SOUTHWEST BINDINGS SCORES PERFORMANCE GAINS
To encourage adoption of a new software platform and provide daily motivation for its sales team, Southwest Bindings rolled out GameDay, gamification software powered by The Printing House™ (TPH®). Featuring monthly sports games that reward specific performance targets and activities, Southwest Bindings has the winning combination it was seeking.
C U S T O M E R S U C C E S S S T O R Y S O U T H W E S T B I N D I N G S S Y S T E M S L I M I T E D
Locations
Industry
Services
Solution
BenefitsCompeting to Win Customizable rewards and penalties let Southwest Bindings target a wide range of objectives to drive positive change.
Scoring Big Southwest Bindings’ sales teams hit targets three months out of four, with every branch reaching quota for the first time.
Motivating a Team Gamification delivers motivation, friendly competition and brings the national sales team closer together.
Surrey, Calgary, Toronto (head office), Gloucester, Pointe Claire, Dartmouth
Corporate and Print Finishing Supplies and Equipment
Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), Systems Integration, Data Management
GameDay, powered by TPH
A T A G L A N C E
After expanding its business beyond its traditional market of document bindings solutions, Southwest Bindings today helps
its customers distinguish themselves with a wide range of branded and custom document finishing solutions.
To streamline reporting and management, Southwest Bindings launched a Territory Dashboard to provide its inside and outside sales people in each territory with a single view of customers, scheduled calls, follow ups, proposals, and projects. In the past, reps called up five different reports to get the same information, which was way too complicated.
“It’s now all on one dashboard but we had to get everyone to use it consistently,” explains Sarah Cordeiro, Southwest Bindings’ Vice President of Communications. Quarterly bonuses or incentive programs didn’t address the daily and weekly activities that could lead to more sales (like cold calls or follow ups), nor did it look at the challenges around software adoption or team interaction. “We wanted something to motivate them to do something different and help us increase sales,” she says. “Bonus programs weren’t doing enough for us and wasn’t having an impact”.
Southwest Bindings was looking for a solution to help motivate staff on a daily basis.
“GameDay is helping our bottom line and it’s fun for staff.” Sarah Cordeiro, Vice President of Comm-unications, Southwest Bindings Systems Limited
PLAYING TO WIN
Southwest Bindings starts new games each month and changes the sport with each new season. Each quarter the company sets new KPIs, defines new point structures, and reviews the teams in each division to ensure the competition remains fair.
“Shuff ling teams and divisions around lets us keep the games more lively,” says Cordeiro. “Each quarter we’ll change the sport, remove points or add new bonuses or penalties to make it new and keep people engaged.”
“There have been so many months where teams are one point away from the top spot, so it has been really exciting, and it’s often down to the last day,” she says. “We’re often surprised by who takes the top spot at the end of the month. In the latest game,
MAKING A PLAY FOR GAMIFICATION
A meeting with TPH gave Southwest Bindings the solution they needed. Called GameDay, the solution was developed for internal use but was so effective, TPH released it externally as a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) gamification platform.
“A big part of my job is trying to figure out how to motivate our employees. When I was introduced to GameDay, I was very excited by it. It brings that fun element into the workplace and a little friendly competition,” says Cordeiro, who was introduced to gamification in college and knew this type of fun competition could build teams, motivate behaviour changes and, ultimately, improve results for the business. “GameDay not only helped us boost sales in a challenging industry but helped us to encourage people to use our new dashboard and get more com-fortable with it,” says Cordeiro. “Every team across the country is now using dashboard consistently and are diligent about entering their data because they know it will help them score points in the game.”
WINNING RESULTS
The competition is paying off.
After using GameDay for close to one year, Southwest Bindings has seen the improvement they were seeking. “We’ve hit our monthly forecast the last three months out of four and for the first time, we had every single branch hit their numbers. That’s a big milestone for us,” says Cordeiro. “It is helping our bottom line and it’s fun for staff.”
SCORING POINTS
Cordeiro notes that traditional rewards programs are too focussed on sales, which can demotivate staff who might have a bad quarter and realize they can’t meet their targets.
“Just because you don’t reach your sales that month doesn’t mean you haven’t been working; it doesn’t mean that you didn’t get all of these new customers, issue quotes or have other projects in the pipeline,” she says. “In GameDay, we measure those other activities on a daily basis so even if a team doesn’t meet a sales number, they’ll still get points because
they met all these other elements and it is still a good day for the team.”
While sales are important, Southwest Bindings wanted their games to help encourage specific behaviours or activities, such as entering data into their dashboard or conducting follow ups on a scheduled basis. They spent time developing games to reward or penalize teams for specific tasks.
“GameDay is really helping (to motivate) people because you know your hard work is going to show up whether you reach your sales number or not,” says Cordeiro, noting she was surprised that they had no resistance to playing the games, even from those they didn’t think would be interested.
“The people who end up winning GameDay aren’t always the ones who have sold the most. We can tailor our rewards to show who’s worked the hardest and fulfilled a number of their other targets as well. It’s a much more equal playing field.”
“It has become such an integral part of our business that if we decided to turn if off, I am sure I would get calls from every single sales rep. Everyone is addicted.”
we have a three-way tie in one division. You’re on the edge of your seat waiting to see who is going to take the top spot.”
In the coming year, Southwest Bindings plans to hold some playoff rounds in GameDay to add further excitement to the competitions. They are also working on collecting new data in their dash-board to measure cross-selling activities, so they can start adding points to GameDay to reward teams that cross-sell services.
DIVING INTO THE DATA
The cornerstone of GameDay is the data that provides teams with a real-time picture of their performance.When Cordeiro started thinking about rolling out a gamification platform, she thought the data and IT considerations would be daunting. She wasn’t sure if the software could talk to her data or how much work it would take to implement, but TPH helped her every step of the way.
“When we first bought into the idea of GameDay, IT integration was the one thing looming over our head and figuring out how we get from point A to point B. We thought IT would be the biggest hurdle, but it wasn’t an issue at all. The GameDay team were very good at communicating everything and if there was something they couldn’t tweak on their end, they’d walk us through it step by step. The team (at TPH) has been absolutely amazing. I have to admit I had a bit of a learning curve to get through because I was the one taking this on and setting it up, but TPH was very patient with me and would step in to help me out if I forgot to schedule a game properly or if I created a rule that didn’t work the way I wanted.” For Southwest Bindings, GameDay has become ingrained.
GameDay is a SaaS platform developed by TPH to let companies improve performance or change behavior using gamification. Companies can create a wide range of games including hockey, soccer, basketball, football and golf, and tailor the points structure to reward the achievement of the Key Performance Indicators that are important to their specific business or to help them make meaningful behaviour changes.
TPH manages the platform for its customers, providing consulting services and IT support as needed to deploy GameDay. Unlike many other gamification platforms, GameDay’s features move the solution beyond a leaderboard (which only reward top sales performers) to let businesses customize the points, penalties and game structures to the help them target the specific activities or tasks needed to improve the performance of all employees, at every level.
A B O U T G A M E D A Y
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From its six locations across Canada, Southwest Bindings helps businesses portray the right brand image with custom corporate and print finishing, supplies and branded products to help them stand out. Founded in 1978, Southwest Bindings is one of Canada’s largest manufacturers of document finishing supplies and equipment.
A B O U T S O U T H W E S T B I N D I N G S
“GameDay has helped on the motivation side and helped on the dollars and cents side. We came into this hoping it could help us make changes, and it is exceeding my expectations.”
