Capgemini Digital Transformation Group Adopts Badgeville

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The digital transformation practice of Capgemini Consulting, the global management consulting and systems integration firm, is making Badgeville its gamification playmate.

The companies will partner to use game-like behavior reinforcement and rewards to accelerate digital transformation in major organizations by engaging, rewarding and motivating employees and customers. The focus of the deal is on applying Badgeville's software as a service gamification platform to drive behaviors within the enterprise, rather than on consumer websites.

Kevin Akeroyd, senior VP of field operations at Badgeville, said this is the sort of endorsement that should quiet the naysayers arguing that gamification is overhyped. "Having the number two IT consulting firm in the world announce that they're forming a practice in their digital transformation group around gamification is going to deliver a lot of much-needed credibility," he said.

[ Read 7 Examples: Put Gamification To Work. ]

Badgeville promotes its offering as a platform for modeling and influencing behavior, rather than a more narrow application for influencing specific behaviors such as sales force productivity. At the same time, it integrates with popular application platforms such as the Salesforce.com cloud.

Maggie Buggie, VP of digital transformation at Capgemini, said her firm's embrace of gamification is part of a broader strategy for using digital engagement to drive corporate performance.

"People have been interpreting it as a magic bullet. It is not," she said. "If you don't have a clear business strategy, there's no point in developing a game to address something." Capgemini's role will be to help its clients develop that digital business strategy, with gamification as one important tool.

Why bother? Buggie pointed to a report Capgemini sponsored through the MIT Center for Digital Business on The Digital Advantage: How digital leaders outperform their peers in every industry. As summarized by lead author George Westerman, the research showed that "The digirati -- the 25% of firms that are most digitally mature -- are 26% more profitable, gain 9% more revenue from their physical assets, and earn 12% higher market valuations than their industry competitors." Beyond investing in technologies and social media, that maturity is defined as a strong capability to manage organizational transformation. The study tries to identify the "digital DNA" that makes those firms special.

Besides gamification, there are lots of other things digital businesses must do right, from strategy and management communication to the coordinated implementation of other technologies. However, Capgemini is identifying gamification as one of the things that can help make digital transformation successful, she said. "It's part of a suite of capabilities, where we must be doing all of these things well," she said.

Capgemini's choice of Badgeville was influenced by analyst reports from Gartner and Forrester Research as well as its own evaluation of Badgeville's core technology, Buggie said. Badgeville and Capgemini had been working together for nine months prior to formalizing the relationship, she said.

Akeroyd said Badgeville had previously established partnerships with other consulting and integration firms, primarily those focused on integration with specific social, collaboration, and cloud platforms such as Salesforce.com, Jive, SharePoint, and Zendesk. "This is our first relationship with a large global player that's in the top five, like Capgemini. Some of that is just an indication of how much our industry has grown up in the last year," he said.

Follow David F. Carr on Twitter @davidfcarr. The BrainYard is @thebyard and facebook.com/thebyard

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