Innovation Planning, Collaborative Roadmapping and Management Efficiencies aim to Safeguard Continued Market Leadership Position
AMSTERDAM – December 5, 2018 – Sopheon, a global leader for enterprise innovation management solutions, today announces a client relationship with Endress+Hauser SE+Co. KG, a global supplier of products, solutions and services for industrial process automation.
Endress+Hauser SE+Co. KG, headquartered in Germany and part of the Switzerland-based Endress+Hauser group, has long driven growth through innovation. The group introduced 57 new products and 261 new patent applications in 2017 alone. The company found, however, that continued industry leadership called for a further step in continuous improvement of internal planning and decision-making processes.
“We engaged with Sopheon initially with a view to implementing an improved Stage-Gate® process that would keep us focused on the right investments. This quickly evolved into a requirement for a Roadmapping solution to support the management of product portfolios,” says Endress+Hauser’s Director of Technology, Dr. Peter Selders. “Our use of traditional office tools for our Roadmapping activities was creating roadmaps based on a disconnected view of our data, processes and workflows; this did not allow for efficient collaboration in this age of digitalization.”
With the launch of Sopheon’s Accolade® software to support connected, strategic views of R&D projects, the overall product portfolio and forward-looking innovation plans, Endress+Hauser looks to enhance alignment of innovation execution with business strategy. Ultimately, based on collaborative roadmaps, visualizing the true innovation and product portfolios, the organization will be able to prioritize their investments in a better and more transparent way. Eventually this will result in more efficient product management and development.
Dr. Selders explains, “With Accolade, transparency allows for better visibility from the early phases of the development pipeline to alignment with corporate strategy, not only for our executives but also for the product managers and developers within their areas of responsibility. On top of that, we have increased the efficiency in our annual review process with one single source of data.”
Florian Palatini, Expert Innovation Management at Endress+Hauser, elaborates on the benefits even further: “Accolade brings Roadmapping to the next level, and thanks to this, the complexity is much more manageable. We have better visibility of interdependencies, effects and relationships.”
The decision to partner with Sopheon was taken after a detailed analysis of solutions on the market. “Of course, Accolade ticked the box on all of our functionality wish-list items, but more importantly, Sopheon set itself apart with the promise of best-practice content embedded in its software to guide us in defining our new processes, and its knowledgeable and highly responsive team. We are looking forward to reaping the rewards of using Accolade at Endress+Hauser,” concludes Dr. Selders.
About Sopheon
Sopheon partners with customers to provide complete Enterprise Innovation Performance solutions including patented software, expertise and best practices to achieve exceptional long-term revenue growth and profitability. Sopheon’s Accolade solution provides unique, fully-integrated coverage for the entire innovation management and new product development lifecycle, including strategic innovation planning, roadmapping, idea and concept development, process and project management, portfolio management and resource planning. Sopheon’s solutions have been implemented by over 250 customers with more than 60,000 users in over 50 countries. Sopheon is listed on the AIM Market of the London Stock Exchange.
Sopheon and Accolade are trademarks of Sopheon plc.
Media Contact:
Cheral Jansen
Sopheon
Tel: +1 952 851 7500
Email: cheral.jansen@sopheon.com