Businesses in the B2C retail and manufacturing sectors are coming under increasing pressure as competition and economic challenges intensify, so it’s more important than ever to stay relevant and visible to customers.
Innovation is key to staying relevant. Without innovation, businesses often stagnate and consumers flock to their rivals, while external market forces may strangle the life from companies who insist on observing outdated procedures or models. Consequently, more businesses are adopting innovation management techniques as a strategy for continuous service improvement.
What Is Innovation Management?
In simple terms, innovation management is the process of systematically creating new ideas, approaches, or products, from concept to implementation, and utilising these to develop and grow the business.
There are four stages in innovation management:
- Generating: brainstorming and seeking employees’ input to identify new ideas and concepts.
- Capturing: recording and presenting ideas so they can be shared with stakeholders.
- Evaluating: discussing, analysing, and interrogating ideas to ensure they meet the organisation’s needs.
- Prioritising: choosing which ideas will be implemented to optimise resources and time in the business.
Innovation management is most effectively implemented in a collaborative environment in which communication between employees at all levels of seniority is encouraged and facilitated.
Why Is Innovation Management Important?
- It gives businesses the edge when entering new markets and reinforces their presence in existing markets, which enables them to secure more lucrative opportunities for growth.
- It supports businesses to develop original ideas without unacceptable levels of risk.
- Growth is more achievable, even if the process of creating new concepts isn’t always straightforward.
- It ensures that a product portfolio remains relevant to customers, increasing brand engagement and generating sales.
- Businesses that fail to innovate are at a high risk of failing – even established household names – as they rely on outdated models that are unprofitable or irrelevant to modern consumers.
How Reflex Planning Can Help You To Establish An Innovation Management Strategy
Reflex Innovation Management is an integrated planning tool that supports the introduction of new products, develops collaborative working across businesses, monitors progress, and identifies risk.
Product features:
- Defines your critical path, assigns resources, and generates a detailed project plan.
- Easily configurable to match your businesses processes.
- Integrated Gantt chart for reviews of progress.
- Controlled product launch tools, including dummy products, document management, audit trails, integrated reporting, and project tracking.
- Integrates with demand and capacity planning.
Contact Us To Find Out More
If you would like to find out more about how Reflex Innovation Management could support your business, please contact us today on 0044 1889 508075 or request a free demonstration here.
