Effectiveness is about doing the right thing. In Innovation Management, effectiveness ranges from selecting the right idea to delivering the right innovation to the market. Innovation effectiveness is the true essence of innovation management and is what customers desire the most. SAP Innovation Management has been designed along the principle of innovation effectiveness. Visually speaking, SAP Innovation Management helps companies to build their customized innovation funnel, which takes ideas as input and delivers great market-ready products as output.
SAP Innovation Management addresses innovation effectiveness holistically by providing different tools throughout the innovation process:
- Flexible stage gates
- Iterative stage gates
- Tailored evaluations
- Reporting
- Coach and expert model.
Innovation effectiveness in SAP Innovation Management - supporting the innovation management process end-to-end.
Flexible Stage Gates. Stage gates are decision points in the innovation management process, in which ideas are transferred into a new phase. Examples of such phases are prescreening, assessment or portfolio decision. Flexible stage gate processes allow customers to tailor the innovation process to their needs by defining new sequences of stage gates, phase transitions and phases. Moreover, they help companies to run the innovation management process in a structured way. Stage gate processes typically depend on the organizational structure and the existing processes and culture of the company. Moreover, these stage-gate processes can differ per innovation campaign, reflecting the requirements of each individual campaign.
Iterative Stages Gates. In the future, innovation management processes need to reflect a non-linear life-cycle of an idea to keep up with the pace of innovation in some industries. So ideas do not need to follow a fixed sequentially process, but can be accelerated or re-iterated along the innovation management process. Finally, this helps companies to deliver the right innovations as fast as possible but also helps to re-iterate over ideas considering the fast-changing environment of technology and economy.
Tailored Evaluations. To decide upon the innovative character of an idea, it needs to be evaluated. Evaluations heavily depend on the particular aim of the campaign, such as target market, type of product and customer base. Evaluations can be performed upon multiple dimensions such as viability on the market, desirability by the customer and feasibility regarding technology and financial constraints. So the criteria of such evaluations need to be customizable for each campaign. Only the right evaluation criteria will help to find the right innovation. SAP Innovation Management helps companies to design and select the evaluations for discovering the right ideas.
Reporting. To enable innovation effectiveness and to select the right ideas out of the innovation management process, reporting is crucial. Using the reporting capabilities of SAP Innovation Management companies can filter the right ideas by analyzing the submitted evaluations and other innovation indicators. Examples of innovation indicators can be qualitative data like tags.
Coach and Expert Model. Coaches and experts guide the innovation management process in SAP Innovation Management. They guarantee the innovation effectiveness from two sides. Coaches guide their assigned ideas along the individual stage gates of a campaign in SAP Innovation Management. They request experts to submit their evaluations and communicate with the idea submitter if required. Moreover, they help the campaign manager to select the right campaigns. All these tasks focus on the innovation effectiveness. Coaches thereby ensure that there is no delay in the innovation management process. Delays can be harmful to the overall process, as innovations should be delivered in the right timing to the market. Moreover, avoiding delays keeps the innovative momentum inside a company and satisfies all participants of the innovation management process. Experts provide their expertise regarding particular topics by performing evaluations in SAP Innovation Management and help thereby their company to select the right ideas.
Overall, SAP Innovation Management has incorporated various tools to achieve innovation effectiveness throughout the complete innovation management process. Benefits of the provided tools are:
- Transparency, as evaluations and process decisions can be shared with the community and are available to the individual idea author
- Targeted on discovering the right idea as innovation management processes can be tailored per campaign
- No delay in the innovation management process, as coaches overview the status of each individual idea and guide the idea.
Overall, SAP Innovation Management enables thought leadership through out the whole innovation process based on its campaign-functionality, its expert evaluations and its strong analytical capabilities. Thus, SAP Innovation Management helps companies to inspire employess, partners and customers based on great thought leadership.
This is a post of the Let´s talk SAP Innovation Management, which shall drive discussion about innovation management inside and outside of SAP. We are very keen on getting your thoughts and feedback in all aspects of innovation management.
All articles of the Let´s Talk SAP Innovation Management Series can be found here.
About SAP Innovation Management
The SAP Innovation Management solution helps companies foster innovation, capture it, and effectively and rapidly turn it into value generating initiatives that deliver continued industry leadership.
Comprising unique products, services, processes, methodologies, and governance, the SAP Innovation Management solution helps establish a sustainable creative culture that overcomes departmental silos and unleashes the power of innovation.
For further information about SAP Innovation Management please click here.
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