We often hear decision makers at mid-sized companies say that their company is too small to see the benefits of implementing an idea management platform.
Ideawake powers innovation programs for companies from 50 up to 70,000 employees. What we’ve found from our data is that most companies over 50 employees can see a positive return on investment from investing in idea management software from improvements in efficiency, revenue growth and increased employee engagement.
Rundle Spence is an example of a company with under 100 employees we work with that has seen great results with Ideawake. Here’s what CEO David Spence said about implementing idea management software at his company:
“Ideawake is an extremely efficient and fun way to engage our employees in the innovation process. We’re excited to get our customers and vendors involved in Ideawake to help us gain a competitive advantage over the rest of the players in our industry. The Ideawake team really took the time to understand what makes our industry tick, how our business works, and then catered their solution to our needs. They’ve been incredibly helpful in terms of both strategy and support for Rundle Spence.”
Here are four benefits and ways that Ideawake provides assistance to smaller organizations that will help your company drive a positive return on your investment.
If your company has more than 50 employees, save a full-time salary in time moderating and managing ideas
Even if your company only has 50 employees, you can expect to receive between 25 – 30 ideas monthly. This may be manageable in the beginning, but will quickly become tough to track ideas in a spreadsheet and we all know how easy it is to lose information in email threads.
In fact, research shows the average office worker receives 200 emails a day. So if email is your company’s main channel for idea management communication, ideas can get lost in the shuffle.
Essentially, managing ideas through systems like SharePoint, Excel and email would be a full-time job without idea management software.
Let’s break it down: implementing management software for a 100 person company totals less than $10,000 a year, which is significantly less expensive than the salary of a full-time manager. In addition, idea management software tends to receive 25-30% more idea inflow than spreadsheets or emails, making the return on investment hard to ignore.
In addition, with idea management software, 70% of all communication is automated. This means it’s easier to track and communicate progress, hold participants accountable and move projects forward.
Improved collaboration and prioritization of ideas in your funnel
It’s been established that mid-level managers and decision makers don’t have much time to spare on an idea management program.
The good news is systems like Ideawake allow for crowdsourcing; regardless of company size, our software taps into the knowledge of employees in order to bring the best ideas to the forefront – saving the company time and resources to find the most valuable ideas.
Still not sure if Idea Management software can help your company? Download our whitepaper, “12 Questions to Determine if Your Company is Ready to Innovate”
Analytics and data that you review in board meetings can only tell you so much. Employees who are closest to a process have the best ideas on how to improve that innovation strategy and process. They also have a better idea of which ideas and initiatives will have the biggest impact in solving problems and enhancing customer experience.
Engage a higher percentage of employees to increase morale and retention
With a growing percentage of the workforce being millennials, it’s becoming increasingly important for companies to implement innovative technological solutions to problems in order to actively engage this demographic.
Research from Randstad found that two of the largest influencing factors for workers when considering a company to join are its use of the most up to date tools and innovative culture.
Tools like email and excel are hardly seen as “innovative technologies,” and having these as your main system can actually work towards disengaging employees – a scary thought when research shows 55% of millennials already consider themselves disengaged at work.
With idea management software, your employees will view your company as more innovative which will make them more likely to engage with a program. On average, 25% of employees are going to submit an idea at any given time. However, an additional 40-45% of your workforce will engage by commenting, improving upon and surfacing the best ideas.
When employees are engaged, your company’s retention rate is bound to increase. In fact, Gallup reported that engaged millennials are 64% less likely to say they will switch jobs if the job market improves in the next 12 months.
Leverage Ideawake with customers and suppliers
In addition to engaging employees, we’ve found our clients, especially those in the 50 – 250 employee range will quickly expand the program to engage their customers for ideas on new products and how to improve existing service offerings.
Now more than ever, engaging current customers to improve their satisfaction and engaging suppliers to improve efficiency is critical for companies to stay ahead of their competition in the business environment we live in today.
Research conducted by Deloitte found that not only do customers expect to be involved in the innovation process, but when they are involved, companies tend to develop new products and services more quickly and cost-effectively. In addition, The Huffington Post reports that 70% of companies that deliver an “outstanding customer experience” rely on customer feedback.
Engaging customers can also make them more loyal to your brand. By asking for ideas and feedback, and then actually making an effort to make those improvements, customers will begin to trust that your company cares about them – an essential step during the purchasing consideration phase. Wunderman found that 79% of consumers expect businesses to prove they care about them before they’ll even consider purchase a product or service.
The study also found that 74% of consumers say brands can meet their expectations by providing a higher level of customer service and there’s no better way to do that than with idea management software that lets consumers collaborate with a company to actively produce better solutions.