Introduction to readers
Ideas are very important throughout all your life. Like small, childhood ones, how to get your sandcastle bigger, through the breakthrough ones, from industrial revolution ideas that changed the world as we know it.
Now you can choose from many innovation management platforms that can help improve your business in every way. But is there a universal one, or one size doesn’t fit all?
In this blog digest, we analyzed the most competitive Innovation management software that can assist you in your innovation process with their end-to-end innovation management platforms. With the focus on functionalities and usability as the requirements that all users are in pursuit for, you will know from the first hand what are the pros and cons of this type of software.
Innovation Cloud is one of the most comprehensive, end-to-end innovation management platform, made available on the cloud. On whatever type of innovation you think, they will support it. Top-down innovation, bottom-up innovation, challenge-driven innovation, open innovation, crowdsourcing, phase-gated methodology, NPD, product portfolio management, market tracking…It’s so easy-to-use yet engage and stimulate end-users, that will pull out ideas even from the most elusive ones. The progress of innovation is followed from idea to market, with comprehensive and real-time reports and analytics, so you can always make educated decisions and track your future success.
To make adoption easier and speed up the implementation process, Innovation Cloud can be quickly deployed within your current environment so your end users can maintain their existing tools. And not to forget, their dedicated team of experts available 24/7, to assist you to utilize software to suit your exact needs.
Usability
End-users minimalistic Interface
The intuitive, minimalistic interface of the Innovation Cloud platform for the end-users is the result of years of fine-tuning, recently redesigned.
Functional Data Visualizations
Innovation Cloud flagship software, “Enterprise,” with built-in reports are actionable and ready for export. The capabilities of custom reports will make it much easier for your executives to make educated decisions.
Features
Most features are customizable.
With the Global application, you can customize literally everything. Enables you to digitalaze every part of your innovation process.
Extensive Integration capabilities.
SSO integration is free of charge in any scenario. Possible integration with any other third party software, such as Microsoft SharePoint, Yammer…
Pros
- With Enterprise solution, you can customize everything, literally.
- Text editing features available, no need for uploading and downloading documents
- Lots of advanced, real-time reports. Need more? No problem, customize your reports
Cons
- The web presentation of their different solutions is a bit confusing. Clarification: Enterprise solution stands for out-of-box innovation management platform that can be customized to suit your company needs. The Global solution stands for a tailor-made software solution that you jointly design with their experts from the ground.
Founded in 2006, Qmarkets is one of the most acclaimed innovation management platforms on the market. Qmarkets’ Q-360 suite of collective intelligence products is tailored to address specific use-cases.
The various Qmarkets products are available in three editions, each of which is tailored to enterprises that are at different stages of the innovation process.
Usability
Easy Deployment
With Qmarkets, stakeholders are seamlessly added to the platform via a back-end integration that only requires a one-time setup. Deployment is also kickstarted thanks to pre-packaged solutions designed for specific innovation needs.
Intuitive Self-Admin Capabilities
In addition to offering a selection of best-practice workflow templates, Qmarkets has recently launched a flexible self-admin tool, which offers greater control over specific workflows, as well as a selection of customization capabilities.
Features
Screening and Evaluation Tools
The Qmarkets platform offers intelligent crowd-voting tools, and other features designed to evaluate and incubate ideas within the pipeline. ROI and analytical capabilities are also included.
Intelligent Automation Tools
Qmarkets offers a variety of automation tools, including automated user selection and idea graduation. These utilize predefined criteria to trigger activity and progression within the system.
Pros
- Ease of Use and creation challenge
- Ease of multinational expansion
- Scalability
Cons
- General problem with language translation (Duch, Hebrew). Not supporting all functionalities on other languages.
- More focus on idea management and crowdsourcing than on NPD
IdeaScale represents the emerging platforms in the innovation management niche. Founded recently in 2009, IdeaScale places heavy emphasis on features like gamification and mobile-responsiveness.
Using crowdsourcing, IdeaScale allows organizations to involve the opinions of public and private communities by collecting their ideas, voting on ideas, reviewing ideas and finally implementing those ideas.
Usability
Simplified Interface
IdeaScale’s has an easy-to-use basic interface, deriving concepts from social media networking sites. New users can be brought on board via invitations to a portal where they can submit and vote on ideas.
Manual Idea Pipeline Movement
IdeaScale requires a degree of manual effort to move ideas from conception all the way to implementation. On the flip side, the platform gives businesses more control over the quality of ideas being pushed through the pipeline.
Features
Mobile Optimized
While the most
Open Customization
With IdeaScale, companies can modify every image, language, and interface structure within the platform. Alternatively, they can have a dedicated UX team modify the interface according to their needs.
Pros
- It’s easy to install and use.
- Highly reliable and scalable platform idea generation and management.
- Customer support is high quality.
Cons
- The lack of a few useful enhancements, for example, the ability to clear leaderboards or have leaderboards by campaign but, overall, I dislike very little.
- Covers only idea management and crowdsourcing
Brightidea is another veteran in the innovation market, offering a robust feature set for businesses of all sizes. Its products focus on empowering the workforce, measuring the potential of new ideas, and consolidating insights for the resolution of company-wide problems.
With Brightidea you can engage your employees and partners at scale, collaborate on different ideas, and foster a culture of innovation within your company.
Usability
Flexible Modular Interface
The user-friendly and customizable interface of the platform offers simplified ideation monitoring. This makes it readily applicable to a variety of business models.
Intuitive Project Management Screens
Brightidea makes the process of managing and tracking multiple ideation projects from a single hub extremely simple. The platform’s transparent evaluation capabilities also take out the guesswork of shortlisting the best ideas
Features
Innovation Apps
Brightidea offers 15 separate innovation apps designed to address specific objectives, such as initiating employee engagement, tracking trends, and developing opportunities.
Engagement Metrics
To gauge the effectiveness of your innovation campaign, Brightidea comes equipped with built-in engagement metrics that track employee engagement and collaboration.
Pros
- Modular platform, easy to use for back-end users.
- Reactive support team in case of technical issues. You are never alone with your problem.
- Talented team of Professional services team to get you up and running.
Cons
- A similar, yet diverse submission form can be confusing and challenging for use.
- More focus on contribution and engagement metrics than on metrics related to innovation process.
Spigit is driven largely by a primary goal: to enable enterprises to leverage the collective intelligence of their stakeholders. Founded in 2007, the Spigit platform is recognized for its user-friendliness, scalability, and extensive employee-engagement capabilities.
Usability
Minimalistic Interface
Spigit’s simple and sleek interface can facilitate the management of several idea challenges simultaneously.
Idea Feed
The idea feed makes it easy to stay ahead of new and ongoing ideas in your innovation campaign. Valuable metrics, such as star ratings and incubation progress bars, let you spot high-priority ideas rapidly.
Features
Open Idea Marketplace
With Spigit, employees are put in the driver’s seat when it comes to innovation management. They can pitch ideas, provide feedback, submit projections, and more via an interface modeled on popular social media platforms.
Predictions
As employees push new ideas into the workflow, Spigit’s algorithm works in the background to highlight the most lucrative ideas.
Pros
- End-to-end management of challenges/programs
- Community management, including voting and comments
- Great support from Spigit managers who are always ready to give you a good piece of advice
Cons
- The admin side is a little less intuitive
- Backend still a bit clunky and difficult to use and pricing is not very flexible. The mobile version also needs to be better improved
There it is. The list of Innovation Management Software that are the most used and have strong positions on the market. Everybody is constantly improving so there is a chance to find some new features and functionalities very soon.
As far as usability is concerned, going with any of the platforms above should cause a minimal friction during deployment. After all, these companies constantly update both back and front ends to boost their adoption across enterprises of all sizes.
Features-wise, the top competitors are Innovation Cloud, Brightidea, IdeaScale. However Qmarkets has a slight edge. This is largely thanks to its versatile evaluation tools, streamlined automation capabilities, and recently-added self-admin features – delivering a broad degree of flexibility when crafting innovation challenges.
The impressive consulting capabilities of Innovation Cloud – as well as its simple, distraction-free – make it well suited for getting innovation projects off the ground quickly. Brightidea, Spigit, and IdeaScale also offer a robust array of features and tracking capabilities.
However, in terms of achieving a good balance between usability, scalability, flexibility, and automation, Innovation Cloud is certainly the main contender and out top choise.
