First and foremost, you need a business champion on your gamification team. A business champion is someone who has identified business objectives that he or she wants to achieve and possibly even the behaviors that will help achieve those objectives. The business champion also recognizes that gamification can help drive those behaviors.
Sometimes, your business champion will need a little convincing. In that case, don’t bother trying to persuade him with impersonal software demos. Instead, try to find real company examples that highlight how gamification solved a pain point that that person knows all too well.
The identity of that business champion will vary from situation to situation. If, for example, the gamification efforts will center around motivating a sales force to action, then the business champion might be the VP of sales. If, on the other hand, the gamification program pertains to learning management, the business champion might be the head of HR.
For a community site, the business champion will likely be the VP of community.
Typically, identifying the right champions means finding people who have the specific pain point you’re trying to address with your gamification system. For example, if it’s the chief marketing officer, that person might have a challenge with ensuring customer loyalty. If the person is a vice-president of sales, maybe he or she cannot get the sales team to use its CRM software correctly.
Often, you won’t have just a single business champion. You’ll likely be working with several people on the business side who understand the business objectives and key behaviors. Chief among these will be a product person — someone who really understands the product in question and who wants to increase the use of certain product features. For a customer-facing property, other business champions might include the following:
CMOs
Heads of digital media
Social media managers
In contrast, for an employee-facing property, the following people might be business champions on the gamification team:
CIO
VP of knowledge management
VP of support and services
As you’re assembling your key stakeholders, make it a point to get an executive champion on board. Gamification programs typically straddle multiple groups and systems, so you’ll need someone with high-level authority on your side to make the necessary decisions and keep everyone in line.