improving innovation management: the difference between · 2014-02-01 · improving innovation...

Improving Innovation Management: The Difference between

Sopheon’s Accolade® and

Microsoft® Project Server,

and Why It Matters

Bryan Seyfarth, Director of Product Strategy, Sopheon

The Difference Between Sopheon’s Accolade and Microsoft Project Server, and Why It Matters

The information in this document is subject to change without notice. No part of this document may be

reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, for any purpose

without the express written permission of Sopheon.

Copyright

© Copyright 2012 Sopheon plc. All Rights Reserved.

Accolade, Vision Strategist, Idea Lab, and Process Manager are trademarks of Sopheon plc.

Microsoft, Excel, PowerPoint and SharePoint are trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United

States and/or other countries.

All other trademarks are the sole property of their respective owners.

Table of Contents

Executive Summary ............................................................................................................................................................... 3

Introduction to Accolade .................................................................................................................................................... 3

Accolade’s Support for Project Management ........................................................................................................... 4

Differentiating Accolade from Project Server ............................................................................................................. 4

Illustrating the Differentiation: Enabling Gated Processes ................................................................................... 6

Comparing Accolade to Project Server for Gated Processes .............................................................................. 8

Comparing Accolade and Project Server on Other Dimensions........................................................................ 12

Idea Development .......................................................................................................................................................... 12

Strategic Roadmapping .................................................................................................................................................. 13

Product Portfolio & Resource Planning .................................................................................................................... 14

More Than Just Software: A Complete Innovation Management Solution ................................................ 15

Reference Notes ............................................................................................................................................................. 16


Executive Summary In 2010, Microsoft introduced Microsoft Project Server 2010. This new software

release provides significant value to professional project managers by helping them

control complex project schedules. But we have seen confusion and frustration

among end users looking to use the Microsoft technology to improve their

innovation processes. The purpose of this paper is to examine the root cause of

those issues. It includes a comparison of Project Server to Sopheon’s Accolade

solution.

Microsoft Project Server and Accolade address different markets. Their capabilities

and value propositions also differ:

Microsoft Project Server is a horizontal project management tool, primarily

designed for professional project managers who schedule large projects via

detailed work breakdown structures. It can also be used by functional managers

to plan and schedule portfolios of low-risk, low-uncertainty projects, the

outcomes of which are predictable, even when the resource requirements are

significant (e.g., many routine IT projects).

Sopheon’s Accolade is an end-to-end innovation management solution. It improves

investment decision-making processes across the innovation life cycle, which is

inherently characterized by high degrees of risk and uncertainty. Effective

innovation management enables cross-functional teams and business leaders to

manage such risk and uncertainty, resulting in higher levels of revenue and profit

from new products and services.

Sopheon’s Accolade solution provides a deep integration to Microsoft Project that

allows it to leverage the Microsoft technology’s powerful project scheduling

capabilities. However, companies that attempt to use Project Server for innovation

management are unlikely to succeed. Using it to provide even a minimal level of

management support requires significant custom software code that can only be

created and managed by IT programmers. Additionally, even for those companies

willing to make such programming investments, critical functional gaps will remain.

This paper details the key distinctions between Accolade and Project Server. It is

intended for companies that wish to compare the capacity of the Microsoft and

Sopheon offerings to support their innovation and product development processes.

Introduction to Accolade

For many years, Sopheon has played an integral role in helping companies improve

the business impact of their innovation processes. Through our experience, we have

come to know first-hand that the challenges companies face in enhancing innovation

cannot be solved with traditional project management tools such as Project Server.

Sopheon’s Accolade has become the enterprise standard for innovation management

in many of the world’s leading companies. The primary reason is that it directly

addresses a range of critical innovation-related business challenges that other

solutions are not designed to address. These include:

Microsoft Project Server

offers significant value to

professional project

managers by helping them

control complex project

schedules. However,

companies that attempt to

use Project Server for

end-to-end innovation

management and for

improving their innovation

processes are unlikely to be

successful.

Sopheon‟s Accolade is the

enterprise innovation

management standard of

many leading companies,

primarily because it directly

addresses a range of critical

innovation-related business

challenges that other

solutions are not designed to

address.


Ineffective go/kill decision-making, which wastes precious resources on

low-value, low-potential products;

Lack of alignment between long-term strategy and short-term innovation

execution;

Too few high-value product ideas feeding the innovation process; and

Poor cross-functional adoption of gated process methodologies.

Accolade enables organizations to surmount these challenges by improving and aligning

ideation, strategy and execution across the entire innovation life cycle, thereby

reducing risk and increasing the likelihood of innovation success. This in turn leads to

dramatic, sustainable improvements in the amount of revenue and profit generated

from product and service development investments.

Accolade’s Support for Project Management While focusing on innovation management, Accolade does provide many of the basic

capabilities required to support project management, such as:

Creating repeatable process models;

Assigning deliverables and activities (with start dates and deadlines) to

team members;

Automatically scheduling and assigning based on standard practices;

Tracking the status of projects, deliverables, and activities;

Promoting cross-functional collaboration, coordination and reporting

through a single project portal;

Using automatic email notifications to communicate changes in status,

timing, and ownership; and

Tracking resource plans and identifying bottlenecks.

These capabilities are designed for ease-of-use and to support users with minimal

technical project management training.

Differentiating Accolade from Project Server It is well-established that the core planning capabilities of Project Server provide valuable support to professional project managers, who use it to create detailed schedules and work breakdown structures for a variety of projects. Most recently, new portfolio management capabilities introduced in Project Server 2010 have extended the value of the technology by enabling functional managers to do a better job of prioritizing select kinds of projects—namely low-risk, low-uncertainty projects whose outcomes are predictable. This is true even when the resource requirements associated with the projects are significant. Many routine IT projects fall into this category, which is perhaps one of the reasons Project Server has found its greatest levels of adoption in IT organizations. For such projects, prioritization is typically owned by functional business leaders, who may use Project Server to optimize the planning and sequencing of projects.

While specializing in

innovation management,

Accolade does provide

many of the basic

capabilities required to

support project

management.

Project Server 2010‟s

portfolio management

capabilities enable

prioritization of low-risk,

low-uncertainty projects

whose outcomes are

predictable, e.g. IT projects.

They do not support the

iterative and high-risk,

high-uncertainty business-

related decisions required

during the innovation

process.


This type of straightforward planning and decision-making activity is vastly different from the more strategic, business-related decision-making that takes place within most corporate innovation processes. Innovation is by its very nature a high-risk, high-uncertainty process—perhaps more so than any other business process—and its outcomes are not easily predictable. What’s more, innovation success requires support for a broader variety of activities, including iterative, “gated” decision-making processes. Input and other kinds of participation are needed from cross-functional stakeholders and business leaders across the entire innovation life cycle. Sopheon’s Accolade solution is specifically designed to enable these participatory requirements; Project Server is not.

Figure 1 above summarizes key differences between Accolade and Project Server with

respect to what we define as the four principal aspects of end-to-end innovation

management: gated process execution; idea development; strategic roadmapping; and

portfolio and resource planning. As the table indicates, attempting to use Project

Server to meet even a few of these criteria will require a significant amount of custom

software code that can only be created by IT programmers. More importantly, even

Figure 1: Overview of How Each Solution Meets the Requirements of End-to-End Innovation Management.


for companies willing to make a significant investment in custom code, critical gaps will

still remain.

Figure 1 highlights another important consideration: the degree to which each solution

puts the management of innovation in the hands of the business professionals who use

it. Although Accolade is a software solution, one of its most important advantages is

that you don’t need any kind of technical proficiency to use it. As a result, nontechnical

business people are able to retain control of their own innovation processes. No

specialized IT programmers are required to define, manage or modify the processes

supported with Accolade.

The balance of this paper addresses each of the areas identified in Figure 1 in detail.

We begin with a deep illustration of gated process execution. Sound management of

this execution provides the foundation for the effective management of risk and

uncertainty. We’ll then assess Accolade and Project Server on each of the other

dimensions across the innovation life cycle, providing specific examples of

differentiation.

Illustrating the Differentiation: Enabling Gated

Processes

Gated processes are the lifeblood of innovation for many companies, as they are the

means by which ideas and innovation strategies are brought to life. When adopted,

gated processes enable cross-functional teams to effectively transform new product

concepts into tangible products that generate revenue and profit for the business. The

successful execution of gated processes is an important predictor of business success.

According to research by Nielsen, companies that have innovation processes with

effective, rigid gates average 130 percent more new product revenue than companies

with loose processes.1,2

Gated processes are unlike any other kind of business process. This is illustrated in

Figure 2, which compares gated processes to two other prototypical business

processes: workflow and project management. The latter are relevant to innovation—

and they, too, require support—but their characteristics are fundamentally different. In

contrast to these other process types, gated processes are:

Focused on high-risk, high-uncertainty investment decisions. Gated processes are typically

used when making investment decisions with high degrees of risk and many

“unknowns” for the business. These decisions are daunting, but they are strategic and

represent the company’s best opportunity for future growth. Achieving success in this

environment requires such decisions to be made iteratively. This approach

accomplishes two objectives: it reduces risk by breaking a very large resource

investment into a series of smaller ones; and it allows for the creation of a rich body of

evidence that grows and is validated over time as the project progresses. Business

leaders can then use this knowledge base at each gate in the innovation processes,

helping to ensure that they make the right investment decisions. Workflow processes

also entail decision-making, but the risk to the business is lower and the types of

knowledge required to make decisions are much more tactical, granular and

situation-specific.3

In project management, good tactical information is required to manage complexity

(e.g., knowledge of task requirements, status, and schedule dependencies). In many

Attempting to use Project

Server to manage the key

aspects of innovation

management requires a

significant amount of

customer software code and

shifts control of innovation

processes away from the

business to IT.

Research by Nielsen

indicates that companies

with effective, rigid gates

built in to the innovation

processes average 130

percent more new product

revenue than companies

with loose processes.


ways, however, effective project management minimizes decision-making. Good

project schedules are so clear and specific that people don’t need to decide what to do

next; they simply follow the plan without question, ensuring the project is completed

on time and within budget.

Deliverable-centric. In gated processes, the body of evidence used to support decision-

making is typically organized into a collection of documents known as “deliverables.”

These deliverables are created by a core innovation team and serve as input to the

business leaders who own the strategic investment decisions. This is different from a

classic workflow process, in which a single document or record is approved or denied

in transactional fashion. And although gated processes require the creation of

deliverables against clear deadlines, they do not require a comprehensive breakdown

of every task required to complete the work, as assumed in project management

processes.

Cross-functional. Another unique attribute of gated processes is the requirement for a

significant amount of cross-functional coordination and communication. Innovation

teams must collaborate across each function of the business (sales and marketing,

R&D, operations, finance, and often many others) in order to bring the right

information forward to senior business leaders. Those decision-makers (or

“gatekeepers”) must also be cross-functional in order to ensure alignment and the best

quality decisions. Workflow and project management processes may or may not have

cross-functional participation. Either way, the communication flows in a different

manner. Workflow processes are typically simpler and often require a sequential flow

of communication from one person to another; project management processes are

more hierarchical, with much of the communication flowing up and down the chain

from the project manager to various team members.

Unlike workflow and project

management processes,

gated processes are

characterized by high-risk,

high-uncertainty investment

decisions, a deliverable-

centric nature, and a

requirement for a significant

amount of cross-functional

coordination and

communication.

Figure 2: Types of Business Processes.


Comparing Accolade to Project Server for Gated Processes Accolade is an enterprise engine for gated processes that is unlike any other offering

on the market. Because it was designed from the ground up to enable gated processes,

it provides types and levels of support that Project Server cannot match. One of

Accolade’s principal advantages is that it is viewed as intuitive, a tool that mirrors the

way that business people across functions and at different levels conduct their

day-to-day work in innovation. This is manifest in a number of areas, as outlined below.

Gated Process Modeling At its core, Accolade provides highly configurable modeling capability that is solely

designed for the creation and management of gated processes. It enables nontechnical

business people to design gated processes that reflect the unique way their business

operates. Stages, gates, deliverables, deliverable templates, metrics, and process

documentation can all be defined via web-based configuration capabilities that are

easily navigated by an innovation process manager. This puts the control of these

processes in the hands of the people who use them.

It also ensures that best practices are implemented in ways that are intuitive and

natural to the range of nontechnical business people that participate in the process.

Participants from every function—including sales, marketing, R&D, engineering,

operations, finance, and program management—are able to quickly understand the

specific role that has been defined for them in the company’s innovation processes.

In contrast, Microsoft’s system is a document-centric, horizontal tool with traditional

document workflow capabilities. Although demos of the tool can be created to give

the impression of support for gated processes, these are only made possible via

custom software code created by an advanced computer programmer. As noted

earlier, document workflow processes have their place within the innovation cycle, but

they are not suited to achieving the unique objectives of gated processes.

Gated Process Agility Your business and your markets are in a constant state of evolution. It is inevitable,

then, that your gated processes will need to evolve as well. A pitfall for some

companies is that they define an innovation process and support it with a custom IT

solution that meets their needs at a given point in time. When conditions and

requirements change, they find that their process is inflexible, shackling the business.

With Accolade, the same capabilities used to define gated processes may also be used

to alter and improve them over time. Nontechnical business leaders can use

Accolade’s web-based interface to change the names of process elements, add stages

and deliverables, modify templates, or adjust other settings—and safely implement

those changes in just a few clicks.

This does more than just save time for innovation leaders. It provides them with the

agility required to efficiently adapt and improve their processes across time. This

requirement is critical to the long-term effectiveness of innovation management, but it

is difficult or impossible to achieve with any other solution on the market, including

Project Server. With Project Server, when process changes need to be made, the

custom coding used to create the original process will have to be re-written. This

Accolade enables

nontechnical business people

to design, manage and

update gated processes so

that they reflect the unique

way their business operates.

Giving business people the

ability to alter and improve

gates processes in line with

evolving market and

business conditions enables

the agility required for the

long-term effectiveness of

innovation management.

Although demos of Project

Server can be created to

give the impression of

support for gated processes,

these are only made possible

via custom software code.


presents a significant ongoing expense for the user, and implies that every process

change requires an IT project. Quick and agile evolution of gated processes is simply

not possible.

“Smart” Gate Deliverables As noted earlier, gated processes are inherently “deliverable-centric.” At each gate in

the process, team members must organize and synthesize a significant volume of data

into a set of documents that provide insight to decision-makers. It follows that the tool

you use to support your innovation process should be able to streamline the creation

and management of deliverables. For Accolade, this is a fundamental capability.

Accolade enables “smart” best-practice templates—defined and managed by a

nontechnical business person—that prescribe the information team members are to

create within each stage of the gated process. Such templates may be web-based

forms. Others are derived from Accolade’s out-of-the-box integration to the Microsoft

Office suite, including Microsoft Word, Excel®, and PowerPoint®. Examples of such

templates include:

Integrated Product Definition;

Market Assessment;

Technical Assessment;

Operations/Supply Chain Assessment;

Business Case; and

Executive Gate Presentation.

Accolade’s smart deliverables save team members significant amounts of time, reducing

some deliverable-creation efforts that used to take hours (or days) down to a matter

of seconds. They automatically pre-populate whatever relevant data has already been

entered about the project, and identify the remaining questions that must be

answered. For integrated deliverables such as the Executive Gate Presentation,

Accolade automatically pulls in all data entered across the various functions that

participate in your innovation process, creating a completed PowerPoint file with the

press of a button.

Microsoft, of course, can enable Microsoft Office documents to be stored within the

context of Project Server, and they offer a variety of other tools for creating

web-based forms. But the work required to integrate those forms as “smart”

templates directly into the gated process is anything but simple. As with the creation

of gated processes noted earlier, performing a task like this in Project Server would

require custom coding from a programmer in IT. And the best the user can hope for is

a static, difficult-to-change template.

Product Financial Forecasts One of the more sophisticated deliverables in any gated innovation process is a long-

term financial cash-flow model. Typically assigned to a financial analyst, this deliverable

is what the business uses to evaluate long-term volume, cost, revenue and profit

forecasts, most often extending out over at least a five-year period. Unlike project

Accolade enables “smart”

best-practice templates—

defined and managed by a

business person—that

prescribe the information

team members are to create

within each stage of the

gated process.

Microsoft Office documents

could be stored within the

context of Project Server but

integrating those as “smart”

templates directly into the

gated process would

constitute an IT project. And

the best the user could hope

for is a static, difficult-to-

change template.

Accolade‟s smart deliverable

capability makes it easy for

a financial analyst to develop

a long-term financial

cash-flow model. Project

Server has no equivalent

functionality in its base

system.


management systems that only focus on yearly project budgets, gated innovation

processes must also provide a way to model this long-term cash flow, and calculate

valuation metrics such as net present value (NPV).

Accolade’s smart deliverable capability makes it easy for a financial analyst to develop

this deliverable. It provides a smart, Excel-based template to forecast long-term

revenue and model the cost of goods sold for the product going forward. Based on

these estimates, NPV, internal rate of return (IRR) and other financial rollups are

automatically calculated. Once the calculations are complete, the analyst simply saves

the Excel file to Accolade and all of the financial metrics are automatically pushed into

the database, and made available for analysis.

Project Server has no equivalent functionality in its base system. Again, it is possible to

create custom code to model these templates, but this is just one more IT project to

complete, with another IT project to follow when modifications are needed.

Priority-Based Gate Decisions According to much of the research in the innovation arena the evaluation of a gated

process should be based primarily on the quality of its gates.4 Effective gated processes

must support the work during the stages (i.e. creation of deliverables), and the work

that occurs during the gates. A key lesson Sopheon has learned during its years of

implementing gated processes is that in many ways, executives are no different from

other members of an innovation team. They, too, require special support to play their

role. But their needs are different; what they require are decision support tools to

ensure they make effective gate decisions consistently. They must also be able to gain a

clear understanding of the resources they are committing, and how those resource

investments align with other priorities.

Among the many capabilities Accolade provides to support gatekeepers, its support

for priority-based gate decisions is particularly noteworthy. During gate meetings, while

there may be value in being able to view projects in isolation, it is a great advantage to

also have the ability to examine them within the context of other projects. This, in

effect, allows business leaders to make better decisions about resource investments,

because they are able to consider the impact such investments will have on other

projects and priorities.

Accolade uniquely supports this kind of priority-based gate decision-making. For

example, in a meeting in which six projects are brought forward for a decision, the six

can be viewed either separately or in a view that shows how they rank in comparison

to other active projects in the portfolio. During the course of a meeting discussion,

projects can be moved up or down in priority. The resource gaps or availability of new

resources resulting from such shifts are presented instantly. Furthermore, gate

decisions can be made about more than one project at once. Multiple projects may be

assigned “Go” or “Kill” decisions, and as resource capacity opens up, projects that are

“On Hold” may be easily shifted into an active status.

Again, because of Accolade’s unique focus on gated process, it is the only solution on

the market to enable this kind of priority-based gate decision-making. Project Server

has some tools that can provide decision support at the portfolio level, but it has

Accolade is the only solution

on the market to enable

priority-based gate decision-

making. Project Server has

some tools that can provide

decision support at the

portfolio level, but it has

nothing that can be used to

dynamically support

decision-making in the

context of gate meetings

themselves.

Accolade uniquely supports

priority-based gate

decision-making, enabling

decisions about resource

investments within the

context of their impact on

other projects and priorities

rather that in isolation.


nothing that can be used to dynamically support decision-making in the context of gate

meetings themselves.

Best-Practice Innovation Process Models Because Sopheon’s sole area of focus is innovation management, Accolade benefits

from the deep domain expertise we have gained through years of ongoing work with a

wide range of customers, enabling them to improve their innovation processes and

results. Examples of such companies include world leaders such as BASF, Corning,

Electrolux, H.J. Heinz, Northrop Grumman, Parker Hannifin, Pepsi, and Total

Petrochemicals.

This domain expertise has been crystallized over the past 10 years into a set of best-

practice innovation process models called “accelerators.” For Sopheon customers that

have experience with gated processes, these serve as an important reference model

for charting their own improvement; for customers with little or no experience, they

provide an invaluable starting point for building effective gated processes in a minimal

amount of time. Regardless of the customer’s experience level, Sopheon’s best

practices enable them to quickly advance the maturity of their innovation processes,

leading to rapid increases in profits and revenues from new products.

Project Server is not designed to support best-practice innovation processes. In fact, in

some fundamental ways, it even runs counter to them. For example, Microsoft’s

approach of building gated processes via a combination of custom coding and

traditional workflow tools results in a “hardened” process that prohibits the flexibility

required in a gated process.5 Perhaps more importantly, Project Server does not

provide any best-practice processes, deliverables, templates, or metrics needed for

effective gated-process support. Microsoft is essentially a maker of horizontal software

tools, and is not directly focused on creating solutions to solve the innovation

problems we identified at the beginning of this paper.

Best Practices for Process Improvement As with any business process, gated processes cannot be improved unless they are

measured. They must be assessed with the same rigor one would expect to apply to

the evaluation of any other process. However, because of the complexity of this type

of process measurement, most companies require special support.

Sopheon’s Accolade solution provides many ways to assess the state of an innovation

process, to track progress, and to identify bottlenecks. It is specifically designed to

support the kinds of process metrics that companies typically need to consider as they

evaluate gated processes, such as:

“Kill rate” of early-stage projects;

Quarterly trends in the value of the new product portfolio;

Actual average duration per stage (including “Hold” decisions);

Percentage of projects late to market or over budget;

Number of “Recycle” decisions made in gate meetings; and

Trends in rationale for gate decisions (measured via “reason codes”).

Project Server does not

provide any best-practice

processes, deliverables,

templates, or metrics

needed for effective

gated-process support.

Sopheon‟s Accolade solution

provides many ways to

assess the state of an

innovation process, to track

progress, and to identify

bottlenecks. Microsoft does

not provide any tools that

could be used to conduct

such measurement and

analysis.

Sopheon‟s set of

best-practice innovation

process models enables

companies to quickly

advance the maturity of

their innovation processes,

leading to rapid increases in

profits and revenues from

new products.


These enable the business to assess the real value of their gated processes. Are they

investing enough in the front end of innovation? Are they reducing time to market?

Are they increasing the value of their portfolio?

Sopheon not only provides the software capabilities required to measure innovation

processes. Its Accolade solution also supplies the best-practice views and capabilities

required to analyze and troubleshoot them effectively. Microsoft provides none of

these best practices, nor do they provide any tools that could be used to conduct such

measurement and analysis.

Collaborative Workflow One last area of differentiation between Sopheon’s Accolade and Microsoft deals with

workflow. As noted earlier workflow processes are fundamentally different from gated

processes; however, this doesn’t make workflow unimportant. Oftentimes, workflow

is an important sub-process in the broader gated process. Even in this area, Sopheon’s

solution is uniquely more relevant to innovation teams than Microsoft’s approach.

Microsoft offers a traditional, transactional approach to workflow as a part of its

broader SharePoint offering. Their capabilities, while powerful, require significant

technical knowledge to create and maintain. In contrast, Sopheon offers an optional,

easily-configurable Collaborative Workflow module as an aspect of our solution. This

module enables a simple and efficient process that allows cross-functional team

members to contribute to the creation of shared deliverables—product definitions,

business cases, or scorecards—in the context of the gated process. This workflow

goes beyond traditional workflow approaches by enabling the collaborative editing of

information that is required by knowledge workers who must share input in a

coordinated fashion and build on the work of their peers. The completion or approval

of these deliverables may be done serially or in parallel. All deliverable versions are

permanently stored for future reference and auditing, in compliance with 21 CFR Part

11, ISO, or SOX, etc. This results in improved communication and greater

accountability among global innovation teams.

Comparing Accolade and Project Server on Other

Dimensions

In the section above, we provided a detailed illustration of how Accolade differentiates

itself from Project Server with regard to gated process execution, which is a core

requirement for innovation management. In this section we’ll describe Accolade’s

differentiation with regard to the other aspects of the innovation life cycle, as

illustrated in Figure 1.

Idea Development Another important challenge in innovation management is idea development. To start

with, some companies—as many as 79 percent—simply suffer from a lack of high-value

ideas to feed into their gated processes.6 Sopheon provides unique capabilities to

address this aspect of the front end of innovation.

Accolade enables a strong link between strategy and ideation by providing out-of-the-

box support for idea “campaigns” or idea-submission challenges that help people inside

Accolade enables a strong

link between strategy and

ideation by providing

out-of-the-box support for

idea “campaigns” or

idea-submission challenges

that help people inside

(and/or outside) the

organization focus on

generating ideas that are

relevant to business needs.

Accolade supports

collaborative workflow as a

sub-process of the broader

gated process, allowing

cross-functional team

members to contribute to

shared deliverables—serially

or in parallel. All document

versions are stored for future

reference and auditing as

required for regulatory

compliance.


(and/or outside) the organization focus on generating ideas that are relevant to

business needs. It provides tools to enable idea discovery, which helps people connect

their ideas to other relevant sources of knowledge or interest in the company,

including similar ideas, relevant community discussions, or knowledgeable experts. As

ideas mature and are ready to move into formal concept and product development

processes, Accolade enables them to seamlessly transition into gated processes.

What’s more, all of this is based on a highly configurable ideation platform, which

ensures idea development is conducted in ways that reflect the culture and unique

requirements of each business. As with gated-process support, because of our deep

domain expertise in this area, Sopheon’s idea development best practices undergird

the solution, reducing the time and effort required to define and implement this aspect

of innovation management from several months down to a few weeks.

In contrast, Microsoft does offer some ways to support ideation, but these are

custom-coded tools built on top of the Microsoft SharePoint® platform. With

extensive programming and technical consulting, it is possible to create websites of a

kind that enable idea campaigns and capture ideas. However, such tools require a

significant investment of time, money, and IT resources to achieve even the base levels

of capability that Sopheon offers out-of the-box. For example, it is difficult, if not

impossible, to add programming on top of Project Server to enable automated idea

discovery, or to ensure the seamless transition of ideas from the ideation process to

gated process execution.

Furthermore, because of the overarching need for custom programming, these

solutions are not as configurable or flexible as businesses require. The ownership of

the innovation front end is taken out of the hands of business people; when changes

need to be made, they require the funding of an additional IT project. And lastly, the

horizontal nature of Microsoft’s solutions precludes the availability of idea

development best practices.

Strategic Roadmapping A third aspect of the innovation life cycle that creates difficulty for many companies is

the strategic roadmapping process. Often there is a serious lack of alignment between

long-term strategy and short-term execution. For example, research studies have

found that although most companies identify long-term “areas of strategic focus” for

innovation in their business, only 27 percent actually connect those areas to resource

allocation.7

Accolade is the only solution available that is designed from the ground up to support

strategic roadmapping. Its capabilities are unmatched by any other application in the

market. Accolade enables the creation of the market, product, and technology

roadmaps required for businesses to plan across short-term, medium-term, and long-

term “horizons.”

Additionally, such roadmaps can be integrated into “composite” roadmaps that are at

the center of both long-range and operational planning processes. Sopheon also

provides a number of roadmap data management tools that make it easy for

nontechnical cross-functional representatives to keep their roadmaps up-to-date. Each

of these capabilities is undergirded by best-practice roadmapping process models and

Microsoft does offer some

ways to support ideation,

but these are custom-coded

tools built on top of the

Microsoft SharePoint

platform.

Accolade enables the

creation of the market,

product, and technology

roadmaps required for

businesses to plan across

short-term, medium-term,

and long-term “horizons.”

Microsoft provides for none

of these in any of its market

offerings.


templates that provide a jump-start to businesses that are new to this aspect of

innovation management.

Microsoft provides none of these solutions in any of its market offerings. While it is

conceivable that such tools could be created on top of Project Server via custom

programming, this would be at such great cost and risk that it is not a practical

consideration.

Product Portfolio & Resource Planning Because of the portfolio management capabilities available in Project Server, this last

area of innovation management is one in which there appears to be some basic degree

of overlap between Accolade and Project Server. However, this is only superficially

true.

For portfolio and resource planning to work within product innovation cycles,

portfolio data must be deeply embedded in the gated processes at the core of

innovation processes. Again, because innovation initiatives are inherently “high-risk,

high-uncertainty,” success requires that tough investment decisions be made at two

levels—both at the portfolio level and iteratively (within gate decisions). And the data

collected must serve both of those purposes.

Accolade provides a deep integration between gated processes and portfolio data. As

discussed earlier, Project Server can only provide superficial support for gated

processes via significant custom programming; it then requires even more significant

investment if that data is to be reused in its portfolio tool.

Another differentiating feature of Accolade in this area is its support for advanced

portfolio “what-if” scenarios. Project Server provides a tool to create scenarios with

portfolio and resource data, but it is not easily configurable by nontechnical business

people, nor does it offer the depth of analysis offered by Accolade. For example,

Project Server’s scenario tool does not allow for the explicit force-ranking of projects,

nor does it provide visibility to resource bottlenecks at the individual level. Accolade

does supply this capability.

A similar limitation of Project Server is found in the modeling of pre-defined resource

plans. One important need of team leaders is to be able to quickly create resource

plans that meet the needs of various projects, which often differ in terms of risk and

complexity. Accolade provides a special means of addressing this via something called

“shirt-size” resource modeling. Standardized resource plans can be configured by

functional managers, similar to shirt sizes: small, medium, large, and extra-large. These

models may then be automatically applied to a project based on its relative degree of

difficulty. This provides an invaluable starting point for project managers who are

creating plans for new projects. Shirt-size resource modeling is not possible with

Project Server.

It may come as no surprise that the last point of differentiation between Accolade and

Project Server in this area deals with embedded best practices. Accolade’s solution for

product portfolios and resource planning includes best-practice dashboards, analyses,

and metrics that are uniquely required for effective innovation management. Project

Server provides none.

Accolade provides a deep

integration between gated

processes and portfolio data,

advanced „what-if‟ portfolio

scenarios, and standardized

resource plans that serve as

an invaluable starting point

for new project plans.

There appears to be some

basic degree of overlap

between Accolade and

Project Server as regards

portfolio management.

However, on closer

inspection, this is only

superficially true.

Accolade‟s solution for

product portfolios and

resource planning includes

best-practice dashboards,

analyses, and metrics that

are uniquely required for

effective innovation

management.


More Than Just Software: A Complete Innovation

Management Solution Each of the areas of differentiation presented in this paper can be summarized in a

statement that perhaps is obvious by now: Sopheon is more than just a software

company. It is simply not in our DNA to sell software to customers, install it, and walk

away. Our approach is to partner with users of our software to help ensure that they

achieve the levels of innovation management excellence to which they aspire, and the

improved business results that they are ultimately after. Software is an important

element of this, but we have learned that success also requires:

Trusted advisors with deep domain expertise; and

Embedded best practices that give you a huge head start as you kick off

your journey toward innovation excellence.

Only Sopheon brings best-in-class software, domain experts, and best practices

together in an integrated offering. And because Sopheon’s entire focus is on the

innovation management market, this advantage continues to deepen over time. It is the

combination of this uniqueness and the philosophy of service and shared commitment

underpinning it that enables Sopheon’s customers to quickly increase their levels of

maturity in innovation management, thereby achieving sustainable, profitable revenue

growth from new products.

Only Sopheon brings

best-in-class software,

domain experts, and best

practices together in an

integrated offering.


Reference Notes

1 NIELSEN (2010) “Secret to Successful New Product Innovation: Keep the Boss Out of It” 2 COOPER, R.G. and EDGETT, S.J. (2005) Lean, Rapid and Profitable New Product Development, Product

Development Institute. 3 Sopheon’s Accolade solution supports an advanced version of workflow, something we call “collaborative

workflow” as a sub-process within the larger gated process. See the section on collaborative workflow for a

more detailed discussion of this sub-process 4 COOPER, R.G. et al (2005) above. 5 See recommendations about “flexible and adaptive processes” in COOPER, R.G. et al (2005) above. 6 COOPER, R.G. and EDGETT, S.J. (2009) Product Innovation and Technology Strategy, Product Development

Institute. 7 COOPER, R.G. et al (2009) above.

http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/press-room/2010/secret_to_successful.htmlC:/Users/Cheral%20Jansen/Documents/Archive2%20(5)

Sopheon UK LTD (UK)

The Surrey Technology Centre 40 Occam Road, Surrey Research Park

Guildford Surrey GU2 7YG

The United Kingdom

Tel: +44 (0) 1483 685 735 Fax: +44 (0) 1483 685 740

Sopheon Corporation

3001 Metro Drive Minneapolis, Minnesota

55425-1566

USA

Tel: +1 952-851-7500

Fax: +1 952-851-7599 www.sopheon.com

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The Netherlands

Tel: +31 (0) 20 301 3900 Fax: +31 (0) 20 301 3999

About the Author

Bryan Seyfarth, Ph.D., is director of product strategy for Sopheon, and the consumer goods segment leader for

the Accolade solution suite. Bryan holds a Master’s degree and a Ph.D. in organizational communication from the

University of Minnesota. Bryan can be reached at [email protected].

About Sopheon

Sopheon (LSE:SPE) is an international provider of software and services that help organizations improve the

business impact of product innovation. Sopheon’s Accolade® solution enables end-to-end innovation

management, including innovation planning, ideation, innovation process execution, in-market product

management, and product portfolio management. The software suite’s Vision Strategist™ component automates

the roadmapping process, helping users to visualize and plan the future of products and technologies. Accolade’s

Idea Lab™ component assists organizations in generating, selecting and developing winning product ideas.

Accolade Process Manager™ automates the product innovation process and provides strategic decision support

for the management of product portfolios.

Sopheon’s software is used by top innovators throughout the world, including industry leaders such as BASF,

Corning, Electrolux, Honeywell, Northrop Grumman, PepsiCo, SABMiller and Total Petrochemicals.

Sopheon has operating bases in the United States, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, with distribution,

implementation and support channels worldwide. For more information on Sopheon and its software and service

offerings, please visit www.sopheon.com.

mailto:[email protected]