Bunchball Labs to Quantify Impact of Gamification by Analyzing Big Data

REDWOOD CITY, CA--(Marketwire - Sep 12, 2012) -

Core News Facts:

• Bunchball, the pioneer and market leader in gamification, today announced the creation of Bunchball Labs, the industry's first research and analytics practice dedicated to measuring the business impact of gamification.

• Bunchball Labs aims to quantify how gamification drives real-world business performance, improves sales and productivity, enhances customer loyalty, engages employees and partners, and helps employees reach workplace goals by improving skills and knowledge. Gamification applies proven mechanics from games -- such as goal-setting, real-time feedback, competition, status and recognition -- to websites, enterprise applications, social networks and live events.

  • By studying real-world gamification data, Bunchball Labs analysts are establishing formal mathematical models that can identify the most effective triggers of high-value activity. For instance, analysts could quantify how common gamification components like leaderboards, notifications and badges motivate people to engage and participate more.

  • Researchers will also explore predictive analytics, which could be used to reliably forecast when groups or even specific people will "like" a promotion on Facebook or retweet a message in support of a company's campaign.

  • These insights could help Bunchball provide highly targeted guidance to companies trying to elicit specific behaviors from employees or customers, and may shape new features and capabilities in future Bunchball products.

  • Because Bunchball solutions operate through several enterprise applications, analysts can track performance measures that extend beyond gamification, such as employee strengths and weaknesses, productivity, collaboration levels, and goal achievement. And they can map that data against similar metrics from other Bunchball customers to benchmark how a company is faring in its industry, or how it compares to other companies of its size or scope.

• The analytics undertaken by Bunchball Labs will draw from the world's most extensive cache of big data generated exclusively through gamification.

  • Analysts will cull data from more than 15 billion actions taken by more than 125 million users globally since 2007.

  • The immensity and extent of Bunchball's big data warehouse affords analysts an opportunity to identify trends and tendencies across several years, and to uncover traits unique to certain jobs, industries, company sizes or geographical regions.

• Staffed by four analysts, Bunchball Labs is based out of the company's Silicon Valley headquarters.

• In establishing a research practice dedicated to gamification, Bunchball is writing the latest chapter in its history as the industry pioneer.

  • Rajat Paharia, the company's founder and CPO, is widely considered the father of gamification.

  • Bunchball shipped the first gamification solution in the marketplace in 2007.

  • Bunchball's seminal role in gamification has led to a global presence, and its market influence is growing. By 2014, Gartner expects that 70 percent of the 2,000 largest corporations will gamify at least one aspect of their enterprise.

Quotes:

Attributable to Rajat Paharia, founder and CPO, Bunchball
"Every time a user of a gamified experience answers a question, shares an achievement, completes a mission or takes any action, they offer a glimpse into how effectively they're selling, collaborating or learning. When we add up those actions and view them over time, across an enterprise or throughout an entire industry, a picture emerges that allows us to measure and quantify just how gamification powers the Engaged Enterprise. In creating Bunchball Labs, we're formalizing that process to offer our customers access to those insights, and to the largest warehouse of big data in the gamification industry."

ABOUT BUNCHBALL:
Bunchball is the market leader and visionary in gamification. Powering the Engaged Enterprise, Bunchball enables organizations to improve business performance throughout their ecosystem by creating highly active and loyal customers, employees, and partners. Bunchball's comprehensive suite of innovative cloud-based solutions empowers companies to engage and motivate, leading to improved employee productivity, customer loyalty and ROI. Bunchball's world-class customers include Adobe, HP, Cisco, Warner Bros., Comcast, LiveOps, VMware and Hasbro. Based in Silicon Valley, Bunchball's investors include Granite Ventures, Triangle Peak Partners, Northport Investments, and Correlation Ventures. For more information, visit www.bunchball.com, our blog at www.gamification.com, or follow @bunchball.