Bunchball launches 10 apps to quickly “gamify” websites and enterprises

Bunchball is announcing 10 new apps today that will “gamify” (make non-game apps and processes more game-like) websites and enterprises in a quick and painless fashion. The Spark Series of apps will make it easy for companies to adopt gamification and thereby increase customer engagement or energize employees.

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That’s a big advance that could make gamification, which could generate a lot more revenue for companies, much easier to adopt. Often, past efforts have been tougher for companies, sometimes requiring weeks of custom work and handholding. Bunchball built its Nitro gamification platform for companies to adopt, but the Spark apps are a subset of the capability, geared for specific segments.

“Our customers were coming to us with the same business problems,” said Rajat Paharia, founder and chief product officer at Bunchball in San Jose, Calif. “We thought we could solve them in a more scalable, repeatable app format. We think this is the future of where this industry is going: turnkey and out of the box.”

Each Spark app solves a specific problem common to many businesses. Some of the apps can be implemented in a self-service fashion. Spark Sales allows companies to set up gamified competition among salespeople within a company. The Spark Conversion app motivates users to take advantage of a free trial, converting them from free users to paid users. Spark Adoption motivates people to use something more than they otherwise might, like a new enterprise software program. Spark Community encourages people to collaborate and share knowledge. Spark Engagement gets people more engrossed in a product.

“This is a response to customers asking for solutions that are easier to adopt in a matter of minutes or days,” Paharia said.

Bunchball started working on the apps last year. The company is also announcing a technology dubbed Fuse, which allows a corporation to connect and gamify any enterprise software. You could, for instance, choose to gamify something in Microsoft’s SharePoint software, monitor the activity or usage, and then share the output with the Nitro gamification platform. Paharia said Fuse is deeply integrated with tools such as Jive, IBM connections, and Salesforce.

The Spark Engagement app has an annual fee starting at $15,000. Spark Sales, by contrast, is priced at $300 per user per year. Spark Adoption has pricing that depends on the number of users adopted. Fuse is available at a modest premium to each Bunchball Spark solution.

Bunchball was founded in 2007, and it now has more than 60 employees. Bunchball’s customers include Warner Bros., Comcast, USA Network, Bravo, and Hasbro. Bunchball’s investors include Granite Ventures, Triangle Peak Partners, Northport Investments, Correlation Ventures, and Adobe. Bunchball has has raised $17.5 million to date. Rivals include Big Door, Badgeville, Gigya, and Crowdtwist. Badgeville is also heading in the direction of doing scalable applications that fit into six different frameworks. But Paharia says that Bunchball is the first to come up with real-world apps that can be implemented quickly.

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