Over 50% firms may gamify processes: Gartner

In 2008, the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A) had introduced an online simulator game in 2008 to teach financial market trading for its students. Come 2015, simulator games will become a major part of innovations for corporates, says a study.

According to Gartner Inc., a technology research firm, by 2015 more than 50 percent of organizations that manage innovation processes will gamify those processes. Moreover, by 2014, a gamified service for consumer goods marketing and customer retention will become as important as Facebook, eBay or Amazon, and more than 70 percent of global 2,000 organisations will have at least one gamified application.

Gamification of processes are expected to help companies in reaching short term goals and motivate employees to achieve targets.

"Gamification describes the broad trend of employing game mechanics to non-game environments such as innovation, marketing, training, employee performance, health and social change. Enterprise architects, CIOs and IT planners must be aware of, and lead, the business trend of gamification, educate their business counterparts and collaborate in the evaluation of opportunities within the organisation," says Brian Burke, an analyst at Gartner.

Through gamification, firms will be able to achieve higher levels of engagement, change behaviors and stimulate innovation. The opportunities for businesses will include having more engaged customers, crowdsourcing innovation and improving employee performance, The research firm predicts.

Gartner also identifies four principal means of driving engagement in an organisation using gamification including accelerated feedback cycles, clear goals and rules of play, compelling narrative and challenging tasks for employees.

"Where games traditionally model the real world, organizations must now take the opportunity for their real world to emulate games," Burke adds.