Focus on collecting the right data. You cannot tap into big data effectively if you are not fully participating in the digital world. Small businesses utilize a variety of tools such as CRM’s, blogs, and email marketing tools, web forms for lead capture, and ecommerce products. It will be extremely beneficial for a small business to integrate these various tools into a single Big Data application to automate data gathering and make it easier to analyze data across the customer engagement process. Also, do not get distracted by data that is not relevant. Keep your eye on the intelligence that will really help grow your business and avoid getting bogged down in extraneous information.

At the core of this data round-up is customer interaction, primarily driven by websites and social media. Maintaining accurate, functional sites and social media activities and really zero in on what your customers are saying and doing. Engage with your customers in order to gather information directly through social media. Doing this, a company can reel in a lot of valuable information that, once analyzed and reacted to accordingly, can foster significant small business development.

Cloud-based services are a key means for small businesses to work with big data analytics. They are more affordable and thus can monitor and delve into data to help small businesses with limited funds, especially on a more localized level. Once your business rounds up as much relevant information as possible, these web-based tools and services, such as Google Analytics, will allow you to uncover previously unseen patterns and relationships. As analytical tools become more inexpensive, small businesses will be more likely to embrace them and put big data to use.

Small businesses can utilize large data sets to learn very specific, niche information. This includes, for example, social media interaction, gender or timing preferences for spending, and trend buying. Once you’ve looking into your data, as a small business you have the ability to quickly test new ideas based on the insights you have gained. For example, based on what type of content is getting the most comments and clicks, generate specifically tailored offers and future content. This is especially relevant to local information that continuously impacts small businesses. These companies can personalize products and services in the local market through greater insight into customer preferences. Small businesses can mine the massive data available for such specific insights and quickly take action and shape strategy accordingly.

As a small business, do not feel deterred by the immensity of the information that is out there. Use the rapidly expanding pool of available tools to gain relevant insights. By harnessing big data effectively, you will be able to make better decisions and see increased growth and profitability for your business.

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Primarily, you hear about it in relation to engaging consumers, adding game-like aspects to marketing initiatives, online communities, and existing projects, among other things. These game mechanics include activity points, progress monitoring, group and individual missions, and badges. There is another, more serious use for gamifaction that could foster huge growth for a company. Companies can use gamification in the workplace as a part of business process management to measure successful practices and drive outcomes and behaviors. Here are some ways to plan and implement gamification into your strategy.

1. Understand what is going on in the company. Game mechanics are a tool that can provide company leaders with information such as who the top performers are and what makes them successful, as well as what activities are generating the most sales. By tracking various metrics, this management process can help recognize key actions and steps to success.

2. Train employees. A company can create games that will help employees learn and practice the required skills and abilities for their positions. As employees complete learning programs and share knowledge to contribute to the development process, game mechanics like badges and rewards could come into play. For example, the Department of Defense is using games in its core curriculum and continuous learning and development programs to give employees practice in projects that are too expensive, large, or dangerous to execute regularly. Deloitte Leadership Academy also created an interactive learning program using badges, rewards, and checkpoints as well as means of boasting achievements on social media sites. In general, learning can be broken down into steps and missions, facilitating efficient mastery of a product or process. Deep practice is critical to training effectively, and it could be very productive to gamify this process.

3. Engage and motivate employees. According to a Gallup survey, 71% of U.S. workers are “not engaged” or “actively disengaged” in their work. This has negative implications for productivity and thus profitability is likely to suffer. Clearly, something must change. Gamification is one way that employee engagement can be improved. In a gamified workplace, engagement generally entails missions for teams or units involving specific tasks and subsequently, specific rewards that others can see. Also, game mechanics add a sort of positive stress that can be exhilarating and great for productivity.

4. Accordingly, utilize incentives to further this engagement. Whether an incentive is monetary or non-monetary, employers can develop sustainable engagement and begin to see more of the outcomes they want. Provide immediate recognition by highlighting successes. Give people access to resources and rewards in order to appeal to people’s desire for association. Demonstrate impact by allowing for bragging rights. These are some ways to give people a push towards excellence by putting incentives behind their actions.

5. Foster healthy workplace competition. On a similar note as engagement, gamifying work processes can add an inherent competitiveness that increases employee productivity. Gamification services can help companies collect data from various streams and display employee names on a leaderboard. Additionally, if incentives are widely visible, natural competitiveness fires up and other people work to reach their goals and reap the rewards.

6. Continuously evaluate processes. As discussed, gamification allows for tracking processes and thus understanding what is working and what is not working. The impact of changes can be identified with benchmarks put in place, and key actions can be observed and rewarded.

By applying gamification to the enterprise, companies can not only better understand, but also optimize business processes.

Top Gamification Software Recommendations

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1. Promoting social welfare: Using recognition and non-monetary rewards is extremely effective in motivating people to make contributions. An aspect of friendly competition or acknowledgement can get people to want to continue to contribute. FavorTree app was designed based on these principles — when you do a favor for a neighbor, your virtual tree gains fruit and you are helping your local community in the process. Freerice is an online UN program that donates 10 grains of rice for every correct quiz answer. These are just a couple of examples of gamified experiences that foster social good and encourage helping others.

2. Improving your health: Game-like structures can be used to get people acquainted with illness and then facilitate monitoring and treatment. They can also prompt people to adopt healthier lifestyles. Part of health gamification company Welltok’s program includes challenges related to health and wellness that reward points for reaching goals.

3. Making customer support fun: Dealing with endless tickets can get repetitive and tedious. Gamifying aspects of customer service can potentially add a layer to the process that makes it fun. Freshdesk Arcade, for example, includes a leader board, encouraging friendly competition, and points and badges as work gets done. Especially in a more competitive environment, this might really benefit a business in the customer service department.

4. Fundraising: Expanding upon the idea of promoting social welfare, “crowdraising” can promote highly successful fundraising efforts, especially in corporate philanthropy efforts. Causecast features a Community Impact Platform that creates a fundraising challenge involving social media, real-time reporting, instant donation processing, peer recognition, automatic tracking, and competition with incentives. This really engages everyone and harnesses that energy to raise a decent sum of money.

5. Promoting civic engagement: Especially for the younger generation, gamifying civic initiatives has potential for getting citizens more educated and involved. MTV created the Fantastic Election ’12, which applied fantasy football ideas to politics by having players draft a team of candidates. Points could be earned based on how candidates actually behaved, and there were rewards for learning about and engaging in the political process, such as reading election articles or checking in to campaign-related events. There were real-life prizes at stake for added motivation. Many participants actually became more politically involved due to this process even though their reasoning behind participation was generally not political.

Evidently, game mechanics can be applied to a wide variety of experiences, as demonstrated by these gamification examples. Gamification is more than customer or employee engagement, although that is a key trend that can definitely benefit a business, and different areas are increasingly catching on.

Top Gamification Software Recommendations

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