Sopheon, the international provider of software, expertise, and best practices for Enterprise Innovation Management, announces today the latest version of its Accolade® Enterprise Innovation Management (EIM) solution.
‘Good’ decisions are based on the availability of ‘good’ information - having meaningful, trusted and current data at your fingertips at the moment you need it. Business leaders driving decision-centric processes should be drawing on comprehensive information that is generated internally as well as gleaned from outside the company. Sopheon has long focused on surfacing relevant and timely information to support better, faster decisions; with the release of Accolade version 11.2, Sopheon offers new analytic and knowledge discovery capability to more proactively manage risk and create breakthrough innovations with increased efficiency. The new capability – named Accolade Insights – offers a range of benefits.
Further Connecting the Enterprise
Speed to informed decisions, critical in a fast-moving, digital business environment, depends on data that is timely, accurate, situationally aware and actionable. Accolade Insights automatically leverages and connects internal and external data sources to proactively consolidate and serve up intellectual ‘assets’ at the point a decision needs to be made. These assets include relevant experts and expertise, learnings from past work, and external macroeconomic changes impacting critical assumptions underpinning business forecasts and key performance indicators.
Pre-empting Risk and Improving Accuracy of Business Forecasts
Accolade Insights was designed to help companies leverage internal data in combination with macroeconomic and other external factors for real-time monitoring of the health status of products, portfolios and projects, including the business case assumptions impacting accuracy of revenue and profit forecasts. This is equally applicable to the management of new product introductions, in-market products, product lines and market segments.
When shown a preview of this functionality, a $14 billion industrial manufacturing customer stated: “Some time ago we had what we thought was a great innovation, but the macroeconomics shifted in the middle of our product development cycle. In the end we went to market with a product that failed because we didn’t proactively adjust to the shift. Had I had this early visibility of the business case impact of the market dynamics, it would have saved us millions of dollars.”
Stimulating Innovation & Improving Efficiency through Proactive Knowledge Reuse
Many companies encounter redundancy of innovation effort. They waste time and money on duplicating work that has been done before; recreating experience that has been ‘lost’ when key employees have left, repeating the same mistakes project after project because lessons learned are not codified and shared; or not being aware of technology or other developments that could be reused to shorten the time required to develop breakthrough innovations. Accolade automatically captures cross-functional work activity and work product, which become a rich asset for reuse.
One long-standing Sopheon customer proudly relates how a breakthrough technology developed by a packing business unit to retain freshness in bags of crisps, was successfully reused for entirely different applications in aero and auto by another division, generating millions in new revenue. The ‘discovery’ of the technology that was reused was enabled through Accolade.
Sopheon’s CEO Andy Michuda, said: “Sopheon has long focused on making relevant and timely information available to support better, faster decisions. Accolade 11.2 automatically leverages and connects internal and external data sources through Accolade Insights, allowing customers to proactively manage risk and create breakthrough innovations with more efficiency.”
Sopheon® and Accolade® are trademarks of Sopheon
For Further Information Contact:
| Barry Mence, Chairman Arif Karimjee, CFO |
Sopheon plc | + 44 (0) 1276 919 560 |
| Carl Holmes / Giles Rolls (corporate finance) Mia Gardener (corporate broking) |
finnCap | + 44 (0) 20 7220 0500 |
About Sopheon
Sopheon (LSE: SPE) partners with customers to provide complete Enterprise Innovation Management solutions including software, expertise, and best practices, that enable them 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 200 customers with over 60,000 users in over 50 countries. Sopheon is listed on AIM, operated by the London Stock Exchange.