Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/687399
june 2016 / the tasting panel / 57 Joe Lacroix, Director of Creative and Front-End Design. InsightAction shows you where to look, what to do and where to go. The very same patterns of intuition and design used by successful game developers are the prime drivers behind InsightAction's pathway toward success through the magic of gamification. In the world of beverage alcohol, InsightAction, The Tasting Panel's Innovator of the Year, provides the industry's proverbial movers and shakers with indispensable real-time tools that make it easier to push toward the critical endgame of growing revenue and maximizing profit. "Our view of gamification focuses on enabling players—our clients—to achieve their goals," explains Dave Dennis, InsightAction's President and CEO. "When organizational goals are aligned with player or functional goals, the organization achieves its goals as a consequence of players in their functions achieving their goals." The brain trust at InsightAction comes to the table with gaming know-how. Take Joe Lacroix, Director of Creative and Front-End Design, who has worked on some of the globe's largest gaming fran- chises. "It's all about user expectation; if you can put yourself inside the user's head in a given situation, you can dial in the experience to the point that the interface becomes instinctual," says Joe. According to Joe, users just want to succeed. "Gamification has been around since the dawn of time," he states. "I think the desire to be rewarded or win is in our DNA, and what better way attain those results than to make a game of it, particularly if the game's reward is revenue and profit." One of the core strengths behind InsightAction's data manage- ment solutions is that it integrates gamification, gaming theory and gaming mechanics into an easy to consume interface that optimizes the experience of specific end users. It's a process that acknowledges the fact that, just like there are different types of gamers, there are different types of data consumers that satiate their desire to obtain vital metric-driven information in varying ways. "We can easily customize our software to specifically ensure each unique client user experience is supported with intuitive naviga- tion aligned with their own decision-making path," explains Bruce Christie, Team Software Development Lead at InsightAction: "We build solutions that enable our clients to intuitively navigate on their own to secure the information they require in ways they are accus- tomed to consuming their information." InsightAction's unique form of information consumption and visualization has created a vital tool to help any organization involved with beverage alcohol become far more efficient in achieving their goals. Instead of having to learn new complex systems, InsightAction's applications can be deployed without training. Front-line users intuitively know where to click to access the information they require to advance the goals of the business. Organizations can tailor their data experience to set the parameters of their short-term and long-term goals and around the user to easily access and share a broad range of business-critical information that can include: shipments; depletions; key account sales; on and off-premise sales; marketing effectiveness; ROI; competitive intel; and newly collected execution data. Ultimately, the intuitive tools that InsightAction can provide for business in the beverage alcohol industry allows them the kind of efficiency needed to thrive. In a way, it's not unlike how an easy-to-use video game schematic makes it easier for the user to level up and, ultimately, win.