Check out Calgary’s Kudos now and thank me later

Pretty impressive launch for Kudos®.

Kudos, The Calgary-based start-up recently premiered its new social network for peer recognition at The Motivation Show in Chicago and generated a lot of buzz in the process.

“We discovered that we are at the forefront of a new way of thinking, Tom Short, co-founder of Kudos, told me. “The whole conference was still stuck in the last decade selling merchandise (read as: rewards) as the way to motivate employees.”

An article in this months issue of HR Magazine reports that only 33% of the workforce is engaged at work. 49% are not engaged and 18% are actively disengaged.  Those are some scary numbers! 67% of employees who are working right now are disengaged. (Get yourself educated on current engagement trends, courtesy of the Corporate Leadership Council, here).

The timing for Kudos market entry couldn't be much better as organizations the world over desperately search for new ways to engage good employees while simultaneously guarding the bottom line.

“The corporate social network that we call Kudos is based on the core of recognition,which we see as the central enabler within organizations to provide a better means to engagement," says co-founder, Muni Boga. "Typically, the reward - a form of extrinsic motivation - has been perceived to be the way to engage a team.  But, in fact, it’s recognition, corporate culture, and social integration that truly engages a team."

I’ve chatted with Tom and Muni a couple times since the show and their excitement is palpable. And why not?

Consider:

• The media release announcing the availability of Kudos 3.0 picked up a number of significant placements, including coverage by Information Week and Reuters (ask a start-up CEO how easy that is to pull off);
• Just in the last week, Tom and Muni have talked to execs from consultancies from Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Asia, South America and even Russia – all of them jockeying for the right to re-sell Kudos in their region;
• Built on Ruby on Rails and with a simple, scalable database set-up to provide universal accessibility and dead easy implementation, Kudos will offer a mobile solution by the end of 2011 and apps are in the works for Q1 of 2012;
• The analytics engine behind Kudos is a game changer – ask yourself what the ability to immediately and accurately measure the impact of employee recognition and peer mentoring is to your organization? What if you could tie that BI directly to corporate strategy in a way that both HR and your CFO can appreciate; and
• Kudos’ price point for delivering their elegant and timely solution for tapping “the social life inside your business” is  $1 per user per month – Kudos competitors average between $5 and $30 per user, per month.

Net-net: Kudos has a smart, cost-effective solution for employee engagement that’s easy to implement and can be effectively marketed thru strategically-positioned partners that add value.

Small wonder that by the time I’d caught up with Tom and Muni again last night more than 100 new clients had already signed up for the service at Kudosnow.com

But it’s a massive market opportunity isn’t it? Any organization, of any size, in any region (language support coming soon), connecting local and mobile teams seamlessly and driving real-time business value?

“Most companies and technologies are limited by a vertical or by the audience that needs their solution. Kudos is about people in all organizations . . . business, not for profits, schools, you name it,” says Short. “Everyone that has a smart phone, or uses a computer any where in the world could have a Kudos account. We’re the simple, low cost solution to engagement.”

With the foundation of the Kudos platform established and product adoption growing, Kudos solution is already gaining validation in the market, and with a global foot print.

“Kudos is about a way of life that revolves around treating people better and accelerating our potential as individuals and teams. Imagine you are at work and someone gives you Kudos for something that you did that perhaps normally would go unnoticed," says Boga. "Integrate this way of thinking globally and all of a sudden the world becomes a better place to be.”

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