Gamification Whitepaper

GAMIFICATION
THE SERIOUS BUSINESS OF FUN – WHAT GAMIFICATION
AND SOCIAL MEDIA MEAN FOR BANKING
White Paper

The serious business of fun – What gamification and social media mean for banking
Gamification and social media are changing the way people engage and
expect to engage with their friends and increasingly their employers
and service providers. Banks now have new ways to be relevant, engage
customers and improve sales. This paper sets out Misys’ view of the key
trends and opportunities for banks.
Introduction
Fun is big business. Annually, the computer game
industry makes $115bn. The phenomenal success of
this industry, which is now bigger than Hollywood, is
attributable to the fact that it appeals to fundamental
elements of human nature: competition, reward,
problem solving and social connection. Gamification
is the term for an approach to marketing and sales
that employs the attributes of gaming to engage
customers, change behaviours and expectations.
The basics of gamification have been around for
some time. Foursquare has been awarding badges
and ranking users for location check-ins since 2009.
The principles of gamification have also been
adopted by companies like IBM 1 and Salesforce 2 .
Gartner has also highlighted gamification as a key
trend for CIOs 3 - and it has been covered in American
Banker 4 .
Social media has also changed the way people
connect, discover, recommend and share. With the
internet providing a huge amount of choice, index
search is being replaced by recommendations from
friends, family and people we trust, through social
media. It’s a self-moderating quality control system
that threatens traditional marketing and distribution
models whilst simultaneously providing viral means to
spread the word, good or bad.
Financial services companies are experimenting with
these concepts to get ahead of the curve and
differentiate themselves in the market. Misys believes
this trend will grow. In a world where customer
relationships are increasingly digital, banks cannot
afford to be left behind.
1 Kudos Badges http://www.kudosbadges.com/
2 Salesforce Rypple http://rypple.com/social-goals
3 Gartner Press Release: http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1629214
4 American Banker http://www.americanbanker.com/issues/177_112/
Jane-McGonigal-asserts-gaming-could-improve-mobilebanking-1050022-1.html?zkPrintable=1&nopagination=1
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The serious business of fun – What gamification and social media mean for banking
What is Gamification?
Gamification is the use of games or competition to
encourage a user to complete an action or set of
actions. Users respond to a range of prompts and are
encouraged to return regularly to the application. The
prompts include:
Competition – adding league tables motivates
participants to try and come top. Users either
compete with friends (if there is integration with social
media) or other users like them. This is a core feature
of Foursquare.
Awards – giving badges and rewards provides a
sense of achievement and progress and encourages
users to continue to use the application.
Countdowns – by making certain features and
actions available only for a limited time, customers
are motivated to act before it’s too late.
Scarcity – we assign more value to opportunities
perceived to have limited availability. Scarcity can
drive us to act based on opportunities being scarce
or likely to become scarce. This is a concept used by
Cokezone and www.Gilt.com.
Incentives & Penalties – here penalties, traps and
roadblocks are used to steer people away from
certain behaviours. Rewards and access to privileges
are used to encouraged desirable behaviours.
Penalties can be applied for not doing things, e.g. if
you don’t make a regular payment, you will be
removed from a competition or giveaway or slip
down a league table.
Goal Setting & Progression – we love creating and
working on things we can then “own”. This is a
perfect dynamic for financial services companies and
is exemplified by www.mint.com, whereby customers
create goals and work to achieve them, such as a
house, a renovation, car or a child’s education. This
dynamic is often coupled with progression, providing
a user with statistics and historical data along the way.
Personalisation – by letting a customer add their
own images and choose their own themes for their
account, a customer has a great sense of control,
investment and can continue to develop their
relationship with the site or app. This can be seen in
the new Facebook covers concept.
Team work – as well as individual pursuits, we can be
drawn to collective goals, providing an opportunity to
help others or be rewarded as a group. Groupon
have had great success with “The Deal is On” feature.
Offering a reward if a communal target is hit has also
been the basis of American Express’ Small Business
Saturday on Facebook in the US 5 .
By deploying these dynamics in a co-ordinated
application, a bank can use games to motivate
behaviours and drive outcomes for both the customer
and the organisation.
Gamification should not be confused with simple
marketing. Certainly it can provide excellent
promotion. The Barclaycard waterslide app is an
excellent example of gamification as marketing –
however, used properly, these dynamics can be used
to provide the foundation for long term relationship
and behaviour management.
5 AmEx Small Business Saturday https://www.facebook.com/
SmallBusinessSaturday
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The serious business of fun – What gamification and social media mean for banking
What is Social Media?
’Social media’ refers to websites and applications
which enable the online connection of individuals
with their networks, facilitating collaboration and
sharing. The notion is epitomised by the likes of
Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. New entrants into
the market include Pinterest and Google+.
Social media has changed the way companies gather
market intelligence, respond to changes, create
products and distribute products and services. A
number of social media functions are potentially
useful in the Mobile Banking and gamification
context:
External connectors
Reading from and writing data to the social media
site. This could include adding and reading people,
photos, events, profile updates, likes and pages as
well as the connections between them.
Authentication
Allows web, mobile, and desktop apps to login via
the social site’s identity. This feature can be used to
sign onto the application using a user’s Facebook
identity subject to privacy and security requirements.
For example, the FB SSO may be used instead of a
PIN
Social plugins
Social plugins include features like
Recommendations, the Like Button and Activity
Feeds that can be built into applications external to
Facebook. They are specifically designed so no user
data is shared with the sites on which they appear.
This feature can be used to add a Like button within a
gamification application
Frames
Frames allow applications to be created that are
hosted outside of the social media system, and be
displayed within the social media service.
Events
Events can be created and surfaced between
applications including venue, location, time and
action information. This can be used for setting up
reminders and events for banking activities inside and
outside the application.
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Companies engaging in gamification
Across the world, enterprises are grabbing hold of
these constructs to change the way they engage with
staff, business partners and customers. In gambling 6 ,
retailing 7 , education 8 and travel 9 the examples
abound of how companies are using these dynamics
to get ahead of the competition. In Financial Services,
Amex, Barclays, SmartyPig, AXA and ING 10 are all
beginning to take the leap into social and gaming.
Banks are in a strong position to offer gamification.
Financial health is a subject of fundamental
importance and yet many people pay little attention
to it, finding it dull and uninteresting. By leveraging
customer account information, banks can provide
real-time data feeds into a gamified applications to
make personal finance interesting and engage their
customers. By encouraging customers to use these
sites regularly by employing gamification and social
design, banks can develop better relationships,
improve marketing analytics, sales and capital
positions.
6 http://fantasyleague.williamhill.com
7 http://www.shopkick.com
8 http://www.mathletics.co.uk
9 http://www.onthebeach.co.uk
10 http://www.ingdirect.com.au/savings/savings_tips/goal_setting.htm

The serious business of fun – What gamification and social media mean for banking
How can Misys help?
Misys is here to help our customers deal with this new
trend. At its heart, gamification is the delivery of
financial data and completion of transactions within a
user interface framework that can be managed by the
bank. As such, gamification sits in a space where
Misys has 30 years of expertise.
We have developed a proof of concept. To see this
for yourself, please go to our YouTube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/MisysVideoChannel
and search for ‘gamification’. This solution is an
extension of BankFusion Mobile – retail banking on
the go. Misys gives our customers the opportunity for
our clients to integrate their Mobile Banking and
Gamification applications – or to keep them separate.
Mobile Device
SFDC
Gamification Gamification Server
Server
Bank
Rules
Host Systems
Loans
Gamification
Gamification App
League
Tables
Assets
Admin UI Data Integration
Admin Console
Core Banking
Server
Functionality includes:
• Personalised Messages showing changes in status
and recent events
• Relevant Offers based on actions and targets
• Group Incentives; ‘if you and your friends deposit
$X in total, you’ll get Y”
• Limited Time Offers - showing countdowns and
calls to action
• Progression: The application will show progress
towards goals
• Loyalty, Status and Awards. The idea of a trophy
cabinet – showing status and trophies won
• Next status action: What the customer needs to do
to achieve the next award, trophy or status
• Cloud services in Salesforce’s Heroku platform to
provide abstraction services and in game
componentry to minimise back end impact and
extend security perimeter away from the bank
mBanking App
mBanking Server
Cards
To find out more please contact Misys at
banking.marketing@misys.com
About Author: Alex Bray, Retail Channel Solution Director.
Alex has spent his whole career in retail banking. He joined
Lloyds TSB in 2000 and worked in a variety of roles in channels
and product management. He spent 4 years in retail eBanking.
In 2010, Alex joined IBM as a consultant specialising in Mobile
Banking, social media and internet banking. At Misys, Alex is
the solution owner for branch teller, mobile banking and retail
eBanking solutions.
Twitter: @StGilesResident
Thanks to Dave Durbin, Colin Weir at Moroku, Marc Murray
and Shabri Lakhani
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ABOUT MISYS
Misys is at the forefront of the financial software
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banking, treasury, trading and risk solutions available
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countries our team of domain experts and partners
have an unparalleled ability to address industry
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Misys and the Misys “globe” mark are trade marks of the Misys group
companies. Copyright© 2012 Misys. All rights reserved.
9338_0812
Misys was formed by the merger of Misys with
Turaz, which includes the award-winning Kondor+
product line. Combined they are able to address
all customer requirements across both the banking
and trading book businesses. Misys is the trusted
partner that financial services organisations turn to
for help solving their most complex problems.
Find out more at www.misys.com