> Save Administrative Time

> Get Real-Time Data and Feedback

> Launch Programs In Minutes, Not Weeks

> Increase Flexibility And Eliminate Markup On Rewards

Transform Your Rewards Program

Introduction

Getting Started: Automate Manual Reporting

Build Automated Reporting

Create real-time participant dashboards

Quickly launch new programs with customizable templates

Short-term Boosts

Drive engagement to behaviors that matter

Optimize Motivational Programs

Eliminate reward markups and limited selection

Common Challenges

Transitioning to your new system

Organizing 3rd-party employees and channel partners

About ThinkSmart

Table of Contents

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Introduction

Rewards programs are a critical part of any employee or sales motivation program. The benefi ts of rewarding and reinforcing desired behavior have been well understood and documented for many years. The psychology is straightforward.

However, if you’re reading this guide, then you’re probably responsible for implementing your organization’s reward program… and so it will come as no surprise to you that the logistical challenge of implementing a rewards program is not so straightforward.

At the heart of every rewards program is a very simple premise: If people do X, then they will get a reward and/or recognition

However the mechanics of making this happen are not nearly so simple!

First, “X” must be defi ned and communicated. Then, the achievement of “X” must be measured and quantifi ed. Finally, rewards and recognition must be acquired, distributed, and celebrated.

The process of doing this can take many tedious hours through traditional methods like spreadsheets, manual leaderboards, and conventional reward fulfi llment companies.

Even worse from a business perspective, the time required to do all this manual work (especially for distributed or global teams) means that the psychology of “Do X, Get Y” is disrupted by the passage of considerable amounts of time between the action and the reward.

Ideally, you should also be measuring and optimizing how much you are able to impact behavior through the motivation program since this is the whole point of having a motivational program, but this is almost impossible with traditional systems.

Chances are, when your rewards program was developed, the process you’re stuck with now was the best that could be achieved. However, the cumulative advances of recent technology have

enabled a better way to run your motivational programs.

The purpose of this eBook is to guide you step-by-step through the process of

transforming your rewards program by taking advantage of recent advances in

technology and resulting business processes to:

• Reduce manual work.

• Get real-time data and feedback.

• Better impact behavior.

• Rapidly launch programs.

• Increase rewards fl exibility while lowering cost.

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Getting Started: Automate Manual Reporting

Chances are most of your reward program processes were developed before your organization joined the revolution of cloud computing and involve manual compiled spreadsheets, cutting and pasting, and lots of administrative work. Eliminating this drudgery is the fi rst step in transforming your rewards program.

The key to automated reporting is to aggregate your disparate data sources into a single searchable database.

It doesn’t matter what the specifi c database is, but it needs to be a single source of truth on which you can base your rewards program.

The database should ideally:

• Already be used by your organization for other purposes such assales, accounting, operations, etc.

• Tie into your human resource and/or channel partners database so that you can automatically keep track of participants as they join/leave the organization.

• Be a relatively open and standardized platform with widely available APIs so that you can easily funnel all needed data into it.

Salesforce and other CRM systems make

ideal data sources

For a growing number of organizations, the primary database is likely to be Salesforce.com or a similar cloud-based CRM. Salesforce, and to a greater or lesser extent competing CRMs, enjoy a number of advantages as your repository of data:

• They typically already have relatively high utilization rates, especially amongst sales, support, and marketing staff so you’re not introducing yet another new application to participants that must be separately adopted, logged into, and monitored.

• Increasing utilization of the CRM is, in itself, a goal for many sales organizations.

• CRMs are typically already recording many of the behaviors you’re trying to infl uence like sales and support effi ciency.

• They are open platforms that can accept data from new sources and support new applications like your rewards program.

• As industry standard tools, new participants are likely to be familiar with the basics of using them.

Once you have chosen a single repository for your data, work with your IT department and/or rewards vendor to import needed data in real-time or near-real-time, from legacy or offl ine systems. If you have chosen a CRM system like Salesforce as your data repository, then this type of data integration work is likely already underway, or at least on your IT department’s roadmap.

A motivational vendor that specializes in working on top of your chosen platform should be able to help your team expedite this process.

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Once your data is in a single place, then building automated reporting becomes relatively simple depending upon your choice of platform.

Build Automated Reporting

Custom-build one-off reports that query exactly what you need for specifi c rewards programs. The advantage of doing this is that it’s relatively easy for a novice to build these reports. The disadvantage is that it’s not very fl exible; you need to build a new report every time you change a program rule or introduce a new program.

Build or utilize a reporting framework that allows for quick, fl exible, and easy-to-use program creation and rule modifi cations. This can be more diffi cult to build, but should come pre-built on any sort of modern motivational reporting platform.

There are two basic choices in terms of reporting:

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Create real-time participant dashboards.

The importance of real-time or near real-time participant dashboards cannot be overemphasized in promoting the eff ectiveness of your rewards program. Simply put, the closer you can make the recognition to the action you want to promote, the better.

Gamifi cation & Leaderboards

Gamifi cation has been a popular industry buzzword for several years now for good reason: it works. People really do work harder for badges, status, and etc.

The same concept goes for leaderboards, but with a twist. The primary motivation here is competitiveness with peers. Leaderboards play to the inherent competitiveness of top salespeople. Hence, leaderboards are typically extremely popular with top salespeople.

People thrive on instant gratifi cation, competition, and peer recognition -

and all of these needs are served by real-time feedback.

Motivational programs are not just for sales!

Reward behaviors throughout the enterprise. Now that you’ve established a fl exible system with easy program launching, expand it to impact and reward positive habits and behavior throughout your organization.

Customer service

Training

Security

Wellness

Salesforce.com Data Entry Compliance

Quickly launch new programs

with customizable templates

One of the key goals of a modern motivational program is to drastically cut down the time it takes to launch new programs. The best way to do this is to build fl exible templates.

Work with your team or vendor to setup customizable templates that let you quickly:√ Choose a base motivational goal such as sales, wellness, compliance, training, etc.√ Add custom rules, the dates of the program, and potential rewards.√ Create visually-engaging program announcements, contest leaderboards, and real-time dashboards without help from IT or your design team.√ Launch your program by choosing from a pre-built list of types of participants (all employees, sales, support, etc) and hitting a single button.

A quick way to judge if your program is as easy as it could be is to ask yourself what your reaction would be if your boss asked you to run a one-day custom motivational program tomorrow… if the answer is anything but “no problem” then you probably need a more streamlined system.

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Short-term Boosts

Try short-term “boost” programs to emphasize a specifi c behavior that is especially important or in which your organization lags. For instance, run a special short-term sales contest to familiarize your sales team with a specifi c product and get them used to off ering it to customers. Or create special one-week motivation program with a unique reward to decrease a bad habit that the support team might have fallen into.

When trapped in the logistical nightmare that is a traditional rewards program, it can be easy to lose track of the true purpose behind it.

The point of a rewards program is NOT to hand out stuff .The point of a rewards program is to CHANGE BEHAVIOR.

If the point of your motivational program is change behavior, it follows that some rewards programs are better at changing that behavior than others. But how do you measure that?

Drive engagement to behaviors that matter

Measure reward program eff ectiveness.

Few program managers can actually quantify the impact of their motivation programs. This is a problem when trying to get approval to expand existing programs… or defending them when organizational budgets shrink.

In legacy systems, this is a nearly impossible problem to solve. However, with the transparency and reporting available to administrators in a modern system, the calculation of ROI becomes fairly simple.

How to Measure Motivational Program Eff ectiveness.

Take a baseline. Start measuring the performance/compliance level of your participants before launching your program. In eff ect, you’re launching your program, but not telling anyone about it.

Announce and offi cially launch your program.

Compare the two periods of time. How much did the behavior change?

For ROI, calculate how much the measured change in behavior is worth to the organization versus the cost of the rewards program.

Optimize Motivational Programs

Now that you have a quantifi able measurement of program eff ectiveness… don’t stop there! It’s time to optimize.

• Make changes and launch variants of the program.

• Off er new rewards. Be sure to always have a “before” and “after” when trying out new program conditions so that you know whether you’re moving organizational behavior in the right direction and by how much.

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The biggest cost for most Rewards Programs is the cost of the rewards themselves... whether they are gift cards, cash, or customized prizes. For reward administrators, the logistical challenge of getting prizes to individual winners in a timely fashion can be overwhelming. They therefore partner with reward companies to take care of this for them. However, the dirty secret behind most reward program companies is that they make their money on marking up the rewards. This subsidy of the reward program creates a huge hidden cost for programs at scale.

What’s more, these markups create a confl ict of interest in that the reward program has a tremendous fi nancial incentive to push customers toward one type of reward over another. Thus the proliferation of confl icting “research” showing the superior eff ectiveness of one type of reward over another.

The reality is that you should align your rewards to the most cost-eff ective incentive for your organization and for each participant… whether that’s cash, gift cards, expensive vacations, branded apparel, or less tangible rewards like additional vacation time.

Let your participants pick and choose amongst rewards that matter to them by assigning points that can be cashed in for whatever the participants most desire.

Look for a reward program partner whose interests are aligned

with your own... changing behavior... not selling overpriced rewards.

Eliminate reward markups,

delivery hassles, and limited selection.

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Some of the Best Things in Life Are Free,

Cheap, or Intangible

A motivation program doesn’t exist to disperse rewards, it exists to change behavior. Some of the best motivators don’t cost a lot of money to

implement.

Recognition Points / Leaderboards / Awards.

A little recognition can go a long way. Especially when it’s recognized

and praised by organizational leadership.

The Yellow Jersey.

If it works for the Tour de Monde, it might work for your team!

Reward the daily leader with the exclusive right to wear a special t-shirt/hat/tie/etc.

Lunch with the Boss.

Whether it’s the CEO or the department head, everybody loves a

little face-time with their boss. Make ‘em work for it!

Reserved parking.

Got a big parking lot that fi lls up early? Maybe people would treasure a nice reserved spot next to the front door.

Limited edition apparel.

Sure everyone has a logo’d t-shirt, but maybe they long for one with

more exclusivity?

Team reward. Let the winner play the host at the nearest lunch spot,

local watering hole, or a catered breakfast for their team with the

organization picking up the tab.

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Common Challenges.

Transitioning to a new rewards program is not without challenges. Here are some common issues you may encounter when switching to a new rewards program:

Transitioning to your new system.

When transitioning to a new system, don’t try to switch over everything at once.

Start with a new and relatively small program with a limited number of participants. Continue to run your existing programs on your existing system.

One you have the kinks out of the new system using your trial program, switch over all the new system whenever you start a new program or your existing programs come to a natural stopping point such as the end of the year or reporting period.

Incorporating legacy, global, and/or offl ine data sources.

It’s a complex globalized world and chances are your reward program refl ects some of these complexities. Don’t let the challenges of incorporating participant data from disparate sources stop your progress.

The right reward vendor should be able to work hand in hand with your IT department to develop APIs or near-real-time processes that can incorporate any kind of data. Note that the adoption of an open or industry standard database will make this much easier as many APIs for even obscure system will be available “off -the-shelf” and only require confi guration to fi t your organization’s unique needs.

This one-time eff ort will pay dividends for many years by relieving many tedious hours of ongoing administrative eff ort while improving program eff ectiveness and fl exibility.

Including 3rd-party employees and channel partners in your motivational program is essentially

component of tax rules, cross-organizational alignment, and layered HR issues.

If channel partners or other 3rd-party employees are a major fosure to partner with a rewards company that thoroughly understands this specialized arena.

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Organizing 3rd-party employees

and channel partners.

Wow. This Seems Like a Lot of Work!

Converting a legacy system to a modern rewards program isn’t easy, but with the right partner, the experience doesn’t have to painful or exceptionally lengthy.

At ThinkSmart, our average conversion time for a legacy system is just 2-6 weeks and we do most of the heavy lifting. For companies that have already centralized their data sources, this can be shortened to as a little as a day or two.

The rewards in terms of time-savings, increased program

eff ectiveness, and greater fl exibility

for the investment that you make in transforming your rewards program into a modern motivational machine.

Work hardnow

It’ll pay off latter

ThinkSmart is the product of the global incentives consultancy ThinkSmart. This publically listed company has worked with many of the largest brands in the world on improving employee motivation and performance through the use of employee Rewards Programs.

ThinkSmart is the end-result of their 18 years of experience on automating and improving employee reward systems. ThinkSmart is a revolutionary automated rewards program built upon the Salesforce.com platform. Customers have used ThinkSmart to reduce their motivation feedback loop from 48 days to 48 hours while reducing administrative time by 93%.

About ThinkSmart

For more information about ThinkSmart,

or an online demo or proof of concept,

contact us at +1 (855) 373-5374.

These organizations rely on ThinkSmart to power their rewards:

Features include:

• Automated reporting

• Real-time dashboards

•• cation templates and websites, and allow for new programs to launch in minutes

• Built-in measurement and optimization tools

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