A FRAMEWORK
Gamification is an informal umbrella term
for the use of game elements in non-gaming
systems to improve user experience (UX) and
user engagement [1]. It is the use of game design
techniques, game thinking and game mechanics
in non-game context. Game mechanics are rules
and dynamics of the game intended to make the
play enjoyable. Game design is the process of
using game mechanics to create an environment
that allow people to have a fun and engaging
experience [2].
Gamifcation has been used in multiple
domains and applications like fnance, health
care and education but these are heavily
focused on consumers. Gamification can be
implemented in varying levels of relevance
and when integration with multiple activities
needs to be achieved. At one level, superfcial
Gamification involves adding rewards like
points, badges and leader-boards with little
or no association to the activities. On the next
level, integrated Gamification could have a
level of integration like progress made towards
closure of the activity, time left to fnish the
activity. The final level of Gamification is
part of and is embedded into the activity
which involves changing the job design, for
example, breaking an activity into parts to
make them more amenable to Gamifcation.
Any Gamifcation effort beyond the superfcial
level requires design and analysis of multiple
A prescriptive method for designing a sustainable
Gamification environment for Enterprises
9
aspects like challenges, motivations, narrative
game mechanics and interactions between them.
Further to make the Gamification initiative
durable and sustainable, there is a need to
understand and plan for iterative development
as objectives change over time and also the
newness of gamified environment fades
with time. A framework that will guide the
enterprises through the Gamifcation process
is need of the hour.
FRAMEWORK FOR GAMIFICATION
Set Objectives
It is critical to understand the expectations and
objectives that need to be achieved before one
embarks on designing of a Gamifcation based
system. These objectives need to be articulated
in a measurable format, for example, increase the
First Call Resolution (FCR) by 10%. Without an
agreed set of the measurements, the design
team will not be able to proceed with the next
steps. Enterprises need to note, Gamifcation
is not equipped to provide solutions for all
the objectives of the enterprise. For example,
improving FCR might require mastering
certain technical skills and positive attitude
towards customer needs. Gamifcation can be
employed to engage and motivate employees to
respond positively to customer queries and thus
improve on FCR but training for technical skills
may not be handled well with Gamifcation.
Gamifcation can best be used for the objectives
relating to employee engagement, constructive
involvement, managing perceptions and
attitudes, persuading to inculcate productive
behaviors.
Understand the Challenges
It is very important to understand the challenges
in meeting the objectives. The challenges could
be related to the domain, for example, in the
context of service industry, stress of working in
shifts could be a challenge while in other cases,
it could be monotony of work. The challenges
can be sourced with why..not.. questions,
for example, why are the employees not able to
meet the service level agreements on Calls per
Hour (CPH)? Some of the challenges identifed
may relate to aspects like culture and policies
of the enterprise, these may not be handled
well by Gamifcation initiatives. The challenges
which relate to engagement, participation, and
clarity are suited to be managed by Gamifcation
initiatives. It is possible that the objectives need
to be revisited based on the challenges identifed
and the applicability of Gamifcation techniques.
1. Set
Objectives
2. Analyst
Challenges
3. Understand
Motivations
Next Iteration of Objective Setting Next Iteration of Game Design
Framework for
gamification
4. Create
Narrative
5. Map Game
Mechanics
6. Design
Gamification
Interface
7. Implement
and Measure
Figure 1: Gamification Framework Source: Infosys Research
10
Managing Motivation Factors and Challenges
Motivation as a concept has been extensively
studied by researchers and in the context of
playing. Yee [4] presented a motivational
model based on three components: achievement
relating the desire to gain points, progress
through levels, optimize performance, challenge
and compete with others, social component
relates to motivational needs like working
and developing meaningful relationships with
others and deriving satisfaction and beneft
from being part of a team and immersion
relating to exploring new areas of interest,
getting involved in the activity.
Another researcher Bostan [4] details
motivation from psychological perspective
involving materialism indicating the need
for possession, ownership, organization of
material objects including points, badges and
other rewards, power indicating the need to
be visible to others, exerting infuence over
other people, and having high status, affliation
relates to the need of being in the company
of others, cooperating, exchanging views and
being friendly, achievement indicates the need
to achieve success is closely related with the
motivation for avoiding failure, which may
inhibit people from attempting to achieve goals,
information relating to analysis and cognition
to understand situations and their relevance
in the context, and sensual needs which seek
satisfaction in exciting stimuli or experience.
Ot her aspect s l i ke percept i on of
control, autonomy of work, goal setting
and commitment, individual elements like
emotional, cognitive needs and collaborative
elements like cooperation, competition, and
recognition help in motivating employees
towards the obj ectives. The motivations
can be understood using why.. questions.
For example, why will an employee compete to
be in the leader board in CPH?" These questions
also help in eliciting personal ambitions and
goals of the employees and their association
with enterprise objectives. As with challenges,
all the identifed motivation may not be handled
by Gamifcation alone, for example, some may
require changes in job design.
Derive Narrative
Without a narrative, the play becomes
a single instant activity with no relation
to other activities of the same user or with
respect to activities of other users. Based on
the objectives, the narrative could be short
term or long term. For example, a short term
narrative could be a trek consisting of some
activities paced during a short period of time
and a long term could be a quest with long
timelines consisting of various activities based
on objectives. The narrative helps in providing
visibility into how the current activity will aid in
both short and long term goals of the employees
and the enterprise.
In an earlier research, Psychology Prof.
Mihaly Czikszentmihalyi introduced a concept,
"fow which a state of absorption in one's work,
is characterized by intense concentration, loss of
self- awareness, a feeling of being perfectly
challenged (neither bored nor overwhelmed)
and a sense t hat t i me i s f l yi ng [ 5, 6] .
Any Gamifcation initiative should strive to
strike this balance for fow as shown in fgure 2.
A task that is not challenging or requires
excessive time to complete becomes boring
and players lose interest; a task that is too
hard causes frustration and anxiety and again
players lose interest. With a persons skills
improve over time; the challenge needs to
increase along with the improving skills [6].
The narrative should place tasks within the fow
channel for an employee based on the skills.
11
Also the related rewards are varied based on the
skills of the employee attempting the challenge.
The narrative also helps in confguring diffcult
tasks as skills are gained by the employees.
Map the Game Mechanics to the Narrative
Game mechanics are constructs of rules
intended to produce an enjoyable game or
game-play. Though there is a lot of debate
on what constitute game mechanics, the
crowdsourced list of game mechanics is available
at [7]. The game mechanics can be categorized
into three dimensions: Behavior mechanics
which are focused on human behavior and the
human psyche, feedback, progression, Feedback
mechanics which relate to providing instant
feedback on the action taken, Progression
mechanics which are used to structure and
stretch the accumulation of meaningful skills
and give a sense of progress made. Appendix 1
presents details on the various game mechanics.
Implement the Gamifcation Environment
The i mpl ement at i on of a Gami f i cat i on
environment involves working with designers
to map aesthetics onto the planned mechanics
and narrative. This phase can be as elaborate or
as minimalistic as needed. Hunicke [8] proposes
a Mechanics Dynamics Aesthetics (MDA)
model for implement games with Mechanics
describing the logic and algorithms of the
game, Dynamics describing the working and
runtime behavior of the game and Aesthetics
describes the desirable emotional responses
evoked in the player, when she interacts with
the game system. Though the methodology is
proposed for gaming, the same can be employed
for Gamifcation. This step needs collaboration
from multiple stakeholders from designers to
implementation teams. The stakeholders in
this step should have in-depth understanding
of game design principles, human computer
interaction (HCI) technologies.
It should be noted that the steps of
developing a narrative, mapping the mechanics
and design of the environment need to done
together to develop a Gamifcation.
Measure the Objectives
Measuri ng the effi cacy of Gami fi cati on
initiatives needs to be twofold: frstly, there is
a need to measure the effectiveness of gamifed
environment from the perspectives of usability,
pl ayabi l i t y, engagement of empl oyees,
experience and fow perception while playing.
This measurement is usually done based on
heuristics notably a method known as HEP
(Heuristic Evaluation for Playability) proposed
by Desurvire [9]. Nielsens heuristics can be
used to evaluate usability related measurements
[10]. Secondly, there is a need to evaluate the
effectiveness of the gamified environment
in meeting the objectives that were set in the
first step. These measurements are direct
and can be sourced from the information
systems supporting tasks. Based on these two
measurements, the Gamification initiatives
could go through iterations within the gamifed
Flow control
Boredom
Anxiety
C
h
a
l
l
e
n
g
e
Skills
Figure 2: Mihaly Csikszentmihaly flow theory
Source: Reference [5]
12
Game Mechanic Description Category
Behavioral
Momentum
The tendency of players to continue what they have been performing Behavioral
Blissful
Productivity
Players are happier to work hard than by relaxing Behavioral
Virality A game element that needs multiple people to play and thus requires players to
involve others
Behavioral
Ownership A sense of owning that creates loyalty Behavioral
Epic Meaning Engages players to achieve something great, awesome and bigger than
themselves
Behavioral
Free Lunch Player feels that they are getting something for free due to someone else
having done work
Behavioral
Infnite Game play Games that do not have an explicit end Behavioral
Lottery The winner is determined solely by chance Behavioral
Loss Aversion Infuences user behavior not by reward, but by not instituting punishment Behavioral
Community
collaboration
An entire community is rallied to work together to solve a riddle, a problem or a
challenge
Behavioral
Discovery/
Exploration
Motivation by discovering something Behavioral
Appointment At a predetermined time/place a player must join in game, for positive effect Feedback
Combos Reward skill through a combination of things Feedback
Countdown Players are only given a certain amount of time to do something Feedback
Reward schedules The timeframe and delivery mechanisms through which rewards are given Feedback
Bonuses Reward after having completed a sequence of challenges or activities Feedback
Cascading Info
Theory
Appropriate information is released to the players at each level Feedback
Quest/Challenges Challenges usually imply a time limit or competition whereas Quests are meant
to be a journey of obstacles a player must overcome
Feedback
Achievements Virtual or physical representation of having accomplished something Progression
Levels Players are rewarded with increasing levels for a cumulating of points Progression
Urgent Optimism The intent to tackle an obstacle immediately with hope of success Progression
Status The rank or level of a player for motivation to reach higher levels Progression
Points A running numerical value given for any single action or combination of actions Progression
Progression Success is granularly displayed and measured through the process of
completing itemized tasks
Progression
environment because of the changes in design
of the game or additions and enhancements to
the objectives.
DISCUSSION
The framework presented provides guidelines
for the process of Gamifcation in three phases,
each of which caters to a specific aspect of
Gamifcation. The frst phase details the need
to understand the challenges and motivations
of the employees to meet the objectives of
the enterprise. The steps involved draw from
personality traits and psychological needs of
human beings.
The second phase of implementation
relies on an extensive set of game mechanics,
Figure 3: Appendix of Game Mechanics Source: Infosys Research
13
structured design using frameworks like MDA
and the need to link the activities in the gamifed
environment using narrative.
The third phase of measurement proposes
using well studied theories of measurement in
the felds of usability and engagement including
Nielsen Heuristics and HEP.
Together these phases allow for a
holistic approach to durable and sustainable
Gamifcation in the enterprise.
REFERENCES
1. Deterding, S., Sicart, M., Nacke, L.,
O' Hara, K. , and Dixon, D. , (2011),
Gami f i cat i on. usi ng game- desi gn
el ements i n non-gami ng contexts.
In CHI ' 11 Extended Abstracts on
Human Factors in Computing Systems
(CHI EA '11). ACM, New York, NY,
USA, 2425-2428. Available at http://
gamifcation-research.org/wp-content/
uploads/2011/04/01-Deterding-Sicart-
Nacke-OHara-Dixon.pdf.
2. Game Mechanics http://en.wikipedia.
org/wiki/Game_mechanics.
3. Yee, N. (2007), Motivations of play in
online games, Journal of CyberPsychology
&. Behavior vol. 9, no. 6, pp. 772
775. Available at http://www.cblt.
soton.ac.uk/multimedia/PDFsMM09/
MMORPG%20motivation%20for%20
playing.pdf.
4. Bostan, B, (2009), Player motivationAs:
A psychological perspective, Comput.
Entertain. , vol. 7, no. 2, article 22.
Available at http://www.silentblade.
com/presentations/bbostan-2008-2.pdf.
5. Csikszentmihalyi. M., (1991), Flow:
The psychology of optimal experience:
Steps toward enhancing the quality of
life, Harper Collins Publishers.
6. Xu Y., (2012), Literature Review on
Web Application Gamification and
Analytics, CSDL Technical Report.
Available at https://csdl-techreports.
g o o g l e c o d e . c o m/ s v n / t r u n k /
techreports/2011/11-05/11-05.pdf.
7. Game Mechanics at Gamifcation.org.
Available at: http://gamifcation.org/
wiki/Game_Mechanics.
8. Hunicke, R., LeBlanc, M., Zubek, R.,
(2004), MDA: A Formal Approach to
Game Design and Game Research, In
Proceedings of the AAAI-04 Workshop
on Challenges in Game AI (25--29 July
2004), pp. 1-5. Available at http://
www.cs.northwestern.edu/~hunicke/
MDA.pdf.
9. Desurvire H. et al., (2004), Using Heuristics
to Evaluate the Playability of Games, In
CHI '04 Extended Abstracts on Human
Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA
'04). ACM, New York, NY, USA, pp.
1509-1512. Available at http://delivery.
acm. org/10. 1145/990000/986102/
p 1 5 0 9 - d e s u r v i r e .
pdf?ip=61.246.57.3&acc=ACTIVE%20
SERVICE&CFID=278627446&CFTOK
EN=48652526&__acm__=1361278720_3
52a84c2f1ec12635e08c06b261e98ee.
10. Nielsen, J., (1995) 10 Usability Heuristics,
Nielsen Norman Group. Available
at http: //www. useit. com/papers/
heuristic/heuristic_list.html.
14
VOL 11 NO 3
2013
Infosys Labs Briefings
Getting Gamification Right
By Amardeep Singh Rishi and Sumit Goyal
G
amifcation as a term is relatively new,
however the concept of Gamification,
is certainly not new. The concept has been
used several times to boost participation and
excitement. The objective is to make mundane
tasks more enjoyable. The gamifed experience
is much more engaging experience and involves
rewards. It involves enabling game dynamics
to a non-game environment to achieve a goal.
From collecting house points at school
to staff incentive schemes at work adding
rewards and turning a situation into a game
like environment has helped people to achieve
their goals in a playful yet rewarding manner.
Taking example from an academy award
winning movie Life is beautiful where the
protagonist, a Jewish man saves his sons life in a
Nazi death camp by turning the whole situation
as a game for his child [1].
Be it a fortune 500 firm or a start-
up, everyone is interested in game design.
It is seen that in order to make a solid CRM
strategy to maximize the engagement with end
user gamifcation is picking up pace. Market
verticals like Retail, Healthcare, Entertainment,
Education, Financial, Telecom and even
Government are investing in Gamifcation to
enhance customer and enterprise experience.
Enterprises are using this concept to encourage
people to engage in desired behavior internally
as well. Majority of work force consists of
generation X or millennial. The working needs,
style and expectations of this generation are
different. Integration of gaming elements
like points, stages or levels, points table and
leaderboard into a task to bolster community
engagement and achieving specific goal is
the crux of gamifcation. But are we getting
the concept right to apply game design to
non-game context. Does building a game on
top of an existing process is what gamifcation
is all about? Are we missing some important
ingredients in order to make Gamifcation work
for us in an enterprise and if so then how can
we make it right are some questions, which we
will try and answer here.
WHY GAMIFICATION IN ENTERPRISE
Business dynamics has changed in recent
years and it has been changing rapidly.
Generation Y is coming at the center stage as
they outnumber other generations at workplace.
Building game design to a non-game context
in an enterprise environment and doing it right
15
Business workforce demography has been
shifted from baby boomers to echo boomers.
Millennial/generation Y/Generation next/Echo
boomer - we may call them with any adjective but
its hard to ignore their interests and inclinations.
Technology remains an integral part of their lives
that includes the favor of video games as well.
Growing up under technology infuence does
impact the way they behave and think. The way
in which they engage with others has been
greatly infuenced by technology and millennial
expects same sort of engagement at work as well.
They want to use the element of digital world
including video games type scenarios into their
lives to make non-gaming tasks more enjoyable
and engaging.
Social collaboration at work demands
a paradigm shift and thats what gamifcation
provides. The sense of collaboration in order
to attain a common goal has been achieved by
this new concept.
Recognition from peers, honor badges,
leaderboards, achievement boards and rewards
add to excitement and motivation. The rise in
employee engagement by incorporating gaming
style motivators has made companies to include
it into their future employee engagement
strategies.
Corporates like Intel, Adobe, ESPN,
NBC, Wendys and many others are using
gami f i cat i on concept f or bet t er di gi t al
experience and engagement with customer
and employees. Gamifcation can be defned
as integrating game dynamics into your site,
service, community, content or campaign in
order to derive participation [2]. With the
advent of more tablets and mobile phones into
the workplace, Gamifcation is getting more
prominent. Enterprises are reaping benefts out
of it. Enterprises are using the game dynamics
in to achieve desirable activities like:
Achieving team goals
Education and training
Community engagement
Increase market reach
Employee and customer retention
Bolstering the culture of creativity,
community engagement and rewards
and recognition
Apart from tangible benefits, Gamification
was spotted among top digital trends in 2012.
Mobile platform gamifcation is increasing by
90% in USA by 2017 [3]. On business parameters
too it is hard to leave the game design behind as
Gamifcation market value is expected to touch
$ 3.2 billion by 2017.
GAMIFICATION ESSENTIALS
Gamifcation is good and working but what is
the principal of game and game design? Is it to
turn everything into a game scenario that may
or may not work for a particular process? Or it
is about making an experience more engaging
and more fun? It is about creating a proactive
engagement; more often than not people are
given tasks everyday that they may not want
to do, by making that task fun they will not
Figure 1: Generation wise Worlds Population Percentage
Source: US census bureau 2009, International Data Base
30
20
10
0
25.47
Gen Y Gen X
21.32
Baby Boomers
18.56
Traditionals
4.67
16
only do it with gusto but also remain engaged
and excited.
So what lies under the term gamifcation?
What are the game essentials that propel
communities to achieve a common goal with
fun on the way? While making communities
do desirable activity using game concepts and
in turns give goals, badges, trophies or points
to engage them more can be seen as a broad
gamifcation plan. Application of it in an industry
needs a perspective that this simple defnition
misses. So what are the gamifcation essentials?
Following points should be kept in mind while
designing the game dynamics for an enterprise
Purpose: A Meaningful Activity
Learning: With Achievement
Process: By Choice
PURPOSE: A MEANINGFUL ACTIVITY
Foursquare started the concept of giving
points to its user on doing a desired activity
and based on those points user got rewards.
Many users quit playing foursquare because
they started feeling disconnected with the
whole concept. Rewards can allure users to
jumpstart on something but the voidance of
purpose under game mechanics will quickly
disconnect them from the concept. Unless the
concept of gamifcation does not provide the
sense of purpose and meaning to the end
user it will give a shallow sense of novelty.
The whole concept of gamifcation including
points, badges, reputations and all will not
solve the purpose unless it connects the user
with his goal. To achieve the sense of purpose
some recommendations are:
Make: A make-believe story wrapped around an
experience helps people to visualize the situation
and give them a sense of reason. Carbon footprint
score is an important benchmark for every
industry and it is a collective responsibility. By
turning a mundane objective into a make-believe
Figure 2: Gamification Essential Framework for an
enterprise
Source: Infosys Research
Purpose
Process
Enterprise Gamification
Learning
17
story a sense of reason. The common objectives
of teams are to reduce carbon footprint score
by reducing the paper consumption and other
ways. With every paper saved, a leaf is growing
on a virtual tree and the story of saving a tree is
getting published on a board.
Personal Goals: Achievements will lose
purpose if they are not aligned to personal
goals. While designing a game concept we must
try to give the opportunity for user to bring his
personal goals into the platform. For example,
Fitday.com provide user to set a ftness goal for
him or herself to achieve. Personal goals will
interest the user to be the part of system.
Customizable Goals: As an extension to the
previous recommendation it is better to use
customizable goals. Goals can be added by the user
on her own. System should give her the liberty to
fx her goals. For example, an employee looking
to upgrade herself in a particular technology can
choose technology, timeline and severity level,
etc., within a system. Thus system helps her with
all mechanics to achieving her goals.
Meaningful Community: To make the system
meaningful to the users, it is important to connect
to the meaningful community of interest. Status
and reputation is one of the primary motivator
in context to gamification. Player would
like to brag in front of their colleague and
friends on their achievement. But would it be
considered as an achievement will depend
on the community interest. For example, in
a technology firm, achievement in getting a
badge from an entertainment blog might not
interest many. However if one gets a badge or
becomes a moderator of a technical training by
liking or attending trainings, would interest the
community more inside the company.
Team Goals: Team generated goals and
team-generated badges would add communities
to achieve a common goal and perform a
common desired activity. The carbon footprint
instance cited in the previous section shows
that community cares about achieving the goal.
To translate the idea of gamification
into reality narrative power comes handy.
Well-designed story that is wrapped around
an activity offer a long-term engagement.
Supporting visuals, characters and obstacles
give profound experience carries a story.
Attaching the meaning to an activity gives
interest; it also motivates user and community
to achieve results.
LEARNING: CHALLENGES AND
ACHIEVEMENT
The biggest misconception around gamifcation
is about rewards. It is believed that awards are
the strongest drivers in making gamifcation
a success. Doing an activity right will present
a reward but what about doing that activity
right for ffty times for reward? The user or
the community is sure to lose interest out of
monotony. Watching a progress bar moving
rightward after unlocking an achievement may
excite for something but that is something not
engaging. Too often gamifcation ends up on
serving the system more than the user. Game
designers can keep the fun and motivating
factor on while incorporating game like scenario
into an enterprise by:
Inquisitiveness and Challenges: Curiosity
to know something has always attracted
people. Figuring out something and knowing
how to solve it make people do tasks even
after failing for the first few times. Probably
thats what makes video games so attractive.
Player tries to understand the patterns and
18
ways to complete a stage and get a good sense
of achievement when they solve the riddle.
This sense of achievement through learning
posts a remarkable experience for the user.
This inquisitiveness is maintained by creating
interesting challenges. Challenges those can
only be achieved by following the rules of the
game. Blatant challenge erodes interest.
Challenge Setting: What makes any sport
interesting? It is the challenge or the goal,
and achieving those goals under rules. While
designing a game structure into an enterprise
the aspect of challenge setting is important to
foster involvement. Like most video games
structured goal setting keep users involve.
Setting too tough or too easy goals in the
beginning may thwart interest. A goal too
easy may bore a user while goal too tough may
discourage user even to try it. Especially in
enterprise environment where users normally
are engaged in various activities it is important
to divide challenges into small to medium
term goals so whenever a user enters into
game scenario there is something to look
forward to. Challenges make teams work hard
and overcoming challenges collectively increase
team spirit. Challenge like carbon score increase
to a level will reduce the life of tree will make
teams to work collectively to save the tree.
Anxiety versus Boredom: Why playing games
are enjoyable and doing regular chores or daily
tasks are boring. Answering these questions
will make easier to understand how experience
can be shaped to improve the state of mind.
Video games are designed to provide optimal
experience; they normally have set of rules,
which need learning of skill. Then they have
challenges and they provide feedback. The idea
is explained by a famous psychological theory
by Mihaly Csikszentmihaly fow theory [3].
According to it we as humans feel bored and
lose interest when they are under challenged
and they feel frustrated if they are over
challenged. There is a middle region where they
are neither under nor over challenge they feel a
sense of achievement.
Figure 3: Mihaly Csikszentmihaly flow theory Source: Reference [4].
F
l
o
w

c
o
n
t
r
o
l
Boredom
Anxiety
C
h
a
l
l
e
n
g
e
Skills
19
So when the challenge matches users ability and
he achieve the goal than he feel good by practicing
and mastering the task. While designing a
game dynamics the designers should work
on the diffculty graph very carefully to make
it interesting by keeping the pace with the
growing ability of user. Failing on a task should
propel user to fgure out the way to conquer it
frst and fnally mastering the task. This holds
good especially in case of eLearning activities.
By altering the depth, variety and complexity of
challenge user could be engaged for more time
by keeping the excitement level high.
P o s i t i v e F e e d b a c k : R e c o g n i z i n g
the achi evement i n a form of feedback.
Acknowledging their effort in the form of
points, certificates, and badges is the way
to make a challenge interesting. Setting up
a system with points and awards for a task
has a conspicuous danger and that is the
distorted behavior, instigating people to go
for cheating and exploiting the system in
order to gain the reward. In an enterprise
where tasks are designed to achieve benefits
and increase knowledge these dimensions of
game dynamics should be tested to avoid the
gaming of the system itself. Testers should
check the system in all way possible to avoid
gaming of the system itself that may give rise
to unintended behavior.
PROCESS: BY CHOICE
In an enterprise the process of goal settings are
omnipresent, but still it does not provide the
sense of excitement for users. Why sometimes
goal setting and task deadline feels like a burden
more than exciting. Remember Tom Sawyer the
title character of Mark Twains novel? Who took
the task of painting a fence and actually charged
his friend money for doing the task for him [4].
The idea lies in his will to perform the task by
choice. By opting to do an activity by users
own choice will provide a different experience,
results in high productivity. The idea holds lot
of weight especially in the case of Gamifcation
for enterprises. By attaching a reward or
punishment to an activity we unknowingly
push users to perform tasks. Putting an extrinsic
reward to a task may lower the value of a task
as well. As it may sound more like a gimmick to
attract more users to complete the task. How can
a process be created to provide a value add to
user than to force them to perform tasks under
the veneer of Gamifcation
Know Your Users: It is important to understand
the target audience while designing a game
design for enterprise. A technology company
may not like a game play around Jazz music or
movies, however technology oriented games
have better probability to fy well. Keeping the
interest of users who are going to use the
process or system is important. What they like,
their work, their inclination, geography even
male to female ration should be considered
while designing a game for an enterprise.
Collective Goals: Maj ority of enterprise
internal goals can be achieved easily and
effectively if they are converted into community
or team goals. Let teams take the charge of
situation and handle it in the best way they
can; it gives the users and teams much possible
ways to achieve the goal. The importance of
providing a full ground makes communities
more expressive and innovative. In carbon
footprint example the task is given how they
do it is completely up to them. Teams come up
with innovative way to reduce carbon footprint
by reducing power consumption or making
processes more effective.
20
Helpful Feedbacks: Timely informational
feedbacks helping users to achieve goal and
provide a boost in case of a stalemate situation.
System design should provide frequent and
valuable feedback in case user is taking long
time to achieve goals. Feeding user with
useful information on how to move forward,
best practices and subtle hints help user
marching forward. Right blend of helpful,
controlling and positive feedbacks are essential
for game play. Feedback helps user to figure
out the way to get out of a hard situation.
Surprise Element: It is fun to add a surprise
element into a game design. Surprise like
an unexpected reward or unlocking stages
will provide a feel good factor. Bu opting an
activity voluntarily and getting an unexpected
reward provide the feeling of gratifcation and
experience that is worth sharing.
CONCLUSION
Gaming is one of the most favorite activities
of generation Y. It fits into their way of living
and small form factors of electronic devices are
suiting this concept. The increasing percentage
of them at workplaces and by high market
value of Gamification is setting a hot trend
for enterprises. Apart from its internal and
external benefits attached, Gamification is
making industry serious towards it. But getting
the game dynamics right is more serious
business than just incorporating dynamics of
game on a system. The gist of gamification
is not to add a wrapper around an existing
process or inundating the system with alluring
rewards. The concept of gamification lies
in meaning or purpose. Making the game
process purposeful and enjoyable by keeping
the learnability factor intact is what enterprise
needs to achieve. Just putting rewards at the
end of each task may attract users to get onto a
system but that has its own potential to corrupt
the system itself. Perils of Gamification should
be tested and rectified by incorporating some
suggested ways. The concept of Gamification
lies into performing desirable tasks in fun
and engaging way but the fun should remain
a volunteer activity than an obligation to
achieve maximum benefit of Gamification in
an enterprise.
REFERENCES
1. Life is Beautiful (1997). IMDB. Available
at ht t p: //www. i mdb. com/t i t l e/
tt0118799/.
2. Enterprise Gamification: Engaging &
Motivating The Gen Y Workforce, .
Bunchbal l . com. 2011. Avai l abl e at
http://www.bunchball.com/resources/
enterprise-gamifcation.
3. Kabir, A. (2012), Gamifcation 2012-2017:
Opportunities and Market Outlook
for Next Generation Brand/Product
Advertising through Embedded Gaming,
Mind Commerce Consulting. Available
at http://www.mindcommerce.com/
Publications/Gamifcation_2012-2017.
php.
4. Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2008), Flow: The
Psychology of Optimal Experience,
Harper Perennial Modern Classics;
1st edition. Available at http://www.
a ma z on. c om/Fl ow- Ps yc hol ogy-
Experience-Mihaly-Csikszentmihalyi/
dp/0061339202.
5. Twai n, M. ( 1876) , Tom Sawyer
Whi tewashi ng the Fence. pbs. org.
http: //www. pbs. org/marktwai n/
learnmore/writings_tom.html.
21
VOL 11 NO 3
2013
Infosys Labs Briefings
Gamifying Software
Development Process
By Anuj Jain and Sarika Angadi
T
oday s software industry is plagued
with several challenges that have arisen
on account of diverse cultures, multi-site
devel opment, and presence of mul ti pl e
domains. One of the key challenges faced by
these organizations is of keeping these diverse
team motivated and challenged throughout the
software development process. There is a dire
need of a methodology that helps address the
engagement challenges.
Most of the organizations have concerns
on keeping the teams more involved and
enthused in the development process. The key
areas where the involvement from the individual
is lowest are: Knowledge Management, Process
Compliance and Collaboration. There is a
dependency on every individuals drive and
motivation to ensure fulfillment of these
activities. Today, organizations need a unifed
methodology or technique to compel individuals
in the diversifed teams to get more involved
and engaged. Here we explore application
of gamifcation for overcoming challenges in
software development.
The key objective is to devise a measurable
gaming model to increase the individuals
engagement in software development process
through gamifcation.
EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT CHALLENGES
IN SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT
The globalization across world and IT industry
brings many benefts for development projects.
It increases the speed of delivery as well as
leverage skill from global pool of talents.
But it also changed the team dynamics so that
knowledge management, collaboration and
compliance with processes become crucial for
project success.
The diversification of project teams
on cultural patterns, domain-discipline and
physical locations demands high engagement
of individual in team collaboration; effective
knowl edge management pr act i ce and
Compliance to the processes.
To understand current industry trends
and challenges, survey has been conducted
with industry practitioners on engagement
Gaming principles in software development
augment the team engagements
22
of peopl e wi t h t hree areas of sof t ware
development process namely: Knowledge
Management, Collaboration and Compliance
to process.
To make consistent understanding
across all survey respondents. All three areas
are defned as below
Knowledge Management: Knowledge
management which includes creating,
shari ng and consumi ng of proj ect
knowledge effectively.
Col l a bor a t i on: Ef f e c t i ve t e a m
interactions across all the demographic.
I t i n c l u d e s p a r t i c i p a t i o n i n
intra-team issue resolution. Intra-team
communications using different means
like meeting rooms, chat, mails etc and
Smooth hands-off of work items.
Compliance: Adherence of assurance
pr ocesses such as conf i gur at i on
management, release management,
reviews (requirements, design, code,
test plans, release plans), testing, defect
recording, tracking, RCA etc as required
for project.
The newzoo survey result shows that majority
participant was in opinion that activities related
to these three areas were on low priority for
team members compare to assigned tasks in
hand [1]. But low team engagement of team
on these activities increases risk in the project
as below:
Implicit form of Project knowledge
increases the people dependency which
goes away as team member moves out
of the project.
Increased harmonized effort and time
during application hands-off with
other teams
Increased integration issues between
overlapping areas in project.
Vulnerability of risk of non-compliance
of processes and standards.
The top reasons mentioned by practitioner for
low team engagement in those areas are
No motivation, reward or recognition
while engaging in those activities.
Conficting priorities.
Lack of commitment towards those
activities
Hence addressing these problem areas may
improve people engagement and also reduce
the risks in project.
GAMING ELEMENT ANALYSIS
INFLUENCE PEOPLE ENGAGEMENT
As per human psychology, motivation is a
proven key factor to increase the persons
engagement for an activity. And motivation
is derived if complexity of an activity in game
matches with skills of the person along with
rewards & recognition. Hence games are good
mechanism to improve the individuals skill
level and engagement with activities.
According to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyis
theory of Opti mal Intri nsi c Moti vati on,
the optimal intrinsic motivation is a mental
state when a person fully immersed in activity
with full involvement and enjoyment. This state
is called FLOW.
23
Games are always designed to address the
motivations of individual. They are structured
with transparent rules, which help in high
engagement of players in the game.
One of t he st udy shows t hat t he
population of gamer is increasing every year.
Around 48% of population in US is involved
in online games and they spend every day
415 million hours which is further growing
in numbers. This proved the facts that games
always pull high engagement.
The table below specifes few gamifcation
examples where gaming principles has been
applied in non-gaming context for achieving
high and effective people engagement.
The above exampl es are taken for
testimony for successful implementation
of i ncr eas i ng peopl e engagement f or
collaboration, knowledge management and
compliance areas.
Hence based on t hese f i ndi ngs,
we proceed to identify key use cases in software
development to gamify for improving on
collaboration, Knowledge management and
compliance in the projects in next section.
IDENTIFY USE CASES FOR
GAMIFICATION IN SOFTWARE
DEVELOPMENT.
The knowledge management, collaboration
and process compliances are the three areas
considered having low employee engagement
and require implementation of game mechanics
in those areas. The following are the key use
cases are defned under each category
Knowledge Management
1. Engage people in converting implicit
knowledge to explicit viz.
Context Gamifcation
To improve
the everyday
behavior
https://www.mindbloom.com
The Mindbloom Life Game gives you
a fun and interactive way to work on
your own motivations and personal
goals and passions. Unlike a lot of self-
improvement "games" that are gimmicks
to help you build a to-do list, Mindbloom
was designed to be fun, story-driven,
and useful at the same time.
Source: Infosys Research
Figure 1: Skills Vs Challenges (Intrinsic motivation
worry
Apathy Boredom Relaxation
Anxiety
Low
Low Skill level
High
High
C
h
a
l
l
e
n
g
e

l
e
v
e
l
Arousal Flow
Control
Context Gamifcation
To embed
knowledge
http://www.astronautmmo.com/dmf/
Astronaut, Moon, Mars And Beyond
is a web game created by NASA
Learning Technologies in collaboration
with Canadian game studio Project
Whitecard that offers a massive,
multi-player online game intended
to grow interest, knowledge around
science, technology, engineering and
mathematics.
To leverage
collective
manpower
http://www.projectnoah.org/
Project Noah is a tool to explore and
document wildlife and a platform to
harness the power of citizen scientists
everywhere.
mission-based image gathering for
crowd sourced nature preference
To achieve
effective
Compliance
training
http://www.trueoffce.com/
The company called True offce
gamifes fnancial compliance training
solution for high employee engagement
and effective training.
24
Share the TIPS for doing things
smarter.
Update the issue/defect tracker
with resolution description
Starting new discussion topic
Participate in discussion forum
Submi t knowl edge art i fact i n
repository (org/project level).
Participation in focused knowledge
areas contribution
The above activities can be categorized into
di fferent l evel of contri buti on based on
project nature. And Game mechanics should
be applied so game experience drive him
to higher level of contribution. Also leader
of these journey should be given power to
enhance and review the others contribution.
2. Engage people in knowledge enhancing
activities as defned below. It helps the
continuous update and refnement of
knowledge created from above activities
Moderating a knowledge session
like discussion forum etc.
Pr ovi de c r i t i c a l r e vi e w on
knowledge artifacts.
These activities are second part of knowledge
management, which requires all contributed
knowledge should be continuously refned and
enhanced and require people those achieved a
level in that knowledge area. Game mechanics
will use these activities as Power for contributors.
3. Engage people in consuming knowledge
to remove the dependency on implicit
knowledge. The activities are under this
category are
Provi de rat i ng t o knowl edge
artifacts submitted by others.
Subscribe for knowledge repositories
and downloads for consumption.
Submit Suggestion for search tags
of knowledge artifacts.
Suggest alternate options for issue/
defect resolution.
These activities are increasing participation of
people in using explicit knowledge in repository
rather having people dependency. The game
mechanics should use Point system to improve
their knowledge consumption health and based
on which they could be provided level of
contributor in a focused knowledge area.
Collaboration
1. Engage people in approaching to team
members across skills or location which
include following activities
Ki c k of f i n- c ont e xt pr oj e c t
communication with team members.
Identify and Assign any issue to
other team member.
Above activities will help in improving
communication among team members. And Game
mechanics should apply Status on leader board.
2. Engage people in responding to team
members across skills or location
P a r t i c i p a t i o n i n p r o j e c t
communication started by other
member.
25
Respond to issues assigned to him/
her on time.
Resolve the issues assigned by other
team member on time.
These activities increase faster resolution of
issues and reduction of hand-offs related issues.
The Game mechanics should apply Status and
Reward mechanism as well as give Power
to winners of those activities. Power could
be call for participation in a focus knowledge
contribution as expert or power of reviewing
project deliverables.
Compliances
Engage people in compliance wowledith
processes defined in projects. It includes but
not limited to following activities.
Adherence to Confguration policy e.g.
Check-in / check-out frequency.
Commenti ng adherence whi l e
check-in / check-out.
Running the static analysis tools etc.
Adherence to assurance policy e.g.
Closed all review comments.
Closed all standard violation.
Closed all critical defects.
Unit test coverage of code.
The list of those activities depends on project
problem areas of compliance and there may
be more activities which are not explicitly
mentioned in this project. But game mechanics
should apply in terms of Point, Status and
Rewards. The Power element of game
mechanics can be consider by providing
auditing authority as well as moderating
process improvement sessions.
DEFINE FRAMEWORK TO APPLY
GAMIFICATION IN SOFTWARE
DEVELOPMENT
All games are designed and structured in a
way to continuously increase people skills
and motivation towards playing a game.
The four basic elements of game design are
story, aesthetics, mechanics and technology.
The Aesthetic creates the look & feel of the
gaming experience, Story represents the sequence
of events and activities of the game. On the other
side, the logical schema of game constitutes by
Game Mechanics and Technology provides the
infrastructure layer which builds means, material
& media to implement other game elements viz.
Aesthetics, Mechanics and Story.
Considering these basic game elements, the
gamification of software development is
modeled into three layers of frameworks.
Aesthetic Framework
Game Mechanics
Technology Framework
AESTHETIC FRAMEWORK LAYER:
It covers look & feel; sound, images and
narratives aspects which set the tone of the game
and give a frst level of immerse experience.
Pre-Requirements
Technology Framework
Mechanics Framework
Aesthetic
Framework
Player
Activity
Conditions
Event(s)
Reward
Name, Visual,
Description
Story
Avatar
Reward
Points, Badges,
Leaderboard
Figure 2: Layered Model Of Framework For Gamification
Source: Infosys Research
26
Aesthetic framework loosely couple with game
mechanics framework layer. Each sub-element
in this layer should be narrated through
audio-visual or either of them.
Following table defne the sub-elements
of this layer and design guidelines for gamifying
software development.
While the logic of awarding the reward
is defined and managed by Game mechanics
f r amewor k, t he Aes t het i c f r amewor k
make sure to provide audio, visual or both
representation of rewards and other elements
of game which provide real time feedback
to team members and motivate him/her to
engage in his/her activities.
specifc to individual development projects.
Rule has to be crafted to so more complex
activities start opening up for user based on
his achievement.
TECHNOLOGY FRAMEWORK LAYER
The technology frameworks provide material,
mean and medi um t o i mpl ement game
Aesthetic Framework
(audio-visual representation with
name and description)
Framework
Elements
Guidelines for Software Development
Story Narration of development activities and
events to be gamify
Avatar Visual representation of the team
member
Reward
Status
Access
Power
Stuff
Visual representation of Rewards
to team members. Status can be
represented through points or badges
which can be designed to display on
leader boards. Again Power and Access
should be visually presented to user.
While Status, Access and Power are
In-Game rewards, the Stuff can be
rewards given outside technological
environment of Game.
Game Mechanics Framework
(Defne and Maintain game entities
and their relationship)
Framework Elements
Guidelines for Software
Development
Re-Requirements
It consists of game
setting like selection
of game mode which
in turn pre-confgured
triggers and levels
Pre-requirements could be
setup at the time of start of
development project. It will
setup mode of the game.
The game mode can be
aligned based on project
need of engagement level in a
particular area viz. knowledge
management, collaboration or
compliance.
Activities
It defnes the act in
game through which
a gamer gets a
reward.
Activities of Knowledge
Management, Collaboration and
Compliance which are crucial
to increase the knowledge
quotient, collaboration quotient
and compliance quotient of the
project through high employee
engagement.
Event(s)
Events are instances
during game which
triggered based
on pre-defned
conditions or
on a particular
achievement. These
events lead to
provide any direct
reward or any
opportunity to do next
level of activities.
The knowledge management,
collaboration and compliance
are having many overlapping
activities which can trigger
event across these areas
e.g. conducting a Knowledge
session can trigger activities of
collaboration for participant.
Condition
Conditions are
rule defned while
gamifying the
activities and events.
The rules of rewards and
triggering activities in area
or across areas based on
identifed activities and events
of software development under
this framework
GAME MECHANICS FRAMEWORK LAYER
The game mechanics is the engine of any game.
Hence this layer defnes the schema of entities
involved into game and their relationships.
The framework establishes the mechanism to
identify the achievement of team member and
provide rewards accordingly.
The based on above metal elements
of game mechanics and their mapping with
software development, Game has to be designed
27
compliance. The gamification in software
development will provide analytics which can
establish the measurement of business values.
The gamifcation analytics will not only
helps to measure the people engagement with
these activities but also provide insights in
identifying and managing projects risks.
For example, if overall compliance score
in project is low, it may give an early indicator of
getting issues related to compliance in project.
Another example, knowledge contributor
score may indicate people level dependency
on project.
The few illustrative derived metrics are
mentioned below:
1. Contribution to knowledge artifacts
Comparison of KM contribution to
org wide
2. Col l aborati on: Number of ri sks /
i s s ues avoi ded as c ompar ed t o
organization standard
3. Compliance: Adherence / level of
compliance gained in stipulated time
compared with organization standard
Game Mechanics Framework
(Defne and Maintain game entities
and their relationship)
Framework Elements
Guidelines for Software
Development
Reward
Points
Badges / Level
Control
Access
Rewards are given for any
achievements of a team
member. They are given in the
form of points, badges, Control
or any eligibility of out of game
stuff.
While points and badges are
simpler to understand, the
access and control are provide
access to certain activities e.g.
a person get moderator right
for a wiki page of project etc.
The difference between access
and control is that with control
reward, a person gets the power
to trigger events for others to
get rewards.
mechanics and aesthetic frameworks so that
a gamer gets a unified gaming experience.
In software development, there are
cross domain teams which use different tools.
This creates an environment where everybody
works in silo. Industry standards like OSLC
(Open Services for life cycle collaboration)
are set which standardize the integration of
development tools provide an Integrated
Development Platform. Hence implementing
the gami fi cati on godel on thi s pl atform
is a natural choice which can gamify the
development activities. The gaming model can
be implemented as Game Center on platform
which integrates the gaming frameworks with
development activities and events. The below
diagram provide an architectural view of
gamifed Integrated development platform.
MEASUREMENT OF BUSINESS VALUES
Thi s i s al ways a chal l enge i n sof t ware
development to have a reliable and consistent
measure of values derived from activities like
knowledge management, collaboration and
Game
Mechanics
Framework
Game
Engine
Game Center
Unified Development Platform
(OSLC based Tools integration)
Aesthetic
Framework
Software Engineering Tools
process & Governance Tools
Figure 3: Architecture of Gamified Development Platform
Source: Infosys Research
28
Measurement of score of team participation in
games would be derived on:
1. Recency: How people are active on
day-to-day basis
Poi nt s gai ned by peopl e on
particular day
2. Frequency
Score will be calculated daily,
weekly, monthly and quarterly
3. Virality
Type of people involved,
% of various skilled level people
involved
Various skill level gained by people
CONCLUSION
Everybody in software development field
unanimously agrees that the knowledge
management, collaboration and compliance
areas are very important in project successes. But
there are challenges with respect to effectiveness
and commitment from teams. The priorities to
project deliverables will further take precedents
over activities in these areas. So the key questions
are: How to increase the effectiveness in these
areas? How to bring peoples commitment
towards these activities? How to measure
business values? The answer is to optimize the
people engagement towards these activities.
The online games are designed to
opti mi ze peopl e engagement. Hence by
leveraging the gaming design principles,
this paper set out a model for gamifying the
software development. The frameworks defned
in the model provide basis for systematically
gamifying the development activities in
respective areas. Based on game analytics,
the gamifcation will further helps in measuring
business impact of knowledge management,
collaboration and compliance.
Wh i l e p a p e r a d d r e s s e d t h e
measurement of people engagement within
project, it provides further experimenting
and benchmarking opportunity in people
engagement across projects.
REFERENCES
1. Infographic (2011), US, http://www.
newzoo.com/infographics/infographic-
2011-us/.
2. Goasduff, L. , and Pettey, C. (2011),
Gartner Says By 2015, More Than 50
Percent of Organizations That Manage
Innovati on Processes Wi l l Gami fy
Those Processes, Gartner Press Release.
Available at http://www.gartner.com/
it/page.jsp?id=1629214.
3. Schell, J. (2012), Art Of Game Design:
A Book of lenses, MorganKaufmann
Publishers.
4. Hamari , J. , (2012), Framework for
Desi gni ng and Eval uat i ng Game
Achievements, Helsinki Institute for
Information Technology HIIT, Aalto
University.
5. Hagglund, P. (2012), Taking gamifcation
to the next level : A detailed overview of
the past, the present and a possible future
of gamifcation, UMEA University. Available
at http://umu.diva-portal.org/smash/get/
diva2:546713/FULLTEXT01.
29
VOL 11 NO 3
2013
Infosys Labs Briefings
Gamification in ERP Enabled
Business Transformations
By Deepak Mandot and Abhra Dutta
T
oda y s dyna mi c s a r e pr ompt i ng
enterprises to be agile and constantly
transform themselves. Transformations are
essential when there shift in vision, business
strategy or when there is a need for better
al i gnment of enterpri se wi th respect to
the vision. These transformations, in most
cases, j ol t t he core of an organi zat i on.
Without active participation from all its
stakeholders any transformation becomes
a distant dream.
Several innovation strategies are put in
place by enterprises to improve motivational
levels of its stakeholders. Gamifcation is one
such innovation that has surfaced that promises
to improve stakeholder engagement.
Gami fi cati on puts fun el ement to
work and makes the mundane daily tasks
at work more interesting. The otherwise
routine activities suddenly become interesting.
It helps in improve stakeholder engagement,
helps improve bonding within the team and
eases cultural barriers. Gamification is the
process of applying game design elements to
an activity, application or initiative.
Many enterprises before making huge
investments in transformations are resorting to
gamifcation initiatives as an approach to tackle
the perennial problem of low user involvement
typical in such transformations.
Ga r t ne r Re s e a r c h Re por t 2 0 1 1
est i mat es t hat more t han 50 percent of
organizations high on innovation will resort
to gamification to manage innovation by 2015
[1]. With the growing emergence of social
media, mobility and cloud technologies,
the gamification industry is expected to
touch $2.8 billion by 2016.
Gamification initiatives are increasingly
getting used by enterprises business transformations
to keep the users engaged and encourage them in
achieving the desired outcomes of the transformation
30
3-STAGE GAMIFICATION BASED BUSINESS
TRANSFORMATION APPROACH
Busi ness Transformat i on by defi ni t i on,
transforms the way businesses are run. Business
transformations involves signifcant fnancial,
infrastructural and resource investment from
an organization. Technology plays a key role in
such holistic changes in business strategy by not
only being one of the primary objects of change
but also being the driver of change in people,
process and strategy initiatives.
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) is
one of the key enablers in technology driven
business transformations. ERP enables the
organizations to integrate applications and
allows information flow across different
business processes, functions and partner
eco-systems. ERP adds agility and effciency to
the organizations as they replace a large number
of stand-alone applications, thus overcoming
challenges around quality and accuracy of data,
ease of usage etc.
However, ERP implementations are
typically long drawn and require involvement
from multiple business groups within the
organization and partner eco-systems to
come together and agree on the requirements,
solution design and sign off on the final
application before go-live. Given the scale,
magnitude and complexity, most ERP driven
business transformations have a long lead
time prior to implementations, running into
years and take several weeks after go-live
to stabilize. These programs typically require
stakeholders to undergo a tremendous change
in their work activities (which may pull them
out of their comfort zones), daily schedules,
spikes in work hours impacting work-life
balance and result in increased stress during
multiple phases of the lifecycle.
Gamification initiatives are therefore
increasingly getting used by large enterprises in
ERP led business transformations to drive some
of the critical organizational decisions, with a
goal to keep the users engaged and encourage
them in achieving the desired outcomes of the
transformation. Towards successfully achieving
the transformation through gamifcation a three
step framework is laid down (refer Figure. 1)
The first step is to include the cost
and benefit of gamification initiatives in the
business case for the transformation and
evaluate the feasibility of including it as part
of the implementation.
Figure 1: Drivers for the Business Implementation Source: Infosys Research
Increase ROIC
from x% to y%
Double Annual
Sales in n years
ERP Package Evaluation
Transformation Roadmap
ERP Implementation
Competitive Advantages
Best in class capabilities
Own the supply chain
One Global Org
Set industry standards
Drivers Approach Outcome
31
The second step is to build the gamifcation
plan as part of the ERP implementation plan and
approach. This would involve budgeting for
the users or Subject Matter Expert (SME) time
in these activities.
The third step is a detailed Gamifcation
execution plan knit into the implementation.
The approach should involve identifying the
core processes of transformation that could
be positively impacted by gamification and
identify the gamifcation activities, logistics and
players at each stage. The team should defne
metrics and actively monitor them to determine
if the initiative is successful in meeting the goals
identifed in the business case, specifcally with
respect to gamifcation.
BUSINESS CASE DEVELOPMENT FOR
USING GAMIFICATION
Once an enterpri se chooses to l everage
ga mi f i c a t i on e x e r c i s e i n t he i r ERP
implementation, this has to be factored in
the business case. It needs to incorporate
key investments to be made and benefits
expected to be achieved through gamification
to calculate the overall Return on Investment
(RoI) of the initiatives. The financial and social
costs and benefits of gamification initiatives
need to be quantified and accounted along
with the ERP costs and benefits (Figure. 3).
The development of business case for IT
enabled business transformations typically has
the following steps:
Quantifying and capturing Gamifcation costs:
The costs could be classifed into two
categories, namely:
One Ti me: Covers cost s l i ke
one time fxed asset investments
i nc l udi ng I T har dwar e and
software costs, implementation
costs etc. specifcally with respect
to gamifcation.
Recurring: There exist two kinds of
recurring costs
Bus i ne s s : Cos t s due t o
unavai l abi l i t y of busi ness
resources for non-business
gamifcation work.
Operational: Recurring costs
on pr i ze s /gi f t s , r ooms /
phones, logistics, hardware
and software mai ntenance
etc.
Quantifying and capturing Gamification
benefts:
The benefts could be further classifed
into:
Tangi bl e Benefi t s: These are
measurable benefts like reducing
t he number of def ec t s pos t
implementation, executing higher
number of test cases, improving
system performance etc.
I nt a ngi bl e Be ne f i t s : Wi t h
i nc r e a s i ng di s e nc ha nt me nt
i n dai l y wor k and a us ual
Figure 2: Stages for involving gamification in Business
Transformations
Source: Infosys Research
Business Case
for Gamification
Gamification
Execution
Gamification
Plan
32
Figure 3: Sample Business Case Cost-Benefit Analysis over
a period of 5 years
Source: Infosys research
Parameter Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Year 4 Year 5

Fixed Asset investments like servers, network setup, printers, laptop etc.
Software investments -- any additional software development for
gamification
Implementation cost e.g. dedicated people for support, esearch costs etc.
Notional losss due to un-availability of business SMEs for gamification
Hardware maintenance costs
Incremental software development and maintenance costs
Participant Gifts e.g. monetary rewards, gift vouchers, appreciation tokens
Logistics costs e.g. lodging, boarding, travel costs related to gamification
Operational costs e.g. rooms, telephone calls, electricity etc.
Reduction in process development costs
Reduction in design, development, testing and configuration related costs
Reduction in production support costs
Improvement in system performance
Reduction in change management related costs like training, user
awareness etc.
Improvement in resource productivity
Greater number of knowledgable wokforce leading to efficient business
Easy transition to new system for users
Reduction in change management related activities with less resistance
to change
One Time (Amounts in USD)
Recurring (Amounts in USD)
Tangible (Amounts in USD)
Intangible (Amounts in USD)
B
e
n
e
f
i
t
s
Net Cashflow
Cumulative Cashflow
Discounted Cashflow (DCF)
C
o
s
t
s
resistance to change, there could
be several i ntangi bl e benefi ts
f rom gami f i cat i on i ni t i at i ves.
Easy adoption of the new system
by t he users, mot i vat ed and
knowledgeable workforce, higher
productivity etc. are the intangible
benefits on gamification adoption.
Calculating the net cash flow and
cumulative cash flow of gamification
initiatives over the chosen timeframe.
Financial analysis of the gamifcation
initiatives using methods like Discounted
Cash Flow (DCF), Return on Investment
(RoI) analysis etc.
33
GAMIFICATION PLAN AS PART OF ERP
LED BUSINESS TRANSFORMATION
IMPLEMENTATION
Typically any business transformation involves
multiple stages of sequential activities as
follows (refer Fig. 4):
Pr oof of c onc ept and bus i nes s
case assessment
Project initiation, scoping and planning
As-Is process and requirements gathering
To be process modeling
S ol ut i on de s i gn, de ve l opme nt
and confguration
Solution testing and approval
End User Training
Solution rollout and support.
The Gamifcation principles could be applied
across the phases within the lifecycle of
the implementation in order to improve
the employee engagement and experience.
To enable Gamifcation activities while doing
an ERP i mpl ementati on across busi ness
processes, an organization needs to answer the
following questions:
Who should drive these activities?
What are the activities to be carried out?
Who should be the players?
What shoul d be t he durat i on of
these activities?
How do we expect the users to respond?
What are the benefts we expect?
What are the critical success factors
and metrics?
The answers to these questions provide the
organization with the information around
participants for gamifcation, execution process,
expectations and benefits from each stage.
These details are then captured in the plan to
implement gamifcation as part of their ERP
driven business transformation.
GAMIFICATION EXECUTION AS PART OF
BUSINESS TRANSFORMATION
The execution of the gamifcation process across
various stages of the implementation cycle,
with activities, participants, rewards have been
detailed as follows.
Pr oof of Concept and Busi ness Case
Assessment
This is typically driven by the senior management
of the organization undergoing the transformation.
Sponsors of the implementation e.g. the Chief
Information Officer (CIO) have to drive the
steering committee for the implementation to
prepare the business case. A pilot gamifcation
activity could be carried out in the form of a
simple ERP quiz or a thought leadership exercise
to gauge user response and also identify the
enthusiastic players who will champion the
future activities. The output of the pilot will be a
key input to the business case fnalization.
The involvement of business managers
from the key functional areas is critical to the
success at this stage.
Project Initiation, Scoping And Planning
The Program Management Office (PMO)
includes gamification as part of the project
plan and identifes high level key activities,
resources, anticipated timelines and logistics.
The details for each activity are typically not
listed down at this point in time for every
stage. It is essential that the gamifcation project
plan is continuously updated throughout the
lifecycle of the project.
The scope identifcation is carried out
during this phase- this involves identifcation of
34
Figure 4: Modified Implementation Plan with
Gamification
Source: Infosys research
business functions which are expected to be part
of gamifcation e.g. procurement, sales, logistics,
fnance, marketing etc. The enterprise need to
involve resources across all business functions.
The participants get a better knowledge of cross
functional linkage points leading to an effcient
system design.
ERP i n many cases i ntegrates the
disparate systems of an enterprise across
geographies. In such multi-country rollouts,
t he PMO s houl d i nvol ve t eams wi t h
multi-cultural and multi-lingual background.
Once the scope is fnalized, the PMO
should list down the games they want to
introduce. It then reaches out to the respective
managers of the involved departments for
identifcation of resources for taking part in
the games. Once the participation is confrmed,
the logistics for the event is planned.
As-Is Process and Requirements Gathering
The As-Is stage in business transformation
program involves defning the process landscape
based on an industry specifc reference models.
Proof of
concept &
Business
case
assessment
Fitment
assessment
of package
options
based on
preliminary
analysis of
core
business and
enabling
work flows
Develop-
ment of
costing,
business
benefits &
ROI
projections
for
implementa-
tion options
Validate the
business
case for
involving
gamification
Project
Initiation,
Scoping and
Planning
Project plan
and scope
definition for
involving
gamification
resource,
time, stage
etc.
Development
of a
framework
towards the
identification
of core
processes
and process
owners
ERP
Business
performance
measurement
and metrics
Finalization
of ERP
implementa-
tion plan and
training
As Is
Process and
Requirements
Gathering
Gamification
as way to
elicit
requirements
Creation of
business
process
specific
reference
models and
question-
naires as
accelerators
for the As Is
process
mapping
Gather As Is
Business
require-
ments
As Is
landscape
mapping
To Be
Process
Modeling
Gamification
to frame the
new process
Refine and
finalize the
To Be state
using ERP
as the
reference
Carry out
business
process
and
strategic
improve-
ments
based on
industry
best
practices
Breakdown
of KPIs to
metrics and
align metrics
to ERP
reporting
systems
Solution
Design,
Deployment,
configuration
Gamification
to help in UI
design and
carry out
configurations
Solution
design using
ERP fitment
ERP solution
gaps
addressed
through
customiza-
tion of the
systems
Configuration
and
development
of the
analytics to
ensure
systemic
data
availability
and control
Solution
Testing &
Approval
Usage in
performance
testing and
process
validation
Multiple test
cycles to test
the system
integration
and achieve
user
acceptance
Finalization
of the ERP
Business
performance
measure-
ment plan
and analytics
through
iterative
process
User
Training
Acquainting
users with
the new
system
Trainers train
the bigger
teams
Train the
trainer
Hands on
exercise and
preparation
of manuals
Solution
Rollout &
Sign Off
Production
support with
end user
support and
ticket
resolution
Rollout of
the systemic
changes to
the live
environment
post sign off
from end
users
Post
cut-over
routine
monitoring
of the
metrics
information.
Measure
actual
values vs
business
case KPIs
Value Realization Model and Framework
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Organizational Change Management Plan
Organizational Risk Management Plan
A Global Process Model, Industry Practice Integration and ERP Solution
35
The SMEs build on the reference model to
identify the local processes and add key
functionalities to each process.
Ga mi f i c a t i o n c o u l d p l a y a
key role in eliciting these requirements.
ERP implementations often run into trouble due
to lack of clarity on handover points between
business teams.
The teams identifed in the earlier stage,
now get into action. Each team comprises a
heterogeneous mix e.g. procurement lead,
sales representative, shopfoor expert, marketing
specialist and a finance manager. They are
provided with questionnaires specially prepared
for such exercises and the reference models.
The teams then list down the top 20 requirements
and pain points for each process. They ensure the
integration points are captured for each stage.
Subs equent t o t he col l ect i on of
requi rements, the i mpl ementati on team
validates the responses and finalizes the
acceptable set of requirements to be taken
forward. The teams are scored on the basis of
their responses and the winners are rewarded
accordingly. A leaderboard could be maintained
to track the performance of the teams over the
entire gamut of the project lifecycle.
To-Be Process Modeling
During stage, the organizations restructure their
As-Is processes based on industry best practices
and identifed pain points, to come up with the
new To-Be processes.
Gamifcation again could be leveraged
in the defnition of the new processes. In multi
country ERP rollouts, the teams could be
presented with the varied process flows
from different regions/ countries and key
requirements/pain points for carrying out
harmonization. Subsequent to the collection of
input from the participants, the implementation
team validates the responses and proposes
the To-Be process flow to be taken forward.
The teams could be asked to come up with pain
points, non-value add activities in the process,
possible resolution for the pain points and
suggestions for standardization of processes
across the regions/countries. For example, if this
is applied to Quote to Cash process, the teams
could be asked to come up with suggestions on
motivating the users to make more collection
calls, enter more complete data about the
customer in the ERP system and come up with
means to analyze any non-conversions to orders.
Similarly, if this is applied to Billing, the teams
could be asked to come up with suggestions
on improving the effciency of invoicing cycle,
ensuring the adherence to SLAs etc. The teams
are rated on the basis of their responses (number
of suggestions and quality of responses) and
the winners could be rewarded accordingly.
The To-Be process modeling phase is the most
critical phase for fostering innovation as the next
phases in the implementation cycle would be
execution of these ideas.
In some business transformations,
the games could be completely open ended
(for example, creation of the entire process fow
from scratch with end goal in mind and not the
current process) to foster innovation.
A key benefit of this initiative will
be the active involvement of business in the
To-Be design which ensures that critical
business requirements and important business
enabling functionalities are not missed out
across regions/ business departments.
Sol ut i on Des i gn, Devel opment and
Confguration
Once the To-Be process design is finalized,
the IT team gets involved in the solution design,
development and confguration.
36
The teams at this stage could be deployed
into multiple gamifcation activities. They could
directly contribute to the design of new User
Interfaces (UIs), get involved in confguration
activities and support data conversion.
On the basis of the identified To-Be
process, the implementation team could involve
the teams to design some custom processes
that need e.g. build prototypes for a new UI.
This way the implementation team could
leverage these prototypes to fnalize the design
which will also refect the requirements from
the business. The teams could get involved
in confguration of some master entities like
Bill of Materials (BOM) and pricelists of items.
This way the organization could assured of
data quality.
Further the teams could to be encouraged
to use out of the box ERP package features.
Hence for complex requirements not met
by standard features, the teams could be
encouraged to come up with a workaround
solution that is effcient and effective.
Metrics around percentage of component
designs and confguration successfully achieved
through gamifcation need to be tracked for
understanding the system effcacy.
Solution Testing and Approval
Gamification could play a critical role in the
solution testing exercise. The PMO could
involve the teams significantly in the end user
testing of scenarios and end-to-end business
processes. The teams could be rewarded on
the basis of the number of scenarios completed
and the genuine defects identified. Further the
gamification could be put in a significant
way in the activity of performance testing.
Individuals from the departments like sales
could be asked to book as many sales orders
or quotes in an hour or buyers to process as
many purchase order lines. This will hugely
increase the comfort feeling for the users in
the system and also enable the implementation
team to gauge the performance of the system.
Further the cross functional teams could put
to carry out an end-to-end cycle with full
business like simulation and the time could be
noted for benchmarking. Further, entire teams
could be pushed into volume testing of any
functionality e.g. multiple users could be
asked to enter sales orders or book invoices
simultaneously to evaluate the impact of bulk
usage on the system.
End User Training
Here the implementation team should try to
leverage the experience of the participants
in the previous phases. The teams could be
given the activity to ramp up the teams and
prepare the user manuals and FAQ documents.
This reduces largely the burden of train the
trainer activities and managers of teams could
themselves train the teams directly in the
processes to be adopted.
Typically in most of the ERP rollouts,
Trai n the Trai ner approach i s fol l owed
whereby leading functional SMEs are trained
initially and they take up the process of
training the end users. During the acceptance
testing, the end-users are involved in the
testing of the solution and provide a sign off
for the system to go live.
There is a significant opportunity to
employ gamifcation in these stages to make the
process of adapting users to the new process
interesting. Instead of having classroom sessions
followed by hands on sessions and subsequent
testing sessions, games could be designed
and conducted to combine both training and
testing processes. To explain with an example,
let us take the scenario of asset management
37
for a distributor. The lead trainer could be
the facilitator and the end users comprising
buyers, forecast managers and MDM owners
are cast into different groups. The game is a
combination of training and testing with the
live data that would have been converted from
live environment. The group has to review the
forecast data, inventory picture and sales order
demand and accordingly place requisitions and
approve purchase orders, while maintaining
compliance with supplier specific rules.
Typically for a distributor, there is a high
volume of purchase orders placed and hence the
variety of cases encountered will also be high.
The facilitators and the IT team could choose a
large signifcant dataset based on the converted
data and try to include as many scenarios as
possible for the users to test e.g. drop ship case,
requisition line aggregation, using minimum
order quantity, different types of costs based
on customer choice etc.
The reward for the teams going through
the process needs to be lucrative and competitive
to drive their enthusiasm. A monetary reward
could be provided to the teams based on the
total value of the purchase orders booked e.g.
1% of the total purchase orders approved could
be split in the team. A similar award could be
provided for the maximum number of scenarios
executed by the team in a day.
The users need to reward the teams for
the genuine bugs identifed as part of their
exercise. A process workaround which has
been listed following the identifcation of a
defect could be validated by the lead trainers
and the user could be publicly appreciated
and felicitated for the same. The end-user who
proposed the workaround or solution could
document it which will be circulated to the rest
of the team, which will serve as a prestige factor
for him/ her in the team.
For multi country rollouts involving
changes in local languages, a gamification
technique similar to what Microsoft had
employed could be used for their Office
solutions in regional languages. A game could
be designed whereby the users are asked
to test and review all the reports, alerts or
messages and User Interfaces (UIs) impacted
by local language changes and revert with
the issues and corrections for the same.
The members who successfully manage to
validate the maximum number of such entities
are rewarded suitably with a gift of their
choice. The cumbersome task of validating
these changes one by one could become
interesting with gamification.
The bi gges t advant age f or t hi s
gamification on live data is that the users get
accustomed to a variety of production scenarios
and that will enhance their productivity going
forward. Also the incentive to complete more
cases or book more purchase orders (as in the
above example), also will boost their efficiency
when the system goes live. Further, the thought
of being able to propose solutions for a new
system and win rewards or appreciation will
motivate the users more to effectively test the
quality of the product.
Solution Rollout and Support
The end user training and acceptance testing
phase is followed by the cutover phase which
compri ses data conversi on, components
migration and the actual rollout of the new
ERP system (retiring the legacy system in most
cases). Though the cutover may not be a suitable
phase for involving gamification activities,
the champions from the previous phases could
here be counted on making key contributions
in terms of data validation, smoke testing and
foor support.
38
The cutover phase is followed by post go
live support. The program management team
could leverage gamifcation in support activities
as well. Typically, there is a tool to manage the
user tickets raised post go-live. A count has to be
maintained to record the number of questions
answered or tickets resolved (within defned
timelines) with additional points for suggesting
smart workarounds by SMEs.
A leaderboard again could be maintained
to display the scores and contributors could be
rewarded with appreciation letters or token
gifts. The biggest contributors should be
publicly appreciated and successful completion
of complex activities like financial period
closure without issues could be rewarded
with gifts.
Post go- l i ve support f or an ERP
implementation is usually strenuous as it
could involve a large number of system defects
and user queries given the scale of change it
brings about. Gamification initiatives therefore
could go a long way in making the users
self-sufficient while reducing the burden on
the IT support team as well as in ensuring a
faster resolution.
Key metrics in this phase are the number
of tickets answered successfully by these teams
and the closure time for such tickets.
CHANGE MANAGEMENT DRIVEN BY
GAMIFICATION
A recent Gallup poll observed that over
70-percent of employees are either not engaged
or are actively disengaged and the levels of
non-engagement or disengagement increases
signifcantly during an ERP implementation.
Gamifcation intends to turn this trend around.
Smart use of gamifcation could go a long way
in reducing the stress of change management in
complex ERP deployment and boost employee
engagement towards building an enthusiastic
workforce. With the implementation experience
becomi ng an enj oyabl e one, adaptati on
to the new system is much faster for the
employees and could help in early realization
of business benefts.
Whi l e f or mul a t i ng t he c ha nge
management strategy, it is imperative to
understand what is going to change, how
this change will be done, how it will be
communi cat ed, who wi l l communi cat e
these changes, what would be the audience,
medium and when will these be communicated.
It is important to anticipate the resistance
that may potentially come up and create means
to tackle the same.
While Gamifcation helps improve the
employee engagement of the project team
during the implementation, it could also be a
good tool for Change Management, when it
comes to end users. The ease of adoption
of the ERP system by the end users could
tremendously improve, if the Gamification
techniques are leveraged to enhance the
user experience and engagement. Hence it is
important to include the Gamification plan
within the Organization Change Management
(OCM) toolkit.
Change Champions typically play a
key role in fnalizing the Gamifcation plan
with respect to user adoption. They design the
reward systems based on multiple parameters
like the impact, scale of change, resistance to
change within the user community, motivation
needs etc.
The game s t ypi c al l y i nvol ve a
l ot of t eam- wor k, c o- or di nat i on and
co-operation. This directly helps the team in
sharing the problems, their experiences and
solutions thereby forcing the pace of problem
resolution and user adoption. For global
39
implementations, the opportunity to work in
cross cultural multi-lingual teams could go
a long way in breaking social barriers and
increased awareness about regional business
processes. This knowledge brings about
easy comprehension of localization features
of ERP systems and sense of camaraderie
becomes very helpful in supporting end users
during geographical multi country rollouts.
Smart organizations could put rewards for the
users, who champion the process faster than the
others. Monetary rewards could be provided to
winning teams in some particular competition.
Other than monetary benefits, the performers
could be rewarded with non-monetary gifts
e.g. teams involved in system testing and data
conversion support could be awarded vacations
or recreational benefits. Letters of compliments
from senior management, appreciation trophies
and public recognition could be provided
for people high up on leaderboards for user
training, support etc. These initiatives could
also provide senior management with a tool to
identify the new leaders emerging out of the
transformation and enable them to staff them
in appropriate roles, befitting their talent.
CONCLUSION
With ever increasing need to adopt change
quickly, enterprises cannot afford to undergo
long transformations involving stressful
meetings, stretched hours trying to manipulate
cumbersome processes and sagging employee
morale. Gamifcation could be the answer to
keep ERP implementations smart and nimble.
With its potential to drive change and
foster innovation, gamification, however,
i s ul t i mat el y a t ool t o engage human
resources. Senior management should stub
out any unhealthy competition between players,
ensure business strategy and judgment should
not get reliant on game outcome alone and
never allow frustration of failure in games to
impact players professionally. Gamifcation is
a business enabler and hence caution needs to
be taken to keep it so.
REFERENCES
1. Gami f i cat i on Wi ki , Avai l abl e at
http://gamification.org/.
2. Kar S. (2011), Gamification Becomes the
Norm: 7 Ways to Game Your Business.
Avai l abl e at ht t p: //si l i conangl e.
com/blog/2012/07/26/gamification-
becomes-the-norm-7-ways-to-game-
your-business/.
3. Gamification Blogger, Gamification
& ERP S of t wa r e . Ava i l a bl e a t
www. gami f i c at i onbl ogger . c om/
gamification-erp.
4. Persaud, D. (2012), How gamification
makes ERP software better. Available
at http://www.itworldcanada.com/
bl ogs/i nsi ght s/2012/06/19/how-
gami f i cat i on- makes- erp- sof t ware-
better/63703/.
5. Talagavaram, P., and Dutta A. (2011),
Sus t ai nabi l i t y- bas ed I T- enabl ed
Business Transformation A Structured
Approach, Setlabs Briefings, vol 9, no.
1, http://www.infosys.com/infosys-
l a bs /publ i c a t i ons /i nf os ys l a bs -
briefings/pages/green-it.aspx.
6. Goyal , A. , Tal agavar am, P. , and
S ha h, H. , ( 2 0 0 8 ) , Do v e t a i l i ng
Busi ness Process Re- engi neeri ng
t o E RP T r a n s f o r ma t i o n s A
Syst emi c Approach. Avai l abl e at
ht t p: //www. i nf osys. com/oracl e/
white-papers/Pages/index.aspx.
40
VOL 11 NO 3
2013
Infosys Labs Briefings
How to Make Healthcare Wellness
Programs More Effective?
By Praneshkumar Wahil and Arshad Karim
I
n United States of America majority of the
healthcare money is spent on treatment of chronic
non-communicable diseases. These diseases are
preventable to a certain extent by stimulating
the individuals towards a healthy lifestyle. With
the new Affordable Healthcare Act, there is
an emphasis on preventive care and Wellness
Programs in order to reduce healthcare costs.
Employer based Wellness Programs encourage
companies to improve health of their employees by
offering to lower their monthly premiums which
will lead to lower overall spending on healthcare
later. Even though these programs offer healthy
living and incentives, there is very little awareness
or participation in these wellness programs.
The Gamification technique which is
being used in other sectors can help Healthcare
Industry achieve this goal. Gamification,
in simple terms, is the use of game design
techniques, game thinking and game mechanics
to enhance non-game contexts. This paper will
provide information about different Gamifcation
techniques that are, or can be used in HealthCare
Wellness Programs.
In United States of America, healthcare
costs have been spiraling continuously over the
decade and is of huge concern to the economists
and planners. A lot of time and money has
been spent by government and enterprises to
reduce healthcare costs while improving the
quality of healthcare. 75 cents of every dollar
spent on healthcare in United States of America
is on treatment of chronic non-communicable
diseases. These diseases are often preventable by
motivating the people to live a healthier lifestyle
[1]. It is evident that higher spending on treating
diseases does not always lead to better, healthy life
for patients. Healthcare should be a system that
pursues promotion of healthy lifestyle and not that
aims to treat sick people. Traditional healthcare
system provides no long-term beneft to people to
prevent themselves from getting sick, and results
in higher spending on treatment of diseases.
WELLNESS PROGRAMS KEY TO REDUCE
HEALTHCARE COST
An existing provision of Health Insurance
Portability and Accountability Act (HIPPA)
Gamification- Transforming Enterprise
Healthcare Wellness Programs
41
permi ts empl oyers to provi de premi um
discounts up to 20% to employees who maintain
certain criteria designed to promote health and
prevent disease. The new Affordable Care Act
has a provision to increase the wellness discounts
to 30% for group health plans which can be
increased further to 50% subject to discretion
of the secretary of HHS [2]. Another provision
of healthcare reform indicates government
funding would be made available to small
employers to launch wellness programs for
their employees. Recently, many of the US
companies have been putting more emphasis
on Wellness Programs. These Wellness
Programs encourage companies to improve
health of their employees by offering to lower
their premiums which will lead to reduced
spending on healthcare later. $1 investment in
wellness programs saves $3 in health care costs,
according to the Wellness Council of America
and according to the Centers for Disease
Control [8].
Even though these programs offer
healthy living and incentives, there is very little
awareness or participation in these wellness
programs. According to Maslows theory,
fnancial incentives can motivate people to a
certain extent but beyond that there is a need
for a higher level of satisfaction to attain the
level of participation and achievement required.
PROBLEMS WITH TRADITIONAL
WELLNESS PROGRAMS
Traditional Wellness programs fail to keep the
employees interested for several reasons, few of
which are listed below
Absolute Milestones: The milestones
set for eligibility of premium discounts
are in absolute terms and never give an
employee a visual feeling of how near
or far he/she is from the target. It ends
up giving a feeling of chasing a moving
target which causes the employee to give
up in certain situations.
No Feedback Mechani sm: Mor e
Often, there are not enough feedback
mechanisms to keep the employee
engaged in the wellness program due to
which the employees feel clueless about
their progress.
Lack of Progression or Competitiveness:
There is no mechanism to compare the
effort spent on wellness programs
among employees. Although health
data is very personal and employee may
not like being compared on the basis
of their vital statistics, a mechanism
promoting mutual competitiveness helps
in keeping people interested. Employees
get a feeling of isolation in traditional
wellness program and tend to lose
interest soon.
Lack of Motivation: The exi sti ng
premium discounts do not appear
to provide enough incentives when
compared to the amount of dedication
needed for a behavior change.
GAMIFICATIONTRANSFORMING
TRADITIONAL HEALTHCARE WELLNESS
PROGRAMS
Gartner Group defines Gamification as the
concept of employing game mechanics to
non-game activities such as recruitment,
t r a i ni ng a nd he a l t h a nd we l l ne s s .
Gartner predicts that by 2014, more than 70
percent of global 2,000 organizations will
have at least one gamified application,
42
which can range from mastering a specific
skill or improving ones health
4
.
The Gamifcation technique can help
an Enterprise to increase the effectiveness
of its Healthcare Wellness Programs. In this
era where video games, mobiles games are a
habit or addiction for many; Gamifcation of
Healthcare Wellness Program might interest
most of us.
I t i s i mport ant t o recogni ze t he
philosophy of game engagement to understand
the success of gamifed wellness programs.
According to a survey released in
March-2012 by Towers Watson and the National
Business Group on Health, Gamification of
health and wellness will increase in companies,
with 60% of the sample of 500 employers
indicating they will leverage online games as
well as other types of competitions between
business locations or employee groups [3].
GAMIFICATION FOR WELLNESS
PROGRAMS
Improved Engagement by Rewards
This can be achieved by awarding badges.
For Example, a person signing up for a Yoga
Class could be awarded a Yoga newbie badge.
Employee will have a feeling of achievement
whenever a new badge is awarded to him/her
and this will give them incentives to attend the
yoga class. Badges must be predefned for each
level of progress. Pre-defned badges will help
the employee in identifying milestones and
work towards them.
Figure 1: Elements of Gamification Source: Infosys Research
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Elements of
Gamification
43
For Example: An employee recording
2000 calories of workout in a week could be
awarded a Super Healthy Badge. This shall help
create small achievable milestones pointing
towards fnal goal of healthy living. Similarly,
a surprise Health conscious badge for recording
data from recent routine physical exam can
encourage employees towards preventive
care too.
Leaderboards- Employees log their effort spent
towards wellness program. This data on daily
basis could be updated to create leaderboards.
This creates competitiveness in employees
and keeps them engaged and addicted to the
chosen wellness program. Badges along with
Leaderboards can help employees achieving
small goals in order to reach a larger goal by
competing against each other.
Defi ne Mi ssi ons/ Chal l enge a Buddy-
These are some of the creative Gamification
techniques used by wellness programs for
advanced users.
Once the users have obtai ned the
badges and charting the leaderboards there is a
possibility that they would lose interest.
Creati ng personal mi ssi ons whi ch
would help them to challenge themselves or
their colleagues can keep them engaged in a
longer run.
Sharing Success Stories: A gamified social
platform could be provided that will help
employees to share their success stories and
achievements. These stories may motivate other
employees and also help the individual build
self-esteem. Testimonials from fellow employees
could be used to support a success story which
would infuence more people.
By now it is evident that solely monetary
incentives in form of premium discounts are not
motivating enough to drive behavioral changes
in employees towards health living.
GAMIFIED WELLNESS PLATFORMS FOR
ENTERPRISES
Enterprises can make use of use of various
online Gamifcation social platforms available
to increase effectiveness of Employee Wellness
Programs. These platforms provide multiple
engagement opportunities to employees aiming
improvement in individual health and wellness,
and help them lead a healthier and balanced life.
Figure 2: Daily Challenges e.g like one above would
motivate individuals to have carrots in a diet.
Source: Infosys Research
Figure 3: Let others know how you have improved.
Source: Infosys Research
1
2 3
44
www.Sweatequitycoalition.com , www.keas.
com and www.AetnaEveractive.com are few of
proven products in gamifed wellness platforms.
These pl at f orms can not onl y be
customized for enterprises based on employee
demographic and wellness needs but also
can facilitate monitoring and tracking the
effectiveness of wellness programs at individual
level and enterprise level. Enterprise may opt
to use in-house gamifed wellness platforms
or ready to use gamifed wellness platforms to
ensure sustained healthy behaviors which in
turn could result in reduced healthcare costs
and increased productivity.
Ga mi f i e d we l l n e s s p r o g r a m
Wellvolution was implemented at Blue Shield
of California was with a notable 3:1 ROI,
they introduced a social platform for employees
to create small teams and work towards ftness
goals, challenge and support each other through
online interaction [5].
GAMIFIED WELLNESS FOR INDIVIDUALS
As human behavior we resist changes for many
reasons like lack of interest, a mental block and
moving out of comfort zone. On the fip side
we engage easily in anything that seems fun.
The concept of Gamifcation for individual based
wellness program is solely based on blending
ftness activities with fun. The behavior change is
fructifed without an individual even noticing it.
Individual wellness has been gamifed through
community/web based wellness programs,
mobile applications and console based games.
An example of community based wellness
programs for individuals is weight watchers
program. This program consists of logging the
food intake and exercise through the week and
tracking the points in online portal. During the
weekly meeting members are rewarded on the
basis of their performance during the week
(short term goal).
Many companies are now making the
various online gamification social platforms
available to individual healthcare customers.
These platforms are aim to improve your
health and wellness, and help you lead a
healthier and balanced life. www.Keas.com
and www.AetnaEveractive.com are couple
of proven products in social platforms for
wellness. Aetna Everactive is an easy-to-use
site designed to get (and keep) individuals
healthy. Whether one is seeking information
on beginning a fitness program or training
for a marathon, one will find the resources
and inspiration one needs to reach his/her
personal goals [6].
With the advancement of motion sensing
technology and its usage in a growing video
Figure 4: Cover of Your Shape Fitness Evolved
Source: Ubisoft
45
game market, console based games have also
emerged as a means to promote healthy living.
Xbox console games Shape your ftness
and Kinect sports are a couple of popular
examples. These games let the user have a
good time while working on his/her ftness.
These games are easily accessible and can be
incorporated as a part of the wellness program
for individual.
These gaming options provide challenges
and opportunities for individuals to test their
abilities. The exciting and relaxing effects of
these games are very appealing and help build
the self-esteem of the individual. There is an
app for everything on mobile platform and so
a Gamifed application for Fitness programs
is another means to promote ftness among
individuals. These apps can help individuals
monitor their weight and provide feedback
on a balanced diet; create and track monthly/
weekly ftness goal, Share ones achievements
instantly with friends and family. One of the
most popular mobile ftness app for both iOS
and Android users is the Nike+ running app.
This app has very well implemented majority
of gaming elements to keep the user engaged.
CHALLENGES WITH GAMIFICATION
The key to the success of Gamifcation is to
understand the audience well. There is no
solution that fts all for Gamifcation of wellness
programs. The frst and foremost step towards
Gamification would be to understand what
motivates your target audience. e.g. Elderly
population would seek motivation by reading
the success stories instead of badges and
leaderboards. On the contrary for a younger
audience leaderboards and badges will show
good results.
At Ridgeview Medical Center, a survey
on biometric screening identifes contrasting
motivating factors based on age groups.
Younger workers participated in the screening
because of financial incentives whereas for
older employees getting healthier was the top
driver [7].
Gamification should be used with
caution by enterprises. Employers will have
to ensure that non-participation by employees
must not be used as criteria for discrimination
or punishment. Instead the main cause of this
non participation should be understood and
wellness program should be tailored to suit the
need of the audience. Just Gamifying wellness
program does not guarantee continuous
engagement. The implemented tools and
techniques need be flexible. Rapid changes
should be possible bearing in mind target
audience. Lack of monitoring and tracking
mi ght l ead to dul l and bori ng gami fi ed
wellness programs. Wellness solutions like
mobile or console based games for individuals
have limited feedback mechanism and must
be continuously upgraded to present a new
challenge level for the consumer.
CONCLUSION
Traditional Healthcare Wellness programs
failed to gather employee participation.
There has been continuous emphasis on
behavioral change to live a healthy life style but
the existing monetary incentives are not proving
to be suffcient to motivate the employees on a
long term basis.
There is certainly a need to increase the
monetary benefts along with a mechanism to
continuously engage employees in healthcare
wellness programs. Gamifcation has not only
proven to improve employee engagement
but al so at t ract ed more empl oyees f or
participation in wellness programs. Finally with
i mpl ement at i on of t hes e t ec hni ques ,
46
enterprises have been successful in controlling
overall cost of healthcare and provide better
and healthy life for employees.
Nevertheless gamifcation of wellness
program must be carefully designed and
reviewed based on the employee demographics.
These techniques must be applied with caution
as it should not be misused by employer in
discriminating against the non-participating
employees. Also, the success stories from
colleagues must be a source of inspiration
for fellow employees and taken in a positive
collaborative manner.
REFERENCES
1. Cent ers f or Di sease Cont rol and
Prevention, (2012), Prevention and Health
Promotion, National Center for Chronic
Disease. Available at http://www.cdc.
gov/nccdphp/overview.htm#2.
2. Information based on PPACA, Sec.
2705 Available at http://www.nciom.
org/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/
PR_Provisions_Full.pdf.
3. Ra us e o P. ( 2 0 1 0 ) , I nf or ma t i on
a b o u t Af f o r d a b l e c a r e Ac t .
Available at http://www.paulrauseo.
c o m/ we l l n e s s - a s - a - b u s i n e s s -
strategy/2011-how-should-businesses-
be-preparing-for-obamacare.html.
4. Performance in era of uncertainty
(2012), Survey released in March-12
by Towers & Watson the National
Business Group on Health, gamifcation
of health and wellness. Available at
www. t ower swat son. com/asset s/
pdf/6556/Towers-Watson-NBGH-2012.
pdf accessed September 2012.
5. Gartner Predictions about Gamifcation
in enterprises (2012). Available at
http: //www. gartner. com/it/page.
jsp?id=1844115.
6. The Gamifcation of Wellness program
at Blue Shield of California. Available
at http://www.hfma.org/Templates/
InteriorMaster.aspx?id=34850.
7. Based on i nformati on from Aetna
Everactive.com.
8. With Health and Wellness For All (2010),
Shape Up news. Available at http://
www.shapeup.com/news/article/with-
health-and-wellness-for-all.
47
VOL 11 NO 3
2013
Infosys Labs Briefings
Lending Transformation
through Gamification
By Sam Felix Pradeep Kumar and Tejasvi Addagada
B
anking is a serious business and as it
regulates the fow of funds in an economy.
It would be disastrous if the business is not
handled effciently. But at the core of banking
is the element of customer satisfaction or
user experience, which is the key to maintain
proftability, drive results and stay competitive.
Its interesting to note that adding fun elements
to the banking channels such as online or mobile
can result in enhanced user experience and
customer satisfaction.
Customer satisfaction is one of the key
focus areas for banks and banks are striving
hard to gain mind share and wallet share of
customers. A Study conducted by J.D. Power
among the US Retail banking customers found
that the banks were able to offset the negative
impact on customer satisfaction by offering
better facilities and services, despite the
decline in satisfaction as a result of fees
and other charge[2]. With banking industry
operating on tight margins, not to forget the
regulatory climate, banks end up initiating
measures such as increase fees which impacts
customer satisfaction adversely. The way head
for banks is to enhance the user experience,
thereby creating a positive environment for
the customer dealing with banks. For banks
looking at enhancing the user experience
with channels such as online, Gamification
could prove to be a prodigious strategy.
Such improved experiences translate to better
customer satisfaction, thereby enabling banks
to maintain and retain customers.
GROWTH OF BANKING CHANNELS
Banks have rapidly expanded the number of
banking channels over the past few decades,
without limiting themselves to the traditional
branch banking. Online Banking is one of the
predominant channels that banks deploy to
service customers. A Survey conducted by
American Bankers Association to analyze the
preferred banking method by US customers
In Banking gamification can provide a
good experience to the customers by providing a
narrative approach to planning and goal setting.
48
concluded that 62% of the respondents favored
Internet banking as their choice [4].
According to Statistic Brain-81% of
percent of US customers managed household
fnances by banking online at least once in the
past 12 months[1]. These statistics signify the
importance that Online banking has earned as
a banking channel, reiterating the importance
of offering a better online banking experience.
During the initial days of internet banking,
the web was used as just another channel of
communication for banks and then it morphed
into transactional channel enabling banking
customer to perform transactions such as
account opening, funds transfer, loan payments
etc. Now the online channel has gone a
step beyond enabling customers to become
contributors and decision-enablers of the online
banking site. With customers spending more
time on their online banking sites than bank
branches and with lack of major differentiators
among online banking sites, its time for banks
to lead the way and embrace Gamifcation.
GAMIFICATION IN BANKING
Gamification refers to the concept of applying
gaming mechanics to non-game activities to
induce user engagement and participation.
One simpler way of identifying Gamification
i s a case when a banki ng si t e gat hers
account opening data through narrative and
interactive screens, rather than presenting a
lengthy textual application with boxes and
dashes for borrower to fill. Gamification
can be achieved by using the right elements
in non-game scenarios. Popular non-game
environments for consideration are web
portals doing retail sales, business services,
market i ng campai gns and ot her onl i ne
communi t i es. Gami f i cat i on i s growi ng
and extending its reach beyond traditional
consumer market i ng t o t he operat i onal
core of any business. Gamification is not
anymore limited to marketing campaigns
or advertising, but they are expected to
influence the business of online banking and
the user experience.
Telephone
3%
Mobile (Cellphone,
PDA etc)
1%
ATM
8%
Mail
6%
Branches
20%
Internet Banking
(Laptop or PC)
62%
Figure 1: Preferred Banking Method 2011 in US Figure 2: Applicable Features of gamification
Source: American Bankers Association Survey [3] Source: Infosys Research
Set your
financial goals
Get advice
Track your
accounts
Know where
user money is
moving
Get badges,
incentives,
rewards
Videos on
learning
Blog on your
experiences
49
Gamification in banking gains even more
significance owing to following factors:
1. Banking today is not fun with customers
having to line up at bank branches,
remember and enter online credentials,
ring customer care center which has
humongous options before the customer
can get things done. Banks are looking
at ways of improving the stickiness,
engagement and touch points with the
customers in an innovative, though not
disruptive manner.
2. Banks today realize that the customer
touch point with the bank should be fun
and exciting, so as to enhance customer
experience and engagement.
3. Banks find it difficult to establish
differentiators for their online banking
site, thereby the features/characteristics
gap between the different banks website
is diminishing. With online banking
being the predominant banking channel,
this is a serious matter of concern for
banks to seek ways of establishing a
unique banking platform that the user
enjoys and associates with.
Gamification can be applied across diverse
areas of banki ng, but t he f ocus of t he
art i cl e i s t o est abl i sh t he i nf l uence of
Gamification on two predominant banking
areas-Consumer Mortgages and Personal
Financial Management (PFM). Consumer
Mortgage is an area where banks are finding
it difficult to manage the user experience due
to complex nature of product by itself and
the associated regulations. Personal Financial
Management solution implementation is
growing rapidly and this is considered to be
a product that would help the customer feel
close to the bank and manage his finances
better. Understanding how Gamification can
transform user experience with Mortgages
and PFM solutions would provide significant
i nsi ghts and l earni ng experi ence to the
banks.
GAMIFICATION IN PERSONAL FINANCIAL
MANAGEMENT
Market Outlook
The current outlook on personal finance
management i s that the customers l ack
confidence in financial providers and have
a sense of negativity on their own fnances.
Customers feel good to set goals and fnd it
an enriching experience on the path towards
Do you want to make progress towards your Goals?
Select your first goal. We will help you on the way till you pay off the debt.
Get Started by selecting your goal
Save
Money
Pay off
Debt
Click here if you are not sure on selecting your goal
Select your goal
Customize the goal
Check Progress
Figure 3: Simple and narrative gamification features with
progress path
Source: Infosys Research
50
the goals. They fnd majority of the applications
provided by the bank to be cumbersome and
diffcult to comprehend. While branch banking
has started declining, there is rapid growth in
web and mobile banking. There is a gap between
what people know and in motivating them to
do it. The customers are more social regarding
their finances and are increasingly sharing
certain aspects like goals, fnancial instruments
on social channels. There is a strong user growth
utilizing PFM tools and the customer outlook
makes PFM tools the best ft for gamifcation.
Use of spending on gamifcation will actually
make it more productive, customer centric and
proftable to the banks.
Gamifcation can change the way the customers
view personal fnances.
Educate players about money in a fun
format
Use game mechanics to reward positive
behavior
Provi des a road map for rati onal
behavior.
Personal finance should be simple to
be fun.
Means unburdening from excessive
information
Some people want a more playful
experience and an easy way to change
their spending patterns even more on
top of that.
The gamifcation layer needs to be as
informative to drive customers path
FEATURES SUITABLE FOR PFM
Cons t r uct s i ncl udi ng The Expl or er ,
The competitor, The storyteller and the
achiever can be useful in pulling a perfect
Gamifed PFM application. General features of
a personal fnance application include fnancial
planning, budgeting, financial overview
and dashboard view of categorized inflow
and outfow.
Financial Planning
The current applications have fewer features in
this area, but the customers are more inclined
towards planning. Gamifcation can help provide
a good experience to the customers by providing
a narrative approach to planning and goal setting.
Interface and user experience plays an important
part in this part of the application. The customers
can be provided with simple, unburdened,
informative and habit creating experience by
adding features of gamifcation. A narrative or
story telling approach advising customers on the
dry aspects of fnancial instruments and goals will
add value. Planning provides an opportunity to
up sell/cross sell by showcasing products towards
which the customer has propensity. The costs
associated with brokers can be transferred to
reward points linked to the bank stores.
Budgeting
Budgeting can range from planning the spending
and savings for the coming months to reporting
on budgets from previous months. Personal
budgeting is related to deferred real time
rewards, which can be substituted by virtual
points, rewards or levels to boost motivation
towards the best approaches. Achievements
can be shared globally by using social widgets
and applications from the same tool. This can be
complemented by usage of badges and public
recognition on reaching the budget targets.
51
Since budgeting is a best practice in fnancial
planning, points can be awarded for logging
into this application and performing tracking
activities. The pitfall here can be going in for
more rewards which create a cognitive overload.
The whole feature of rewards can be linked to
the promotion and reward programs of the bank.
This can act as an avenue to cross sell products
to the customers by providing promotions.
Financial Overview
At any instance, the customer can find the
snapshot of his spending, income patterns,
investment patterns, returns and other financial
features on his dashboard. Many current
dashboards are not comprehendi bl e by
the customers and lack the drive to use
them. Simple, narrative and informative
characteristics of gamification can change
t he behavi oral t rai t s of t he consumers
on the use of dashboards. Many features
like account overview, statements, funds
transfers, payments, bills, cards, links to
other banks, investments can be shown on
the overview with clear differentiation from
each feature and information regarding each.
The customer experi ence can be further
enhanced by providing levels of achievement on
the financial goals, points on linking accounts,
challenges in front and an opportunity to blog
about their experiences.
Cash Flow Management
A customer is always interested to know where
his money is flowing to. This feature of tracking
customers cash purchases and spending on
investment products are available on this
feature. Gamification principles including
rewards for spending on investments, points
for spending on the right purchases and timely
payments can be placed in the application.
He/she should be able to track them with
little effort using simple interfaces. The
experience can be enhanced by providing a
spend analysis using progress paths towards
the goals. Some aspects of financials like tax
filing are not deemed interesting and can be
gamified by providing rich and interactive
and narrative flow.
Personal fnance management tools can
be a major take for the banks offerings in terms
of branding, marketing, socializing and selling.
Achievement
Application
Submission
Bonuses
Pre-
Qualification
Count-Down
Product Pricing
Levels
Calculators
Ownership
Education and
Training
Leaderboards
Figure 4: Gamification in Consumer Mortgages Source: Infosys Research
52
This is possible with improved involvement of
the customer in these applications. The customer
involvement can be possible by using the
principles and constructs of gamifcation on
these applications. Further, use of analytics
for monitoring time spent on each feature can
be used to provide insight into customers
behavior, stickiness, and propensity.
GAMIFICATION IN CONSUMER
MORTGAGES
Home ownership is the dream of any individual
and with the rising asset valuations, consumers
turn to banks for residential mortgages to fulfll
their dream. Mortgage loan market is ever active,
thanks to the ever increasing demand for homes
and the availability of loan products to cater to
individual needs. But with the sub-prime crisis
which was primarily infuenced by subprime
mortgages and the multitude of mortgage specifc
regulations in the recent past, customers trust
towards mortgage and the banks have declined
in the recent past. Banks need to rebuild the trust
and demonstrate their interest to fulfll the needs
of the customer. The Exhibit records some of the
prominent game dynamics and relates them to
their relevance to the consumer mortgage process.
Application Submission
With banks enabling customers to submit
mortgage applications online, the accuracy
of the data enables better decision making.
Banks can consider gamifying the process
by Levels approach, letting the customer
know the status of completion with each page
transition. More important is to transform the
aesthetics from traditional textual application to
animated, interactive application. In addition,
showing statistics of some of the loan approvals
based on the completeness of the application
can stimulate customer to complete application
with details. When customer is excited with the
gaming experience, banks can also beneft from
improved data accuracy.
Pre-Qualifcation
Customers are increasingly looking at lenders
with ability to pre-qualify the customer,
even before submitting the loan application.
Pre-Qualifcation is a must to have with all
online banking sites and this is a significant
area for banks to source and retain customers.
Pre-Qualifcation is done based on minimal data
and customers might not spend greater time in
data entry, but banks have the opportunity to
attract customer within this minimal time frame
if they provide better experience to the customer.
Banks, for instance, can adopt Achievement
game, providing the customer with any physical
or virtual representation of having successfully
pre-qualifed. This approach also has the potential
to create ownership and loyalty towards the bank.
Product Pricing
Mortgage pricing is complex to comprehend
with numerous details on interest rates,
fees, points etc. Pricing is one area that can
result in customer distrust if not handled
properly. Recent regulations are more focused
on improving the transparency in pricing; still
there is an opportunity for banks to incorporate
gaming mechanics and build customer trust.
Providing Leader boards with information
about the average mortgage rate offered on a
day for customer with the same attributes will
defnitely instill confdence. Also when banks
introduce new products with introductory offer
on rates, they could adopt Count-Down giving
a certain amount of time to the borrower to lock
the loan. Such an activity will create interest
among customers and banks can stand to gain
the mind share of customers.
53
Calculators
Online Mortgage portals are flooded with
calculators to enable customers understand the
cost of loan and also perform scenario analysis.
These are important tools that customers
defnitely want, but the tools need to go beyond
the traditional calculators. Banks should
consider wrapping up mortgage calculator
in a visual, interactive journey for potential
customers to explore. Customers get to imagine
the reality of making mortgage loan payments
even before making the commitment.
Education and Training
With banks offering gamut of products to
cater to different set of customers and with
integrating advanced features to the online
mortgage portal, it is imperative for banks to
train the users so that they realize the expected
benefts. Uploading bulk of training materials
with textual content will not serve the lenders
objective of educating the customer. Banks can
attempt to gamify the learning experience by
adopting Levels or Leader Board approach.
For instance, on completion of a product manual
in levels, the customer can be rewarded with
badges. Or the customer can be compared
against similar customers with the lender and
scored on his level of awareness.
CHALLENGES IN IMPLEMENTING
GAMIFICATION
1. Gamifcation strategy requires constant
updates to the aesthetics and theme of
the game, as games with no challenges
or stale games could demotivate the
customer. This necessitates banks,
which are already operating on shoestring
IT budgets, to plan accordingly at the
start of IT budgeting period.
2. Gami f i cat i on i s a rel at i vel y new
phenomenon and very few financial
institutions have attempted to wet their
legs in this area so far. Without a strong
success story to follow, banks could be
skeptical to integrate gamifcation within
their online strategy.
3. Banking is a diverse area and it might not
be fair to assume that one game strategy
can be applied across all cross sections of
banking. Relevancy is far more signifcant
and banks cannot adopt one-size-fts-all
approach. It would be absurd to have fun
games in loan default application, which
is primarily used by customers whose
loans are in default. Moreover, banks
should not insert a random fun-only
game into work just to have fun.
4. Banking is a highly regulated industry,
deal i ng wi t h sensi t i ve cust omer
information. Every care needs to be
taken to ensure that the gamifcation
strategy does not alter or compromise
the data security. This requires a strong
authentication in place.
5. Depending on the nature of gamification
strategy, it might require re-architecting
the system or building an interface
with external sites (as in the case of
reward points). Any such changes to
the existing online system translate into
cost for the bank.
RECOMMENDATION FOR BANKS
1. Banks need to perform a thorough cost-
beneft analysis to understand the true
value of implementing a gaming strategy.
54
Without mere followers of gamifcation
based on the experiences from other
banks, the respective banks should
thoroughly study the environment and
see if gamifcation strategy can really
help them to fill the void that they
observe with user experience.
2. Once a game strategy is implemented,
banks need to be agile and have several
alternate strategies to deploy immediately,
if the earlier strategy is not a success.
This involves costs, but can help the banks
to position the right strategy, thereby
derive the benefts of gamifcation.
3. Banking customers do not hang on to
every word in the bill inserts and direct
mail. Nor do they have time to visit the
well-crafted banking websites to browse
the product offerings. Creating game that
rewards, engages and amuses customers,
woul d defi ni tel y draw customers,
and build loyalty of customers towards
the bank.
CONCLUSION
Gamification, which revolves around the
application of video game design and interaction
to improve user experience and problem solving,
has begun to gain ground in online banking.
Few banks like Barclays, Lloyds TSB and platforms
like PayDivvy.com, Payoff.com have already
started using favors of gamifcation as part of
their online banking strategy. The fact that there
is plenty of similarity between game playing and
managing finances, advocates the importance
of integrating gamification in the business of
banking and fnance. Plenty of discussion foats on
whether Gamifcation is just another buzzword in
technology or can it really be the game changer in
the technology world. Gamifcation is identifed
as one the emerging technology by leading
researchers and it has the potential to innovate
key processes, maximize infrastructure effciency
and enhance value propositions. Still, gamifcation
need not be the solution for every business
problem nor can it turnaround the user experience
overnight. If banks aspire to reap the true value
of gamifcation, they should defne the problem
statement with the current user experience clearly,
analyze the relevancy of the game strategy,
brainstorm on the ideal game environment and
then go ahead for implementation.
REFERENCES
1. Online Banking Statistics, (2012), Pew
Research Center. Available at http://
www. s t at i s t i c br ai n. c om/onl i ne-
banking-statistic/.
2. Beird, M. (2012), 2012 Retail Banking
Satisfaction Study. Available at http://
www. j dpower. com/content/press-
release/Hmio580/2012-retail-banking-
satisfaction-study.htm.
3. 2012 Canadian Retail Banking Customer
Satisfaction Study Results (2012). Report
Avai l abl e ht t p: //www. j dpower .
com/content/study/3oxDBvl/2012-
canadi an-retai l -banki ng-customer-
satisfaction-study-results.htm.
4. Kaplan, C (2011). ABA Survey: Popularity
of Online Banking Explodes. Survey
Available at http://www.aba.com/
Press/Pages/090811ConsumerPreferen
cesSurvey.aspx.
5. Meloni, W., and Gruener, W., (2012)
Ma r ke t Upda t e , Cons ume r a nd
Enterprise Market Trends. Available
at ht t p: //gami ngbusi nessrevi ew.
com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/
Gamifcation-in-2012-M2R3.pdf.
55
VOL 11 NO 3
2013
Infosys Labs Briefings
Enterprise Gamification
Architecture Strategy
By Sudhanshu Hate
2
013 and beyond, Gamifcation is going to
be one of the marque initiative for lot of
enterprises. Unlike many other initiatives,
Gamification is a relatively sensitive area
and to successfully incubate and reap fruits
from gamification, enterprises will need to
effectively synergies all the three fronts of
people, processes and technology.
For the success of any Gamification
Initiative, on people dimension, soft aspects such
as individual or groups motivational drivers,
their age and gender profles, individual/group
psychology, culture of the organization are
important to understand.
With respect to processes, having right
processes and governance mechanisms to
deal with, execute and sustain the initiative
is important.
Technology is the third and important
wheel of this. Amongst the three, understandably
usually lot of emphasis is put on to the technology
and still enterprises are not able to get it right
due to several reasons, some of them being are,
Trying to get it working quickly to
demonstrate the concept
Approaching Gamifcation as a point
solution as against Gamifcation as an
enterprise solution
Not able to make a judicious choice
between build or buy or using a hybrid
approach
Understandably in the current era of stretched
bottom-line, it is not practical to have strategic
vision into the areas which are not able to clearly
demonstrate ROI (Return on Investment) from
day one. Also hardly anybody can fnd fault
with the approach of taking baby steps and see if
a particular thing works out for the good of all.
In the world of establishing Gamifcation
technology and architecture, while dealing with
the above, it is important to look slightly beyond
short term. Sooner or later Gamifcation is going
to touch large set of Enterprise applications in
Gamification should have a defined long term
strategy for adoption across enterprise portfolios
56
HR, Sales and Marketing, Finance, Customer
Support, and so on.
Whi l e Enterpri ses must start wi th
internal tactical pilots, they should have a
long term strategy to avoid duplication of
effort across enterprise applications. Custom
building Gamification functionality as part
of each application, proj ect, will become
duplication of code and effort over a long run.
Enterprises looking to adopt Gamification
should have a defined long term strategy
t o adopt i t across ent erpri se port f ol i o.
Gamification as a horizontal service offering
can become very useful to deliver Gamification
functionality in the enterprise. To realize
this vision, enterprises can either buy Out of
the box (OoB) Gamification product or use a
bespoke approach.
PRODUCT CENTRIC APPROACH
A product centric approach involves buying a
product stack from a leading product vendor.
In this approach, enterprise look at evaluating
various product vendors to see which one is the
closest to the current enterprise requirements.
Some of the key parameters they should look at
while evaluating these products are,
Vendor stability: Ability of a vendor
to provide ongoing support over next
ten years
People skills: Availability and cost of
hiring, retaining skilled people in the
vendor product area
Functionality match: Closeness of
alignment with business requirements
User experience: Do they provide User
experience that will have VOW effect for
the users? Immersive experience across
various devices, form factors
Configurability: Abi l i ty to easi l y
confgure various business rules to cater
to the application specifc requirements
Integration: Integration with other
products in the enterprise. Key aspects
include Authentication, Authorization,
data exchange, etc. Dependi ng on
the requirements, Ability to provide
integrated login with other auth. such as
Facebook, LinkedIn, MSN, etc. providers
can become critical.
There are certain pros and cons of going with
a product specifc vendor offering as against
building it be-spoke.
Pros
Not re-inventing the wheel. Will get
the necessary functionality OoB. Some
vendors have good matured offering.
Gamification
Technology
Process People
Figure 1: Gamification Influencers
Source: Infosys Research
57
Reduces implementation cycle time and
improves time to market
Cons
First and foremost, evaluating a vendor
agai nst every changi ng enterpri se
requirements can become an uphill
task. Often in a niche space like this,
requirements are diffcult to articulate
and hence mapping it to product vendor
becomes a challenge. Most often the
requirements are also moving target and
in such a case sticking with a selected
product vendor can become ti ed
relationship over a long run.
Most of the vendors in this space are
of small size. Smallness of vendor has
threat from longevity perspective as they
can be subjected to acquisition in turn
leading to change in product roadmap
Reliance on product vendor also brings
a baggage of proprietary technology,
long term tech. support and negotiating
one off contracts
Beyond a point, products are diffcult
to extend and underlying architecture
cannot be changed in a dynamic evolving
technology architecture space unless the
product vendor does it diligently. If the
product vendor does it, technology/
version refresh becomes a huge challenge
Increases total cost from l i censes,
and future support perspective
Chal l enges of i nt egr at i on wi t h
other enterprise wide technologies,
applications
Exhaustive Evaluation of the vendor
offering and then getting stuck with it
for rest of the life
It is important to look at some of the leading
Gamifcation product vendors and what they
have on offer. Gamifcation being new space,
there are a few vendors who are providing
products in this space. Some of the leading
amongst them are available in Appendix 1.
CUSTOM BUILDING APPROACH
While some of the vendor offerings in Table 1
are good to start with, custom building
Gamification functionality as part of each
enterprise application, project, can become
duplication of effort and maintenance overhead
in the long run. Duplication of functionality/
effort with respect to each application can
happen on the following fronts,
Creating data model to capture and store
various logical entities such as badges,
levels, point scoring activities, etc.
Infrastructure for defining rules e.g.
includes point scoring rules, milestones
for rewarding badges, etc.
Infrastructure to code in the context of
the application getting user points,
getting user levels, tracking and scoring
user activities, etc.
User components that can ft in to the
application e.g. displaying user specifc
badges, displaying leaderboards, etc.
Standard application specifc reports e.g.
display user challenges, display user
activities, etc.
58
In purview of this, Gamifcation as a horizontal
centralized service offering can become very
useful to deliver Gamification functionality
across enterprise at significantly lower cost
and effort.
GAMIFICATION PLATFORM-AS-A-
SERVICE
To avoid the pitfalls of buying Out of the box
products and taking an application centered
approach, enterprise can look at approaching
Table 1: Gamification Vendor Analysis Source: Infosys Research
Vendor Gamifcation areas Offerings Details
Badgeville
www.badgeville.com
User Engagement, user
behavior
User behavior analytics
Reputation program
Customer retention
Customer loyalty
Time spent on site
Employee Productivity/
Training
SaaS platform
Dynamic Game Engine
Widget Studio
Social Context
Connectors
Mobile SDKs
Bigdoor
www.bigdoor.com
user loyalty and
engagement
gamifed reward programs
Gamifcation + rewards
Social Integration
(Facebook auth.)
Dashboard Analytics
Mobile Gamifcation
Provides framework for
pre-designed loyalty
plugin, engagement
badges, and real,
tangible rewards. Use
it for rewarding users
for engaging with site
and sharing content
Bunchball
www.bunchball.com
User Engagement
Increase program
engagement
Loyalty and Commerce
promote market or sell
products
Customer retention
Infuence buyer behavior
Employee Motivation
Learning initiatives
has a Nitro platform -
cloud based service for
gamifying Facebook,
Twitter, etc.
Fanplayr
www.fanplayr.com
Customer loyalty, Sales,
Social marketing
Spinner Game - multi
variable game play
Mystery Game - scratch
and win game card,
chance based
Card Flip Game-
web, email, social
marketing campaigns
through coupons
generation
Gigya
www.gigya.com
Web site integration with
Social channels
Leverages Social identify
Social plug-ins
Analytics Dashboards
not a pure play
Gamifcation vendor
Not much for mobility
channels
Scvnger platform
www.scvngr.com
location based mobile
gaming platform, treks
rewards, badges based played from a custom
app on Android or
iPhone or through SMS
59
Mobile
Request
Response
(Html, JSON)
Gamification
Platform
Services
(REST
Services)
Infosys Enterprise
Gamification
Accelerator
Web
Smart/Thick
Client
Consumer app.
Figure 1: Gamification Platform as a Service
Source: Infosys Research
Gamification as a centralized service that
can be delivered across enterprise business
functions/departments, applications as a
service (precisely platform as a service
PaaS). While doing this, if really required,
i t can l everage one or t he ot her above
ment i oned product of f eri ngs. Pl at f orm
based appr oach can al so hel p del i ver
Gami f i cat i on f unct i onal i t y t o mul t i pl e
distributed geographies, applications, and
form factors.
Platform View
The high level view of the platform can be
depicted as follows,
How the platform thing works?
Consumer appl i cat i on sends a request
to the platform with certain parameters
Consumi ngAppl i cat i onI d, User I d and
ActivityCode.
e.g.
Give me all the badges earned by the user
Give me leaderboard for this application
The platform returns response to the consuming
app. for the request.
Platform Characteristics
Some of the salient characteristics of this
platform are,
The platform is multi tenant and can
support multiple application instances.
This can help rolling up points for a
user from one or more applications to
organization level giving an integrated
view
The functionality is exposed as REST
Services and can be consumed by any
thick, thin, mobile client application
The platform allows defning rules for
scoring points, depicting levels, depicting
leaderboard through confguration.
The platform allows confguring badges,
images for the badges.
The pl at f orm based on t he rul es
confgured for the application, calculates
and assigns point to the user
The platform can provide repository of
metaphors which can be used in specifc
application context
Tr ans l at i on engi ne t o t r ans l at e
appl i cat i on cont ext i nt o speci f i c
metaphor as needed by the application
Platform Functionality
The platform can provide the following
functionality,
Ability to score activity (e.g. posting
a comment, liking an item, buying
a product) based on pre-configured
defned rules
60
Defne rules for rewarding badges, levels
Get points earned by a user
Get badges earned by a user
Display User Levels
Display User Activities
Display Leaderboards
Display User Profles
Ability to apply a metaphor to the
application
Metaphor translation engine
Score calculation engine
Reuse Argument
Having a broader enterprise vision can help
reduce duplication of effort and improve re-use
along the following fronts
UI components
Services
Business logic components
Rules defnition
Information model - DB Schema/design
Report Templates
Metaphor repository
GAMIFICATION COMPONENT MAP
The Gamification Component Map can be
depicted using the following Table 2, except
the items mentioned in Social column, all the
other components can be consi dered as
part of Gamification Platform as a Service.
The components mentioned in Social should be
available as part of the consuming application
or should be brought in as plug-ins
DISCUSSION
Sooner than later, Gamification is going to
be important and integral part of enterprise
business and architecture strategy. Currently,
given the space is nascent, evolving fast,
Social Gamifcation core Rules DB Design/Entities BI/Reporting
Social Login
(Integrated
with
Facebook,
Linked in,
Twitter, etc.)
Share bar plugin
(broadcasting)
User Profle User Master
User Points
Graph (daily,
weekly, monthly)
Get User
info.
Rating plugin User Badge Activity Score Activity Type Master
(Comments, Ratings.
Like, etc.)
Challenges Vs
Activities Stairs
Get Contacts
Info (email
contacts)
Review
comments
Leaderboard
Rewarding
badge
User Activity Leader Boards
Follow bar Activity Scorer
Badge
Calculation rule
Activity Feed Score Calculator
Number of
users to display
in leaderboard
Points Master
Chat User Levels
Rewarding
mechanism
Badge Master
Reactions -
Voting, Poll, Like
Challenges User Level Challenges Master
Invite Friends
Challenges
Design Rule
Challenges items
Table 2: Gamification Component Map Source: Infosys Research
61
motion recognition and gamification.
In Proceedings of the 5th International
Conference on PErvasive Technologies
Related to Assistive Environments
(PETRA '12). ACM, New York, NY, USA,
Article 9, 5 pages.
3. Apari ci o, A. , Gut i rrez Vel a, F. ,
Gonzlez Snchez, J., and Isla Montes,
J. (2012), Analysis and application of
gamification. In Proceedings of the 13th
International Conference on Interaccin
Persona-Ordenador (INTERACCION
'12). ACM, New York, NY, USA, Article
17, 2 pages.
4. Deterding, S., Sicart, M., Nacke, L.,
O' Hara, K. , and Dixon, D. , (2011).
Gami f i cat i on. Usi ng game- desi gn
elements in non-gaming contexts. In
CHI '11 Extended Abstracts on Human
Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA
'11). ACM, New York, NY, USA, pp.
2425-2428.
and technology choices are far and a few.
It is important that enterprises have right
technology and architectural strategy in place
to seamlessly absorb increasing footprint/
penetration of Gamifcation in the enterprise.
Planning Gamification as a platform based
services that can cater to multiple business
functions, applications and form factors will
help reduce duplication of effort, improve
scalability, extensibility and increase time to
market signifcantly.
REFERENCES
1. Huotari K. and Hamari , J. (2012),
Def i ni ng gami f i cat i on: a servi ce
marketing perspective. In Proceeding
of the 16th International Academic
MindTrek Conference (MindTrek '12).
ACM, New York, NY, USA, pp. 17-22.
2. Korn, O. , Schmidt, A. and Hrz. ,
T. , ( 2012) . Assi st i ve syst ems i n
production environments: exploring
62
VOL 11 NO 3
2013
Infosys Labs Briefings
Campaigns for fostering
Innovation A Case Study
By Venkatakrishnan Balasubramanian and Rajaram Venkataraman
W
hile most organizations are designed
for high performance in execution, they
do not focus as much on harnessing employee
potential on innovation. In the emerging
business scenario, the need for differentiation
has become paramount due to competitive
intensity and the need for sustained growth.
Hence, in order to achieve sustained profitable
growth, it is not enough if only a few parts of
an organization like R & D and Marketing are
innovating. The knowledge, capability and
behavior to continually produce incremental
and disruptive innovations are required
to be embedded at all levels for sustained
excellence. This calls for establishing and
nurturing a culture of innovation. One of the
key elements essential for innovation culture
to flourish is the employee engagement [1].
Effective engagement of employees will
lead to new ideas getting developed to cater
to business challenges. This will result in
business growth and delivery of higher value
to clients. So how can enterprises develop
and foster innovation culture by effectively
engaging the employees.
To foster innovation, enterprises set up
idea management system to be a gateway for
submission of ideas. These idea management
systems initially generated lot of excitement,
but over time, the employees lost enthusiasm
to contribute in large numbers due to lack
of active engagement. It was also observed
that these passive ideation approaches did
not always align well with the organizations
business strategies. A need was felt therefore
to have a process that channelizes the ideation
potential of employees towards achieving
enterprises objectives.
Gamification is a powerful concept
that improves engagement with employees
and inspires employees to contribute on
innovation. According to Kevin Werbach,
an Associate Professor at Wharton and an
expert on gamification refers gamification as
Gamification is a powerful concept that
improves engagement with employees and
inspires employees to contribute on innovation
63
a valuable tool in the management arsenal
[2]. This new gamification led innovation
management is seen to contribute to building
the innovation culture among the employees
of the organization.
HOW GAMIFICATION INFLUENCES THE
INNOVATION CULTURE?
Employees usually have inherent desire to
contribute to innovation. But they are often
constrained by the excessive focus on day to
day operations. There is no motivation to go
the extra mile to address the innovation desire.
Another challenge is that the employees tend
to work in silos, limiting the focus to their
project work. Such behavioral tendencies
inhibit innovation and it is important for
enterprises to design innovation initiatives
that address these issues. A major benefit
of gamification is that it can provide the
necessary trigger for the behavioral change
required in the employees.
Rewards and recogni ti on schemes
also play an important role in shaping the
innovation culture among employees. In most
of the enterprises, the incentives are strongly
aligned to the core operational work and
there is not much importance to innovation
efforts. Gamification could address this issue
through recognitions like top innovators,
winning ideas in contests, opportunity to
incubate their ideas, and tangible rewards
as well.
The scope of this paper is to discuss the
objectives of an innovation campaign initiative
at the new growth opportunities unit of a large
technology company and the gamification
process and elements that supported the
initiative. A summary of the key objectives
of the initiative that led to the setting up of a
gamifed system were:
1. Develop a culture of innovation of
among employees of the unit through
continuous education, evaluation and
mentoring process.
2. Showcase innovations of the unit and
inspire the employees to innovate.
3. Provide opportunities for the employees
to generate and incubate ideas.
4. Evangelize the various offering of the
unit and through the initiative build a
rich future roadmap for the offerings.
INNOVATION ENABLEMENT VIA
IDEATION CONTESTS
Ideation contest was chosen as the key aesthetics
of the gamifed system [3]. Contests provide the
much needed impetus required for employees to
participate in new initiatives. The time pressure
of a contest drives employees to free up their
time from their regular schedules and to share
ideas. The rewards and recognition element of
contests provides the necessary inspiration for
high quality ideas from the employees.
Several cri ti ci zers of gami fi cati on
point to the fact that, the gamification makes
participants to indulge in a rat race and
thereby de-motivate lot of players. But in the
specific case of this initiative, there is a need
for quality ideas to build a future roadmap for
the products. Contests have been observed to
be very effective in such scenarios. Contests
make sure that only high quality and relevant
ideas with good market potential go through.
Participants, whose ideas sail through the
contest review process, get winners badge.
Such contest campaigns facilitate regular,
effective and sustainable engagement with the
employees.
64
Typically gamified environments like
ideation contests include three characteristics:
a goal that is to be met by the learner, obstacles
that create challenge and difficulty for the
learner and collaboration or competition,
which can include competition against self
[4]. The game design for this initiative was
modeled based on the MDA framework as
given below [3]:
Aesthetics
Ideation contests develop innovative
i deas and hel p showcase creati ve
skills.
Inventiveness develop ideas that
facilitate a future roadmap for the
existing products.
Challenges develop ideas to address
specifc challenges of a product.
Incubati on pri ze opportuni ty to
incubate winning ideas.
Employees are the players and relate to
the Achievers type in Bartle Player Types
model [5].
Dynamics
Time bound ideation stages ideas
are filtered as it evolves over multiple
st ages. Mul t i pl e st ages al l ow f or
progression of ideas.
Campai gns Cont i nuous st ream
of campaigns, with each campaign
focusing on a gathering of features
and e nhanc e me nt s f or e xi s t i ng
products and new ideas for newer
products.
Develop your understanding of the
product For hi gh qual i ty i deas,
it is important for the participants to
understand the product and its domain
very well.
Crowd review of ideas excitement to
participate and the recognition to be top
rated by your peers.
Campai gn wi nners and runners
Rewards for winning ideas from each
campaign. Celebration of success through
organization wide events every month.
Sponsorshi p- Present at i on t o t op
executi ves to wi n i dea i ncubati on
sponsorship.
Mechanics
Games like Quiz, Walk the talk provide
the challenging environment, promote
collaboration, facilitate competition,
e mbe d f un pa r t , a nd i mpr ove
understanding of the products for which
ideas are sought.
Quiz scores are an indication of how well
a participant has understood the product.
The events like Brand the product, Walk
the talk build excitement to participate
in the contest.
Sample ideas presented during the
campaign helps to relate to the theme
guiding enthusiasts in their participation.
Onl i ne chat sessi ons wi th subj ect
matter experts to interact and develop
knowledge on the product.
65
Points like gemstones and pebbles allow
for leaderboards.
Pebbles for early bird submissions,
participation in events like quiz, brand
the product, walk the talk.
Gemstones for submission of ideas,
more gemstones as ideas go through
the stages.
Likes and Comments on ideas facilitate
crowd review of ideas leading to top
rated idea boards.
Templates for idea submission and
detailed business case development
template facilitate the idea development
as it moves through stages.
Tools to review and evaluate ideas
facilitate fltering and selection of ideas
as it moves through various stages.
Recognition through e-Certifcates for
participation, rewards for ideas moving
through various stages.
LEARNINGS
I nnovat i on Management t eam r ol l ed
out campai gns t o access t he i mpact of
gami f i cat i on on t he empl oyees. I t was
observed t hat t he week l ong campai gn
was able to effectively engage 25% of the
employees. The campaign generated around
125 relevant and high quality ideas which
translated into products future roadmap.
19 of the 125 ideas were presented to senior
leadership. 7 ideas are being taken up for
incubation at the time of writing of this
article. Each of the high impact idea authors
was allocated a mentor who helped in idea
refinement and enhancement. The success of
the first campaign excited the leadership to
sponsor more such campaigns.
Key Findings
Engagement Index
Initiative Engagement Index
Non Contest Based Initiatives 5%
1st Contest based Campaign 25 %
2nd Contest based Campaign 40%
Challenges
in managing
ideation
initiatives
How the adopted MDA
model solved the challenges
for the target unit?
Sustaining the
ideation initiative
is a challenge
Continuous innovation
campaigns with each
campaign focused on an
ideation contest around a
product/platform of the unit.
Issues in
aligning the
ideas to the
business
strategies/focus
areas of the
company
Theme for each campaign
is based on developing a
future roadmap of a product/
platform.
Game mechanics like online
quiz, events like walk the
talk, chat sessions with
SMEs drive the theme of the
campaign.
Excessive
focus on day
to day project
work hampers
contribution to
innovation
Contest as the primary
aesthetic pulls participation.
Time bound stages allow
for progression of ideas
and moderates the level of
engagement required from
the employees.
Participation as teams helps
in the creative effort required
and in evolving the idea over
various stages.
Table 1: Ideation Initiative Challenges
Source: Infosys Research
Table 2: Engagement Index
Source: Infosys Research
66
Contribution Index
Count of ideas to employee base ratio grew
fve times.
Idea Quality Index
Percentage of ideas selected for elaboration/
incubation grew seven times.
Key Learnings
Campaigns are not just about catchy
emails. It has to be very engaging and
interactive. Experts and sponsors of the
initiative have an important role to play.
Campaigns must enable the 3 key
el ements of success of i nnovati on
initiatives domain knowledge, creative
thinking, and intrinsic motivation [6].
More time upfront for learning the
context and content helps in improving
the quality of ideas.
Multiple channels should be available
both online and those which are physical.
CONCLUSION
Wel l i nsti tuti onal i zed and orchestrated
Innovation Campaigns have proven to be very
effective in improving the quality and quantity
of ideas and help realize better value from
the ideation process. Integrating gamifcation
in these engagements has helped improve
participation levels as well as idea quality
improvement. While gamifcation may at the
outset looks like having a participation bias
towards young people, it has proven to be neutral
to every individual young or old in this unit.
Gamifcation creates a competitive environment
and the rewards associated with it help raise
the innovation bar and bring out the best in
individuals. It can be observed that innovation
campaign integrated with gamifcation features
allowed for a better level of engagement with the
employees. The continuous contest campaigns
can help build sustainable innovation culture
in organization and help shape the future of
product development.
REFERENCES
1. Andrew, J. and Sirkin, H., (2008), Global
Business and Organization Excellence,
Wiley Interscience.
2. Werbach, K., (2011), Lets play a game,
Wharton Magazine Blog Posts.
3. Hunicke, R., LeBlanc, M. and Zubek, R.,
(2004), MDA: A formal approach to game
design and game research.
4. Smith-Robbins, S., (2011), This Game
Sucks: How to Improve the Gamifcation
of Education. EDUCAUSE review, 46(1),
pp. 58--59.
5. Bart l e, R. , ( 1996) , Heart s, Cl ubs,
Diamonds, Spades: Players Who Suit
MUDs. Journal of MUD Research.
6. Amabile, T., (1988), A model of creativity
and innovation in organizations. In
B. M.Stew & L. L. Cummings (Eds.),
Research in organizational behavior,
pp. 123-167.
67
THE LAST WORD
Building Engaged
Enterprises of Tomorrow
A
recent survey points to the fact the
disengagement is having an adverse
impact on nations GDP. Individuals young
and old today are struggling to stay on course.
They lack motivation to carry out routine
things like regularly going for a walk, gym
or consume medicine on time. The issue
gets more pronounced in enterprise setup.
Enterprises are today caught in the slowdown
storm with recovery not in sight. This prolonged
slowdown, sinking economies, lack of jobs has
impacted innovation, productivity and most
importantly enterprise growth. The motivation
is at all-time low. Enterprises are prompted to
listen to stakeholder voice more closely than
ever before.
Ever y ent er pr i s e t oday i s bus y
discovering itself and attempting to become
more agile to shield itself from external forces.
Several conventional way of doing things
are undergoing transformations, Innovation
from top of the pyramid to Democratization
of I nnovat i on, l earni ng i n cl ass room
buildings to learning over the wire, creation to
co-creation, buying to intelligent or informed
buying and many more. At the core of all
of these transformations, nucleus of action
has shifted from center to the complete
c i r c umf e r e n c e , wh i c h me a n s mo r e
de-centralization, or distributed empowerment.
However distributed empowerment also comes
with accountability and responsibility which
is diffcult to establish as the scale increases.
In this age of distributed accountability and
stretched engagement quotient, solutions are
sought to deal with the scale and quality.
Game industry over several years has
gained knack of keeping people hooked and
engaged. However gamifcation by defnition
deals with adding game design elements to
non-game cont ext s. Some of t he i ni t i al
applications of game design concepts in
non-game scenarios was done by credit card
industry in form of loyalty points and airline
industry as frequent fyer programs. Success and
learnings from these are now being applied in
In todays testing time Gamification is providing
necessary impetus to enterprises for achieving
engagement with all stakeholders, opines our
consulting editor Sudhanshu Hate
68
more serious context of enterprises to improve
user behavior. Most frequent usage is seen in
innovation management, learning, health care
systems, compliance systems, customer facing
websites, TV shows, brand building. As points,
badges, leaderboards, levels kind of mechanics
are signifcantly helping to establish the initial
desired engagement. After a certain period,
the systems start facing engagement syndrome-
Gamifed systems start facing challenges where,
users tends to start posing questions like
How can I have more fun while doing
these things?
What do I do with these accumulated
points?
I accumulate points with these various
systems, hard to track?
I need a way to carry my good work from
other places
My inbox gets fooded with useless offers,
discount coupons that I hardly care
As Gamification becomes more and more
pervasive and starts to become integral part of
every user interaction. It seeks transformation
from isolated, fragmented application of
gamifcation to more inclusive and integrated
gamifed systems.
This will help to establish user identity
across systems. It will help move from siloed
application specific badges, leaderboards to
more integrated user reputation, and user profle
that helps users seamlessly navigate across
systems to beneft from his or her established
reputation.
Poi nt s and Le ade r boar ds f r om
being a magnet to drive user participation,
virtual currency will become the de-facto
standard that users can redeem into meaningful,
worthwhile tangible goods and services.
Instead of providing mass generic
recommendations, users social and enterprise
data footprint, data streams will need to be
combined to infuence user behavior. This will
help better engage with individual on things
that matter them most.
While doing all this user experience
needs to conti nuousl y shoot for hi gher
benchmarks. The core system experience
needs to be enriched using modern interactive
mechanisms such as touch, gestures, speech and
augmented reality with 3D ultra high defnition
visuals.
It needs to be noted that, freshness of
any gamification technique fizzles out with
time. Based on the feedback game designers
have to constantly invent newer ways to keep
the participants motivated and glued to the
system. Only then in real term the user will
become partner.
Gamification is expected to provide
sustainable long term engagement to help
organization jump the engagement syndrome.
Gamified enterprises will be able to reap
benefts from enhanced user motivation, and the
investments made in IT over the years would
start yielding results on account of a more
engaged user base.
About our Consulting Editor
Sudhanshu Hate is a Senior Technology Architect
at Infosys Limited, with 15+ years of industry
experience. His current research focus is centered
around adoption of Gamification in enterprise
context. Sudhanshu has several papers to his
credit in reputed forums and is co-author of books
on ASP.NET 4 Social Networking and .NET
4 for Enterprise Architects and Developers. He
is a regular speaker in forums such as Microsoft
TechEd, Vi rt ual TechDays, and Sof t ware
Engineering Conference.
69
Index
Affordable Care Act also ACA 41
Aesthetics 11,25, 52-53,63-64
Bill of Materials (BOM) 36
Calls per Hour also CPH 9, 10
Cashfow
Net 32
Cumulative 32
Discounted 32
Centers for Disease Control also CDC 41
Consumer Mortgages 49
Customer
Engagement 7
Retention 15
e-Learning 19
Enterprise Resource Planning also ERP 30-39
First Call Resolution also FCR 9
Framework 9, 12, 16, 27, 30, 32, 34
Aesthetic 25
Gaming 27
Mechanics 25
Technology 25
MDA 64
Game Mechanics 6, 8, 9, 11-13, 16, 23-27, 40-41,
50, 65
Generation
X 14-15
Y 14-15, 20
HealthCare Wellness Programs 40-44
Heuristic Evaluation for Playability also HEP
11, 13
Health Insurance Portability and Accountability
Act also HIPPA 40
Human Computer Interaction also HCI 11
Innovation Culture 62-68
Ideation Contests 63
Millennial 14-15
Social collaboration 15
Software Development 3, 21-28, 32
Management 35, 39, 49, 63, 68
Asset 37
Cash Flow 51
Change 32-33, 36-38
Idea 62-63
Innovation 65
Knowledge 21-24, 26-27, 29
Money 6-7
Personal Finance 49, 51
Program 38
Risk 35
Organization Change also (OCM) 38
Platform 5, 7, 15, 17, 23, 4, 55, 59 -63,65,71
Banking
Development 27
Gamifcation 58-59
Mobile 45
Nitro 58
Platform As A Service also PaaS 59
Scvnger 58
Social 43
Software As A Service also SaaS 58
Program Management Offce also PMO) 33-36
Return on Investment also RoI 31, 51
REST Services 59
Subject Matter Expert also SME 31
User Experience also UX 8, 56
Gamifcation Platform
BUSINESS INNOVATION through TECHNOLOGY
Editorial Office: Infosys Labs Briefings, B-19, Infosys Ltd.
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Infosys Limited, 2013
Infosys acknowledges the proprietary rights of the trademarks and product names of the other companies
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of, any of the information or in the transmission thereof, or for any damages arising therefrom. Opinions and
forecasts constitute our judgment at the time of release and are subject to change without notice. This document
does not contain information provided to us in confdence by our clients.
Guest Editor
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NOTES
ABHRA DUTTA is a Principal Consultant with the Manufacturing Vertical of the
Consulting and System Integrations group at Infosys Limited. He can be reached at
abhra_dutta@infosys.com.
AMARDEEP SINGH RISHI is a Technology Lead at Product Engineering Group,
Infosys Limited. He can be contacted at Amardeep_Rishi@infosys.com.
ANIL RADHAKRISHNAN is a Senior Associate Consultant with the Financial Services and
Insurance unit of Infosys Limited. He can be reached at anil_radhakrishnan@infosys.com
ANUJ JAIN is a Senior Project Manager working with ADM Practice of Infosys Limited.
He can be contacted at anuj_jain02@infosys.com.
ARSHAD KARIM is a Project Manager with Financial Services and Insurance Practice of
Infosys. He can be reached at Arshad_K@Infosys.com.
DEEPAK MANDOT is a Delivery Manager with the Manufacturing Vertical of the
Consulting and System Integrations group at Infosys Limited. He can be contacted at
deepak_mandot@infosys.com.
ITIKA VYAS is a Consultant working with Infosys Limited. She can be reached at
Itika_Vyas@infosys.com.
NEELI BASANTH KUMAR is a Research Analyst with Infosys Labs, the research arm of
Infosys Limited. He can be contacted at Neeli_kumar@infosys.com
PRANESHKUMAR WAHIL is a Senior Consultant with Infosys Process and Domain
Consulting services. He can be contacted at Praneshkumar_Wahil@infosys.com.
RAJARAM VENKATARAMAN is a Principal Research Analyst with Center of Innovation for
Tomorrows Enterprise, Infosys Labs. He can be reached at Rajaram_Venkataraman@infosys.com
SAM FELIX PRADEEP KUMAR is a Lead Consultant with Consumer Banking Practice
at Infosys Ltd. He can be contacted at samfelix_k@infosys.com.
SARIKA ANGADI is Client Solution Manager with Infosys, Business Platform group.
She can be reached at sarika_angadi@infosys.com.
SHEETAL NAWALKAR is a Consultant working with Infosys Limited. She can be
contacted at Sheetal_Nawalkar@infosys.com.
SUDHANSHU HATE is a Senior Technology Architect at Infosys Limited. He can be
reached at Sudhanshu_hate@infosys.com.
SUMIT GOYAL is a Group Project Manager at the Product Engineering Group, Infosys
Limited. He can be contacted at sumitgoyal@infosys.com.
TEJASVI ADDAGADA is a Senior Associate Consultant with Consumer Banking Practice
at Infosys Limited. He can be reached at Tejasvi_Addagada@infosys.com.
VENKATAKRISHNAN BALASUBRAMANIAN is a Research Analyst with Center
of Innovation for Tomorrows Enterprise, Infosys Labs. He can be contacted at
Venkatakrishnan_B@infosys.com.
In the modern era of industries, the first wave of revolution embraced
IT powered process automation. It led to the establishment of core IT
infrastructure foundation. The next wave of transformation was innovated
through business process re-engineering that led to the greater business
value extraction from the processes and systems of the enterprise. While
technology and business processes continue to evolve with the modern
innovations, the next wave of transformation is beginning to emerge. This
wave is focused on the people in contrast to the previous waves that
were largely focused on process and technology strategies. The people
engagement as a business strategy will manifest in all forms of enterprise
eco-system customers, employees, partners and even the society at large.
Gamification is one of the emerging trends that bring the promise of highly
effective people engagement. analysts estimate that by 2014, 7 out of
10 large enterprises will have one or more Gamified applications in the
environment and the overall Gamification market is likely to grow to a
staggering size of $3+ Billions this is serious business!
fundamentally, Gamification is a technique of influencing the motivation,
which has over the years engaged people to solve complex problems,
perform certain actions, and have fun, on the way to building positive
organizational energy. What it also does incredibly well is induce voluntary
change in behavior, mindset or attitude in the desired direction; in other
words, it enables transformation.
There are endless possibilities for what organizations could do with this.
for instance, they could employ Gamification to generate customer loyalty
and advocacy, drive co-creation or improve brand penetration. Within
their four walls, they can use Gamification to break the productivity ceiling
or raise compliance benchmarks or employee retention.
In this first ever issue fully dedicated to Gamification, we bring forward a
set of papers that explore the relevance of the Gamification across various
industry verticals like healthcare, retail and financial services. This issue
intends to illustrate the possibilities and inspire the imagination of the
global business leaders. This is just a beginning and we hope this journey
of inspired innovation continues.
Happy Gamifying,
Guest Editor
Rakesh Kumar mishra
Authors featured in this issue
Infosys Labs Briefings
Advisory Board
Anindya Sircar PhD
Associate Vice President &
Head - IP Cell
Gaurav Rastogi
Vice President,
Strategic Global Sourcing
Raj Joshi
Managing Partner
Consulting & Systems Integration
Ranganath M
Vice President &
Chief Risk Officer
Simon Towers PhD
Associate Vice President and
Head - Center for Innovation for
Tommorows Enterprise,
Infosys Labs
Subu Goparaju
Senior Vice President &
Head - Infosys Labs
Gamifcation: Rediscover
the Power of Engagement
For information on obtaining additional copies, reprinting or translating articles, and all other correspondence,
please contact:
Email: InfosyslabsBriefngs@infosys.com
Infosys Limited, 2013
Infosys acknowledges the proprietary rights of the trademarks and product names of the other
companies mentioned in this issue of Infosys Labs Briefngs. The information provided in this
document is intended for the sole use of the recipient and for educational purposes only. Infosys
makes no express or implied warranties relating to the information contained in this document or to
any derived results obtained by the recipient from the use of the information in the document. Infosys
further does not guarantee the sequence, timeliness, accuracy or completeness of the information and
will not be liable in any way to the recipient for any delays, inaccuracies, errors in, or omissions of,
any of the information or in the transmission thereof, or for any damages arising there from. Opinions
and forecasts constitute our judgment at the time of release and are subject to change without notice.
This document does not contain information provided to us in confdence by our clients.
VOL 11 NO 3
2013
GamIfIcaTION
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Subu Goparaju
Senior Vice President
and Head of Infosys Labs
At Infosys Labs, we constantly look for opportunities to leverage
technology while creating and implementing innovative business
solutions for our clients. As part of this quest, we develop engineer-
ing methodologies that help Infosys implement these solutions right,
frst time and every time.
Infosys Labs Briefings