Incentive by design, Ima–cc new member news – Incentive Publications PM40801507 User Manual

Page 16

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background image

A

founding member of IMA
Canada has launched an
exciting

and

innovative

new software product that
will allow its users to

design their own in-house rewards
programs on demand.

Carlton Group Inc. is a relative new-

comer to the Canadian incentive mar-
ket, having launched its first online
application in 2000. Since then, the
company has grown exponentially,
adding dozens of blue chip clients.
Carlton Group is now upping the ante
on the competition with the introduc-
tion of Power2Motivate™, the only
“on-demand” system in the market
today. “We designed P2M™ to enable
our clients to create and manage their
own programs,” says Rob Purdy, CEO
of Carlton Group and past-president of
IMA Canada. “All the tools are there.”

Power2Motivate is very different

from

traditional

managed

online

rewards programs. The biggest differ-
ence – and likely a major selling point
– is the pricing structure. Clients are
not charged for P2M software because
they create and modify the system
themselves. However, clients are not
left completely without resources
because a “motivation coach” is
assigned to each account to help
answer business questions or solve
technical and programming issues.
Users pay only for the points they
award with no setup or ongoing man-
agement fees.

“It’s a very unique business proposi-

tion for clients. It’s also compelling
for medium-sized businesses because
managed systems can be very expen-
sive,” says Purdy.

A

three-minute

Flash

tour

at

www.power2motivate.com explains
how the program works. Key to the
program’s success is its vast rewards
database. Through Carlton Group,
Power2Motivate offers everything from
event tickets to online travel and its
association with Amazon gives its
users access to millions of other
reward items. Its delivery system is
one of the best in the business with
rewards being shipped anywhere with-
in North America within three to five
business days.

The program was launched at the

end of February and has already gained
a strong following, Purdy asserts.

Elmer Saslo, director of information

technology with Corporate Sport Inc. in
Fairfax, Virginia, previewed 12 different
points programs before settling on P2M.
After just a few months of using P2M
with a few clients, Saslo says the feed-
back has been “absolutely amazing.”

“They’re able to connect with their

participants in a way they haven’t
before,” he says. “This is by far the
most scalable and customized applica-
tion I’ve seen.”

P2M is very modular, offering

“unparalleled” flexibility that can
meet client needs in a way not offered
elsewhere in industry, even for very
small companies with tight budgets.
“P2M gives us the ability to offer a
much broader range of recognition
capabilities than we ever were able to
offer before,” Saslo says.

The new system also allows clients

to recognize and reward employees for
specific skills and accomplishments
from a managerial level. “It really
allows us to put the program opera-
tion more into the hands of the client,”
he notes.

Cotton Candy Inc. is a company that

is working with Carlton Group to mar-
ket P2M in Canada. Company president
John Houlding says the introduction of
P2M is shaking up the incentive world
and he predicts the new system will
cause huge changes in the industry.

“The software they have developed is

fantastic because it’s basically the
same massive software used by Fortune
500 companies but in a generic scaled-
down version anyone can use,” Hould-
ing says, adding P2M has all the “bells
and whistles” of a big program without
the ongoing management costs.

The beauty of P2M, Houlding says,

is that it gives Human Resources per-
sonnel the flexibility to develop their
own rewards systems.

INCENTIVE FOR CHANGE

Carlton Group spent nearly two decades
as a promotional consulting agency help-
ing clients to develop and execute sales
promotions. That continued until 2000,
when Carlton Group was approached by
a pharmaceutical company that wanted
a proprietary system to allow them to
manage an incentive application. The
online system handled very sensitive
information and had to be secure.

It was a first for Carlton Group, but it

launched the company on its new path
as developer of incentive systems. “We
had no experience other than we han-
dled catalogue-based, incentive pro-
grams to that point. Everything was to
be integrated and completely online,”
Purdy recalls. From that point, Carlton
Group transformed itself from a paper-
based incentive provider into automat-
ed online systems creating IMS, a pro-
prietary software solution that can be
customized to meet the needs of any
client. Although the new system was
not the only one of its kind, it did repre-
sent a massive shift both in the indus-
try and for Carlton Group, he says.

“It was a marvelous transformation

for our company. All of a sudden our
clients looked at the capabilities of IMS
and several converted immediately from
paper to online.”

CANADIAN

IN

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MAGAZINE

BUYERS’

GUIDE

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16

Incentive by Design

New system puts incentive programs in the
customers’ hands

By Jodi Ferguson

IMA–CC NEW MEMBER NEWS

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