Microsoft has acquired Incent Games, the makers of the innovative sales gamification platform known as FantasySalesTeam that has helped a long list of companies in boosting sales productivity, driving up revenue and improving customer relationship management adoption.
As the name suggests, the platform gives sales organizations the ability to create contests similar to how fantasy sports games work.
According to Microsoft, it will be making FantasySalesTeam available to its customers to provide the same benefits that the many clients of Incent Games have received. Among the companies that have used FantasySalesTeam are Siemens, HP and Michelin.
In FantasySalesTeam, organizations assign sales representatives to certain player positions in teams based on their performance. Prizes are then awarded to the teams based on different kinds of results that are connected with the desired sales figures and goals of the company.
The scores that the players and teams receive could then be recorded in the CRM system of the company, through the integration of platforms such as Microsoft Dynamics and Salesforce. The platform can also be used independently from a CRM system, with the scores recorded in Excel files.
FantasySalesTeam also gives teams the ability to recruit non-sales personnel, including managers and employees on non-sales teams, to increase collaboration across the company.
"This feature is revolutionizing team building in the sales setting and the impact has been nothing short of staggering," Microsoft wrote in a post on its official blog detailing the acquisition.
Microsoft gave two examples of companies that saw their sales figures improve significant after the adoption of FantasySalesTeam. The first company, Service Corporation International, saw sales representatives on the platform closed 88 percent more contracts at 213 percent of the average value compared to sales representatives that are not on the platform. The second company, Wireless Zone, saw its total sales increase by 176 percent, specific product sales increase by 35 percent and profit increase by 9 percent over only the first month of using FantasySalesTeam.
FantasySalesTeam will be integrated into Microsoft's Dynamics CRM platform, but it will still support other CRM software being used by clients of the platform. Microsoft also said that it will look at how the features of FantasySalesTeam can be applied to non-sales areas for future use.
