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The business applications for gamification are no longer just a matter for academic discussion. It’s literally time for CIOs to get into the game.

Gamification is about taking the essence of games—fun, play, and passion—and applying it to real world, non-game situations. In a business setting, that means designing solutions using gaming principles in everything from back office tasks and training, to sales management and career counseling.

Over the past year or so, gamification has become a central part of almost every enterprise business package. This has made it imperative for CIOs to understand the avenues for generating value from gamification techniques throughout the organization. It’s not just about making work fun or even increasing engagement with employees and customers. The real value comes from using gamification to understand, measure, and analyze behaviors and then creating incentives to adjust behaviors to achieve desired business outcomes.

Early efforts have focused on using gamification with sales teams to understand not only how to improve the sales pitch, but also how to redesign products to increase sales. And these techniques show great promise for helping organizations sustain culture changes and organizational transformations.

Doug Palmer, a principal with Deloitte Consulting LLP, explains why gamification should be a priority on the CIO’s agenda.