Enterprise Ireland – Best Connected -

One of many interesting talks at last week’s DevDays Mobile/iPhone developers event, was a session entitled “Engagement through Gamification” by Chris McClelland of Ecliptic Labs.

Not a completely new idea, but great to spend some time listening to someone who has put a good deal of thought into it. I’ve read about people using games controllers for education and other non-game applications, but here the focus was on the social interactions in gaming and taking those into the “real” world.

The idea is that people are more likely to participate in a community if they are engaged using some or all of the basic human triggers common in games – the desire for reward, status, achievement, self expression or respect whether it is driven by competitiveness or even by altruism. Chris went on to give examples of social media companies who use these triggers in their products and also to outline some software frameworks that can be used to provide much of the functionality if you don’t want to build your own.

A question to readers of this blog – are there elements of gamification that you could use to engage your customers further? Apart from the obvious areas of social media and elearning, could it apply to enterprise applications? Should you incorporate a leaderboard into your next release?

Reference: Chris recommended a book called Total Engagement on the subject of gamification.

DevDays: Mobile developers from across the island gathered in Belfast and Dublin last week for DevDays 2010 (http://devdays.info). I attended the  Dublin session although the agenda was similar at both events. There were talks on Facebook integration from Tapadoo.com, Connected/Mobile Health solutions, Card Payments in iPhone Apps separate to the AppStore, adding location to your apps from OS3.ie , good/bad product strategy from Des Traynor of Contrast and the importance of good design.

Enovation Solutions is a business and information technology company providing professional services and managed solutions to the finance, government, health and education sectors.

Products/Services
• Project & Programme management – Providing clients with accredited PM professionals to delivery large complex projects, supported by a unique project support office.
• Software quality / Test consultancy – Offering test audits, test management, professional testers on-site as well as out-sourced test facilities. Test automation and tracking tools, based on open source products, and consultancy are also provided.
• Software development and support.
• Open source solutions – Enovation offer consultancy, hosting, training, integration and development, mainly in the areas of education, training and repositories.
• Moodle – As Moodle Partner, Enovation offers a full range of services designed to allow Moodle to provide educators with the best tools to create quality online learning courses.
• Repositories – Dspace, ePrints and Fedora. Implementing and customising repositories for Universities and libraries. The features of these products address storage and indexing of digital assets, archiving and preservation of digitised documents, on-line distribution of research material and automated workflow control of document & asset submission.

Key Benefits
• Experienced, accredited PM professionals managing complex projects.
• Cost-effective test solutions using best practise industry standards.
• Experienced team of open source developers with a deep understanding of the open source products, contributing regularly to the open source community.

Clients
Department of Social, Community and Family Affairs, Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform, Forfas, An Garda Siochana, Dublin Airport Authority, An Cosan, South Dublin County Council, Department of Finance, Fingal County Council, Local Government Management Services Board, FAS, Salford City Council (UK), The Samaritans (UK), The Chief State Solicitors Office

Partners
RCSI Health Care Management, Moodle, JasperSoft. Mahara, How to Moodle

Web www.enovation.ie

Tel +353 (0)1 602 4784

Address
The Friary, Bow Street, Dublin 7

Softworks provide flexible workforce solutions to the public, retail, hospitality, manufacturing and pharmaceutical sectors.

Products/Services
Time & Attendance, Flexitime, Scheduling, Timesheets, Absenteeism & Sick Pay/Sick Leave Tracking, Biometrics, Access Control and HRM solutions.

Key Benefits
• Saves time and money.
• Reduce absenteeism.
• Eliminate paper chase.
• Flexible data collection options.

Clients
Revenue Commissioners, Department of Finance, Department of Foreign Affairs, Department of Agriculture and Food, Department of Justice Equality and Law Reform, Dublin Airport Authority, Beaumont Hospital, Court Services, Department of Transport, Derry City Council, Dublin Bus, Dublin Port Company, Irish Prison Services, Midland Health Board, National Lottery, National Maternity Hospital, Northern Ireland Housing Executive, City Of Sunderland College, North Yorkshire County Council, Ministry of Defence.

Partners
IBM, Fujitsu, Accessit Data, Intelligo Software, Ceridian, Computers in Personnel, ICS Computing, Rutherford Webb, Select HR, Trace Employer Services.

Web www.softworks-workforce.com

Tel +353(0)1 286 6126

Address
111 Main Street, Bray, Co Wicklow.

Gartan Technologies provide personnel availability, activity attendance, payroll and rota management solutions for the fire service.

Products/Services
• FSi Availability – manages the availability of retained fire service personnel to attend emergency callouts.
• FSi Attendance/Payroll – manages callout attendances and the payment of fees, retainers and other allowances.
• Rota Management – manages fulltime rotas.

Key Benefits
• Ensure optimum use of resources.
• Management information, budgetary control and performance monitoring.
• Fire service crewing levels are always optimised.
• Web based-users manage the hours they are available.

Clients
Fire & Rescue Services in Gloucestershire, Cambridgeshire, Lancashire, Northumberland, Hampshire, Highlands and Islands, Central Scotland, Oxfordshire, Wiltshire, Cumbria, Cavan, Clare, Cork City, Donegal, Galway, Kildare, Kilkenny, Limerick County, Limerick City, Longford, Leitrim, Laois, Meath, Monaghan, Mayo, Offaly, Roscommon, Sligo, North Tipperary, South Tipperary, Waterford, Wexford, Wicklow.

Web www.gartantech.com

Tel +353 (0)74 9126608

Address
Enterprise Business Centre, Ballyraine, Letterkenny, Co Donegal.

Core International software caters for every aspect of employee management from recruitment to retirement. Core helps clients save money, time and resources by providing HR and payroll solutions to medium and large size public sector and multinational organisations. Core has a penetration rate of over 90% in the Irish public sector.

Products/Services

• Integrated CoreHR suite is modular, allowing organisations to select functionality to fit their requirements.
• Consultancy, training, and support for DBA and disaster recovery services.
• Bureau payroll and HR facility, serviced by industry experts.

Key Benefits
• Improve the overall running of their business.
• Reduce costs.
• Streamline processes.

Clients
All Irish Government Departments, all Universities, all Institutes of technology, the UK houses of Parliament, 11 of the world’s top 15 pharmaceuticals.

Partners
Core is an approved Oracle Business Partner.

Web www.corehr.com

Tel +353 (0)21 494 7400

Address
Core House, Westpoint Business Park, Link Road, Ballincollig, Cork.

FlexTime delivers web oriented employee time and location recording and rostering solutions including home, remote, mobile working, hot desking and eworking. This includes achieving the necessary changes in how working time is perceived and managed in customer sites.

Products/Services
• Time Recording: flexible working systems.
• Scheduling and rostering systems.
• Health and Safety including showing in real time who is in.
• Duty Management: Lets employees know what jobs they are expected to do.
• Technology combined with advice and studies.

Key Benefits
• Savings and work place improvements.
• Increase staff & supervisor morale.
• Reductions in absences, over time, staff turnover and administration  costs.
• Increase in business through better cover.

Clients
The Office of the Taoiseach, An Garda Siochana, Health Board, Health Research Board, Government offices for the UK, Liverpool University, Birmingham University.

Partners
Gallagher Security (Netherlands), TMC (Italy), MBB Gelma (Germany).

Web www.flextime.ie

Tel +353 (0)1 260 9680

Address
1 The Cranford Centre, Dublin 2.

Cora Systems provides ProjectVision – a programme, project and performance management system. ProjectVision is aimed at public sector, local government, national government, pharmaceutical, manufacturing, software, financial and other sectors that use formal project management methodologies.

Products/Services
• ProjectVision – web-based programme, project and performance Management.
• HelpdeskVision – web-based helpdesk with workflow, linkable to ProjectVision.
• PurchaseVision – web-based purchase orders.
• EGrantVision – grant management solution.
• InvestVision – online investment management for VC’s and financial institutions.
• Training in business process, project management ProjectVision and other related services.

Key Benefits
• Consistent framework by which projects can be managed and reported.
• Seamless visibility of all programmes and related information such as spatial (GIS) or Cashflow (Financial).
• Management information on the whole organisations work allowing key decisions from reliable data.
• Dramatic reduction in report generation time.

Clients
Fingal County Council, Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, Cork County Council, Leitrim County Council, Newcastle County Council.

Web www.corasystems.com

Tel +353 (0)71 962 2078

Address
IDA Business and Technology Park, Carrick-On-Shannon, Co. Leitrim.