Every innovation, whether a product, service or process, begins with an idea. Most top-level executives worldwide believe that idea management is a significant business growth driver for both short-term and long-term success of any brand. Ideas, whether big or small, could drive meaningful value and define innovation in an organisation.
The term ‘innovation’ simply means solving problems that matter to an organisation or – customers, workers, and other stakeholders – to improve overall experience and performance. To become innovative as a company and ensure sustainable growth, you need an effective way to access the wealth of ideas within your business.
Indeed, it is a potential goldmine if only you can identify and capitalise upon the right ideas to identify potential areas for improvement, adapt your business strategy to emerging priorities, and, most importantly, find new cost-effective ways to improve your bottom-line.
To help business owners and entrepreneurs understand the potential of logical approach to effective idea management and how you can leverage it, here are 5 creative ways your company can use idea management software to ensure sustainable business growth.
1. Streamline your company’s processes
Every company has numerous business-related processes. Human resource, administration processes, finance, customer support, sales processes, and operations… these are examples of organisations’ functions where executives have standardised their operations, whether formally or informally.
While each process was set up for a specific reason, most of them run inefficiently. For instance, some of these processes may not have fully adapted when changes happen in the organisation, and even if they have, there is always wiggle room for improvement.
Basically, there are numerous opportunities where slight adjustments might lead to considerable savings in time and costs. The benefit of taking advantage of this low-hanging fruit is that their benefits are compounded, resulting in a positive ripple impact on a business’s bottom-line. If you’re unsure where to begin from, in terms of idea generation and management, ask your staff how they’d enhance the current procedures linked to their work.
This is a guaranteed way to get practical ideas. A good idea management software can help capture these ideas, analyse them, and identify practical opportunities for improvement.
2. Identify new client segment for your products
Nearly all the fast-growing products or services were first designed for a specific client segment. For example, Facebook started as a simple social platform for Harvard University students. Slack was just a chatroom for an engineering team, and Amazon was initially an online book store. These are just a few examples of successful companies that grew gradually by finding new ways they could use the current tech to reach new client segments.
Analyse your customers’ feedback and ask your company’s staff to brainstorm creative ways to utilize what you already have to reach new markets. Sure, most of the ideas might not make much economic sense, but one or two ideas certainly will.
3. Cost optimisation
Every process has waste. It is the reason there are no perpetual motion machines. Unfortunately, most organisations are wasting a lot of resources. For instance, half of the food items produced worldwide is never consumed!
Unnecessary waste has a significant effect on a company’s sustainability and a significant financial impact on its overall performance. Every buck saved in minimising waste is money that goes towards the overall profitability and positive performance of the company. Thus, minimising waste and the resultant cost optimisation is something every company should plan to do systematically.
But where do you begin? The answer is simple; idea management.
via Microsoft Teams
via Web Interface
4. Boost sales
Businesses thrive or fall, depending on their revenue and sales numbers. Even if a business does everything right, but its sales numbers are in the ICU, it can never achieve sustainable growth. On the contrary, a less popular product could be tremendously successful in the able hands of a highly organised and effective sales department. The beauty of sales management is that slight adjustments, which are often straightforward and affordable, could result in considerable growth.
The biggest challenge lies in taking note of these minor but highly impactful changes and finding cost-effective ways to manage and track their efficiency. A cost-effective way to address this challenge is to implement the right system for your company’s sales representatives to log in their insights, challenges, and opportunities. These are different forms of ideas that might offer you the chance to improve your business’s sales numbers.
5. Improve customer experience
While it is imperative to identify the problems your clients have, it is just as crucial to address them long before they appear. Your smart staff members know your clients’ needs better than anyone else. That’s the reason it pays off to request your employees to identify the right opportunity for improving client experience.
Keep in mind that your employees, particularly in the marketing and sales departments, know your products, and target consumers perfectly. So, why not ask for their help in identifying the less performing aspects of customer experience and how to address these issues?
A logical approach is important in this case. Without it, your work is likely to be infrequent or often focus on the specific areas some employees are most focal about, rather than the ones with the highest potential. That’s why you need a highly reliable idea management software.
Wrap up
The concept of idea management revolves around a formalised and structured routine for generating, organising, evaluating, and implementing ideas to drive innovation and business growth. Unlike other business theories, practices, and models, idea management is infinitely flexible, simple, and hugely transformative if implemented well.
