Company’s Accolade® software helps the world’s largest brands make better decisions, bring products to market faster than ever
MINNEAPOLIS – January 17, 2018 – The word “innovation” is often perceived as background noise for business. For Sopheon, a global leader in enterprise innovation management solutions, there’s no innovation realization without strategic planning execution, and the company continues to help the world’s largest brands become smarter and more agile in bringing new ideas to market.
Sopheon is committed to educating the market on how to bring business strategies to life through integrated, well-communicated innovation execution plans. In its 2017 Market Guide for Strategy Execution Management Software, in which Sopheon is named a Representative Vendor, Gartner states as one of its four key findings that “creating strategic change requires making effective decisions, combined with agility, responsiveness and unimpeded multidirectional communication.”1
The Gartner Market Guide also states: “Executing strategy in the digital age requires tools connecting the shared objectives of business strategists and those executing the change. Program and portfolio management leaders directing transformation and/or EPMOs will benefit from investing in strategy execution management to be successful.”
Among Fortune 100 market leaders, there’s no shortage of well-intentioned innovation methods and processes, yet business leaders responsible for innovation are often hamstrung by inefficiencies, cross-functional silos, limited resources and complex processes, diminishing the potential for market impact and profitability.
“Enterprise Innovation Management (EIM) is an increasingly critical capability for innovation-driven companies, yet there is still too little attention paid to creating the connected autonomy required for efficient execution,” said Andy Michuda, chief executive officer for Sopheon. “In our experience, even the best-laid strategic plans are often not well communicated, poorly adopted or misunderstood across the enterprise. Our role as a partner to our clients demands that we take our 18 years of extensive learnings from working with the best in the industry and share how companies can close the gap between strategic planning and execution realization.”
Sopheon is committed to providing strategy execution management tools that support continuous and iterative transparency and process change, while enabling real-time decision-making resulting in improved performance. The company’s Accolade software supports better and faster decisions by enabling transparency, harmonization and alignment through the interconnected enterprise. Introduced to the market in 2001, Accolade captures critical data for better visibility and decision enablement, providing a single source of truth for all functional groups and geographically dispersed teams that are required to collaborate.
Dozens of the world’s most successful, innovation-driven companies – including market leaders in consumer goods, food and beverages, chemicals, industrial manufacturing, high-tech, aerospace and defense – use the Accolade software to achieve exceptional long-term growth and profitability through sustainable innovation. Clients include leaders such as BASF, P&G, Honeywell, Applied Material, Parker Hannifin, Electrolux, Entegris, PepsiCo, Merck, and others. The Accolade software provides these companies with an integrated solution for executing against the entire innovation lifecycle, from strategic roadmap planning, strategic idea development, portfolio optimization and prioritization, product launch planning and go-to-market execution, as well as end of life management.
According to the Gartner Market Guide, “strategy execution management software needs new and different technology-enabled features and functions compared with day-to-day operational and project management tools.”1 To support its leadership role in strategic innovation execution, Sopheon continues to invest in resources to help the industry – and especially Accolade users – navigate the many challenges and demands of innovation strategy and move away from manual processes in favor of rapid, intelligent, data-driven decision-making.
“Despite the growth of technology as a business driver, too many innovation-driven organizations are still not using technology to create a connected autonomy across their enterprise, which speeds up execution,” Mr. Michuda said. “By digitalizing the process for connectivity, transparency and speed, Accolade gives even the largest enterprises the ability to pivot and be agile, while preserving big-company capability and scale. That’s where execution, paired with innovation, can create a seismic shift in strategy realization.”
About Sopheon
Sopheon partners with customers to provide complete Enterprise Innovation Management 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 over 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
1 Gartner “Market Guide for Strategy Execution Management Software” by Daniel B. Stang, Philip Allega, Teresa Jones, 9 November 2017.
Disclaimer:
Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner's research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.