The thinking is simple: the more interesting it is, the more likely people are to engage. So how can business analytics benefit from gamification’s immersive impact? And is it a game that businesses would find worth playing?
Gamified BI is about competing on analytics
Ovum believes gamification has potential to improve business decision-making. The search for and discovery of BI and analytic insights has a “game-like” feel to it. Many BI systems resemble a gamified system that seeks to engage business users and change organizational behaviors to improve business performance and outcomes. Gamified functions also typically generate a lot of data for analysis.
The key is providing users with an immersive data experience that drives them to improve on that information through exploration and feedback. Technically, this is enabled by the ability to access, navigate, and manipulate large data sets quickly and easily.
BI can benefit from gamification designs that engage users in collective and continuous querying and analyzing of data to solve a business problem, much like how consumer-focused “gamified” applications such as Foldit work. But with gamification, winning is not as important (or as valuable) as the experience of taking part (or competing). It’s the latter that drives usage and a more immersive BI experience.
Ultimately, gamification can be seen as a way to further operationalize BI by embedding it seamlessly into everyday knowledge work, albeit in a competitively friendly and fun way.