Idea management software seeks two “holy grails” of enterprise collaboration technology: 1) innovation and 2) the breaking down of silos. Enterprise idea management has been around for over 10 years, but according to Mark Turrell, co-founder of pioneering idea management company Imaginatik and current CEO of Orcasci, there’s been an “explosion of interest” in the field in the past 18 months. Here are a few of the trends in the area that we’ve noticed.
Stand alone enterprise idea managment platforms are increasingly integrating with Microsoft Sharepoint. Imaginatik recently added Sharepoint integration to its flagship Idea Central product.
Spigit (our coverage) and Kindling, newer players with big name customers, have both announced SharePoint integration in the past 12 months as well. Kindling actually took it a step further with Outlook integration.
Since Sharepoint is the most popular enterprise collaboration platform, it makes sense for vendors to focus on Sharepoint.
Vendors Baking In Idea management
Meanwhile, other enterprise collaboration vendors are baking idea management into other products. MangoSping has an idea management solution (previous coverage) and Jive added an ideation module to its offerings in March.
Newsgator is fusing both trends by adding Ideas to its Social Sites for SharePoint offering.
Bringing ideation into existing collaboration tools – whether it’s SharePoint, Jive or something else entirely – is a logical strategy for enterprises hoping to encourage not just innovation but collaboration on ideas.
Customer Facing Tools Being Turned Inwards
Many times departments and business unit managers want to gather ideas from staff but don’t want to deal with complex solutions or wait for the IT department to purchase and deploy a solution. Other times, they find that the systems like Spigit are too complex.
“Most employees don’t have three hours a day to spend in these systems,” says UserVoice (see our previous coverage) CEO Richard White. UserVoice started as a customer-facing web application, but White says the company has been getting more inquiries from enterprises wanting to use it for internal purposes.
Deloitte is now offering a Deloitte Innovation Academy service that combines some of its own tools, UserVoice, and education to provide all in one innovation solution to enterprise customers.
Don’t be surprised to see Salesforce.com customers turn the Salesforce.com Ideas platform, used by companies like Starbucks and Dell to solicit consumer feedback, inward for more ideas.
Are You Using Idea Managment Software?
Are you using idea management software in your organization? Which software? Has it been successful in fostering innovation, or has it been an unnecessary distraction? Have you seen any trends we didn’t mention?
Photo by Bart
