Along with the keynote at today’s JiveWorld2011, gamification is making a big splash. Platform company Bunchball announced that they will be integrating their Nitro platform with Jive in order to bring game mechanics into the leading social business software platform. Jive combines collaboration software, community software, and social applications, and makes for an easy fit for gamification of the enterprise. Bunchball believes that reward, status, achievement, competition, and real-time feedback will provide increased motivation and collaboration for users of the platform.
Nitro for Jive is expected to hit the Jive Apps Market later this year. “To further the adoption of Social Business, companies need to drive participation and engagement across the organization by maximizing the user experience of the platform as quickly as possible,” said Robin Bordoli, vice president of the Jive Apps Market.
Gamification of the enterprise has demonstrated that playing and engaging positively with work can be great for employee motivation. Growing off of the social networking and collaboration tools of Jive, Nitro onboards users with a set of missions to complete, each of which exposes them to a new element of the Jive platform. By earning points, unlocking badges, and leveling up, Bunchball hopes to drive education in the platform, and social elements like high score tables will support friendly competition and collaboration among the user base.
Earlier this year, Bunchball won Salesforce’s AppQuest2011 for Nitro for Salesforce, and with the new announcement with Jive, Bunchball continues to grow from their base in marketing and advertising and push into enterprise software. Although gamification first gained a foothold in marketing, many of the lessons from brand engagement amongst fans and consumers can translate to engagement amongst employees. The market is still young, and although earlier case studies by Spigit and others have proven the concept, more data on ROI and solid metrics are still sparse. But Nitro for Jive is a good step towards bringing an increased degree of enjoyment and feedback into daily work routines, and proving that gamification of the enterprise can increase productivity, collaboration, and autonomy.
cool post.