Member Article

Trends in corporate gifting 2013

The UK has had a love of gift vouchers for many years but the gift card didn’t come into the mainstream until as recently as 2002 - for the corporate market it wasn’t until a year later. Gift cards initially hit the UK marketplace through our work with Debenhams to introduce a flexible, more practical form of giving than the old fashioned voucher that was previously so dominant. From those early roots we’ve endeavoured to utilise technology to change the face of gifting in the UK, increasing its scope and making it more intuitive.

In terms of the industry as a whole, one of the biggest on-going projects is the development of mobile gifting. Mobile is changing the gifting market in two key ways. Apps and other mobile solutions are going to become an attractive selling-point for pre-paid products for a certain demographic of customer. The rapid growth of mobile devices, as a means of accessing and managing data, has meant that the market has effectively forced itself onto the priorities list for companies like PrePay Solutions.

The second is more long-term. Eventually customers are going to want the full end-to-end pre-paid experience to begin and end on a mobile device. Purchasing virtual gifting products on a smartphone is a great start, but the redemption of these in a multi-channel environment will also become a factor. It is still early days for this, but there are plenty of innovations under-way in the market to continue this journey moving forward.

As the recession continues to bite, UK businesses will continue to struggle with the enduring battle to incentivise their staff. Technology arms the employer with two important weapons in this fight. Firstly, the ability to offer highly flexible, practical and tailored rewards gives HR teams the ability to act quickly and plan incentives carefully on a case-by-case basis. Secondly, whilst budgetary restrictions will always be an important consideration, the technological edge allows firms to more easily measure the effectiveness of their motivation techniques, and cull the poorest performing incentives.

Successfully – and economically – motivating a workforce has been a struggle for employers since the industrial revolution, but we’re approaching a point at which the incentives available and the delivery vehicles that supply them, can evolve to meet whatever demands are placed upon them.“

By Ray Brash, MD of PrePay Solutions

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Rostrum .