Getting ready for innovation management software in 2024?

Innovation organizations can gain significant benefits and competitive advantage from digitizing their innovation processes. But by how much and how quickly will vary greatly – based on the approach you take and the software you select.

With a track-record of delivering over 40 successful digital transformation projects in the last 15 years, we’ve honed our expertise across a spectrum—from smaller R&D units with fewer than 50 people to complex organizations with thousands. Drawing from this experience, here is a distilled guide to help you make a winning case for innovation digitization.

Know your starting point

All transformation programs should be clear about their starting line. – how well your current systems are boosting, or hindering, your innovation performance. Typically, organizations find themselves at one of these three crossroads:

We manage everything right now with email, spreadsheets, Word documents and PowerPoint and need to up our game.
We have a basic project management tool but now want to consider a more comprehensive platform.
We are constrained by outdated innovation management software and want to evaluate moving to a state-of the art system.

Unlock the value proposition for your business

Your innovation digitization project should hang its hat on four key outcomes:

Will this give us information to make better project investment decisions?
Will this accelerate project teams and project execution?
Will this reduce the uncertainty and variance of project outcomes?
Will this minimize the time and effort to manage innovation?

Smarter investment, faster results, reduced risk and lower costs: the points that executives yearn to hear to justify your project. The magnitude of these benefits, of course, depends on your starting point.

Identify your change champions

Who will benefit the most from a new system? Enlist these people to champion your cause and support the business case for software enablement. These will include:

Executive decision makers (i.e., Gatekeepers)
Project leaders and teams
Resource managers
Portfolio planners and Portfolio Management Offices (PMOs)

Pinpoint the jobs to be digitized

Today’s Innovation management software can tackle a wide range of jobs that drive innovation performance. But no one size fits all – each software vendor comes with various strengths, weaknesses and price points.

Here is a starting list for the most common jobs – pinpoint the ones you need to get done immediately and those that can wait for a second or third phase. Your executive sponsors will want to see a realistic implementation plan that delivers quick wins for your business.

Portfolio Management
Strategic roadmapping
Stage-Gate governance
Stage deliverables management
Financial business cases and cost management
Resource capacity planning and tracking
Project management (agile and waterfall)
Product requirements management
Voice of customer analysis
Team collaboration and notifications
Ideation and opportunity discovery
Reporting and metrics
Data integration with other corporate systems such as ERP, PLM, Financials and data warehouses

Select the right software

Every software vendor will compete for your attention, promoting their unique selling points, and downplaying their product weaknesses. Here are a few pro tips to consider in your selection process:

Pick a scalable platform. Opt for a platform that you can grow into. Your software should be a long-term investment, scalable to support your future needs. Otherwise, you may incur significant switching costs down the road.

Pick a configurable platform. Your software should adapt to your unique needs, not the other way around. The best way to fail with software is to frustrate your people, forcing them to adapt to functionality that does support your ways of working. The best software tools are highly configurable, without the cost of hard-to-maintain ‘customization’ code.

Insist on a Proof of Concept. Never settle for just a sales demo. Insist on a three-month free trial. This is a long-term investment, so reliable vendors will offer you a try-before-you-buy, to see how the software will really work for you.

Check the vendor’s customer installed base. Are most existing customers using the system to manage innovation, or for other purposes? Vendors will drive their product roadmaps according to the needs of their installed base. If you don’t fit their installed base, then their future releases won’t fit you.

Software as a service (SaaS) is non-negotiable. Cloud-based software is lower risk, easier and cheaper to support and reduces upfront investment. A single-tenant SaaS solution is even better, giving you more control over software configuration, version upgrades, and secure data and backups.

Crunch the numbers. Always evaluate the total cost of ownership for your software implementation. This will include:

Software licensing. Which capabilities are available for which type of user license, and how does that fit with the number of job executors you have?
Software hosting. Is this included in the license fee, or extra? Does it include data backup and restore? What security is being offered? Does it guarantee adequate system response time and scaling with your usage?
Product maintenance and support. What is covered? Do you have the rights to future version upgrades and modules? How often are upgrades released? What is the contractual resolution time for different types of defect or issue? Will their support cover your own specific configuration?
Implementation and training. How much will the vendor charge to design and configure the system to fit your innovation processes, and provide training in the process and software going forward?

Consider these pro tips and you will be well on your way to a successful innovation digitization project. For personalized guidance tailored to your unique challenges, I’m offering a free consultation. Contact me at colin.palombo@stage-gate.com and let’s make your digital transformation project a triumph!