Return of Gamification
How enterprise software can become fun
By the nature of the work we do, we see inside a lot of enterprise software companies and the products they build.
Most of the time, boards and management teams are focused on differentiation of features, especially as it relates to AI.
But, it’s a race to sameness. Everyone tracks everyone, so you’re forced to zoom in pretty deep to find true differentiators.
The old adage, “missing the forest for the trees” applies here.
Part of the problem is that Enterprise Software is not fun to use. The user experience, frankly, sucks.
Why?
Because we’re trying to grow EBITDA and increase our multiples. So we don’t want the extra expense of hiring designers or product visionaries. So, products get designed by engineering. “We got a design system years ago, so we just use that. Besides, employees are forced to use our products, so why spend the money making them simple, easy, or fun to use.”
It just makes business sense. (In the short-term, maybe, but over the long term…?)
Consumer software, this is not.
This is why Claude and ChatGPT are growing so quickly. They made a standard interface that every consumer on the planet is used to using (messaging) and put all the enterprise cruft behind that simple user experience.
And boy did it work. Now Anthropic says their market size is $30 Trillion. LOL aside, perhaps they’re onto something?
When no one in the enterprise software industry values design or creating fun software, then by definition, it creates a real differentiation opportunity.
Not since the days of Gowalla and Foursquare have we seen much of anyone pushing on gamification, save for the new CEO of Xbox and the cash-rich Sony from their recent Spiderman success. GTA VI is about to drop and take the world by storm.
And now every company is trying to copy the UX of AI Chat. Sameness comes standard.
So we decided to do something about it, since it seems we’re collectively having trouble innovating these days.
We gamified revenue growth, CRMs, and business development.
It’s a first pass, but proves the point. Every company needs growth. And teams of sales people are tired and uninterested in the daily grind of reaching out. Wouldn’t it be more fun if we turned it into an adventure, a quest, a point-earning capability that resulted in real-world money instead of those fake Xbox gamer scores that mean nothing in the real world?
Take it a step further.
What if there was a nice community where you get points for responding to messages from other vetted and trusted folks n firms in the network. Perhaps we could do business the old fashioned way. People trust the work you do. You get paid right after you do the work (and don’t have to worry about that). You drive results for your customers. And the entire ecosystem just works better, together.
Wouldn’t that be something.
Adventure on at jetpackecho.com and let us know what kind of signal the market sends back.
—Sean
