Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) acquired sales gamification platform known as FantasySalesTeam. The game lets sales organizations to organize contests just like those in fantasy sports. Microsoft intends to make this functionality accessible to its customers so that they can offer incentives to their sales teams and obtain superior results.
Microsoft claims FantasySalesTeam has been potent at boosting productivity, team collaboration and hence driving superior results as well as business growth.
It attempts to address a traditional sales problem: most organizations have the same sales personnel leading the conventional incentive systems resulting in other members to give up as they believe that they can’t win the race.
FantasySalesTeam was established by Adam Hollander in 2012. The organization has received $1.5 million in funding so far. FantasySalesTeam clients boast of names such as Siemens Ltd (NSE:SIEMENS), Comcast Corporation (NASDAQ:CMCSA), Lionbridge Technologies, Inc.(NASDAQ:LIOX), FSU Credit Union, Michelin and others. With apps for iOS, Android and the Web organizations can produce customized games. Scoring methods are outlined with employees obtaining points. All can see the progress of everyone on the team.
FantasySalesTeam is integrated with customer relation management software such as Microsoft Dynamics and Salesforce. The product comes with an API designed to leverage other systems.
The product lets companies allocate player positions to sales representatives depending on their performance. Prizes are awarded as per the different outcomes. There is the feature of recording scores in Excel worksheets. A nice feature of FantasySalesTeam is the ability to get on board non-sales employees to boost collaboration across the company.
As per Microsoft, it plans to integrate FantasySalesTeam with its software while offering support to the existing customers of the platform. It doesn’t stop at that. Microsoft is deliberating emulating the Fantasy model to different aspects of its enterprise as well. It seems that making work fun is getting popular and improving productivity as well as business growth in the process.
Sources: venturebeat, techcrunch
