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Idea Management Software Buyer's Guide
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Ideas come and go, but only some live and some need to track for positive results. To get profit from a good idea, you need to improve them continuously. No new idea is pursued immediately as soon as revealed and needs to be tested. Few new ideas do not appear worthy until developing a little. Companies are forced to ignore great ideas as it takes a lot of time to determine if an idea works or not. This may lead to miss a great opportunity, or worse, your competitors may develop the same idea later at any time.
What is Idea Management Software?
Idea management software is the collection of tools that help companies to identify and develop the best ideas that come from employees, customers, or the public. The software’s main goal is to prevent good ideas from losing or not be a waste to allow industry leaders to find the best ideas and make the right decisions.
What are the Features of Idea Management Software?
The features of idea management software have common elements with other genres of software, including mind-mapping software, project planning and management software, and knowledge management software. Apart from some similarities, the purpose of idea innovation management software is for the workflows, processing and permission controls required for idea submission, and collaboration development.
› CAMPAIGN SUPPORT: Idea management solution should support the company with unlimited idea campaigns. A campaign is a specific proposal for crowdsourcing ideas against a specific business challenge or an area to focus on.
› IDEA ARCHIVE WITH STRONG SEARCH: The software product that can archive ideas and allows searching through the existing ideas is important. You should be able to find the solution easily from the pool of ideas with strong search functionality features.
› FLEXIBLE IDEA SUBMISSION FORM: The best idea management software allows you to personalize idea input forms related to a specific project or campaign. Having a customizable submission form for different business challenges helps to get the information you need to test the ideas.
› FLEXIBLE REVIEW PROCESS: Along with the idea submission form, the idea management system should be able to accommodate certain types of flexibility, such as changeable criteria, variable review team, a variety of criteria types, and drop-down lists.
› REWARDS AND RECOGNITION: The software with incentive-based rewards and recognition system encourages your employees to increase their engagement and adopting the initiatives. This will encourage your employees to contribute their ideas towards a business challenge that leads to organizational growth.
› REAL-TIME FEEDBACK FORM: The software should have the user feedback feature that provides insights to make useful changes to meet the employee's expectations and fulfill their needs to give more effective ideas. This yields valuable information that will provide calculated decisions.
What are the Benefits of Idea Management Software?
Capturing ideas effectively from your employees and customers with idea management systems helps your organization build a systematic idea management process. The software comes with a lot of benefits than just innovation management. Because of the several compelling advantages with idea management, the software is gaining more popularity.
› CAPTURE IDEAS FROM ALL DEPARTMENTS: The software allows you to capture ideas easily from every employee of all departments. It also encourages your employees to give more ideas to capitalize and share them with the entire organization.
› CAPITALIZE QUICKLY ON THE BEST IDEAS: The software lets you tap on to ideas of all your employees, customers, and partners. The best ideas received and categorized will be able to capitalize quickly.
› PROMOTES TRANSPARENCY IN YOUR COMPANY: An open and transparent idea management tools help your employees to see other’s ideas and feedback. The ability to add improvisations to other's ideas allows them to take part actively and work together on ideas in an open system.
› ENCOURAGES COLLABORATION: Cooperating to work on an idea can help to give a shape to raw ideas into a more complete and compelling solution. If each opportunity for improvement is available broadly, then the process becomes cooperative and cross-functional.
› ACHIEVES COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE: The software helps your company to develop the best ideas quickly by collecting and evaluating them efficiently to increase their speed in the market. This helps the organization achieve sustainable competitive advantage.
› MEASURE RESULTS: Once the implementation of the idea starts, it is important to know if it is producing positive results. The software supports this process and makes it easy to consider if the improvement should be supported in other ways.
What is the Cost of Idea Management Software?
Innovation Tracking Software is used in collecting and developing innovative ideas by the companies. The tools help to improve cooperation between employees and gives them recognition. The price of the idea management software is an important consideration for any business, regardless of industry. Choosing the wrong product can cost you money, time, and effort. Before you choose an innovative tracking tool, do some research and compare the software's pricing options, features, and support from the vendor. This will help you to choose the perfect software for your business needs.
Different software providers offer different packages that meet your needs. Contact them to know more about the product and pricing information. You can also request a demo or use free versions with access to many important features to understand software functionality. Try using free versions of at least three or four software products to get clarity on what product suits your company best. The standard cost of the idea management software starts from $7/user/month or $575/month. However, the price of the software also depends on company size. If you are a large enterprise with more than 5000 employees, you have to contact the vendor to request a quote.
Conclusion
Novel ideas are key components in the innovation process. The idea management software allows organizations to measure the bottom-line of ideas collected and implemented. This helps businesses to stand separately in the competitive world with its innovative and productive ideas, which have a great impact on your organization's profitability. Weighing all your needs, choose the software in a way useful for your business.