Quite a few companies are working on this around the world. A concrete example coming to mind is Entellium, that makes a CRM which is largely driven by game mechanics.
Problem is, good game mechanics are very hard to do. But even worse, using such mechanics makes it very easy to accidentally promote wrong behaviour.
For example, score 2 points for sending an email to a prospect, score 5 for calling. 3 emails will give you more points, but any salesman will tell you one call is worth more than 3 emails. So if the "game balance" in your biz app is off, you might thus end up with negative productivity for your users :-)
Problem is, good game mechanics are very hard to do. But even worse, using such mechanics makes it very easy to accidentally promote wrong behaviour.
For example, score 2 points for sending an email to a prospect, score 5 for calling. 3 emails will give you more points, but any salesman will tell you one call is worth more than 3 emails. So if the "game balance" in your biz app is off, you might thus end up with negative productivity for your users :-)
It's all very interesting though.