Ideas are the root of every organization. But in the fast-paced rhythm that companies have been developing, it is hard to keep recognizing the best ideas and opportunities if you don’t have access to a powerful idea management software, such as Ideawake.
If you want to see repeatable growth, investing in an effective idea management solution is a no-brainer. That’s why we’ve collected some of the best idea management solutions you can use to streamline your efforts.
Keep in mind that it’s best to choose an easy-to-use innovation solution that offers added resources such as learning tools, project management functionalities, and features that incentivize employee engagement. This will facilitate software adoption and ensure higher commitment throughout the entire company, which is key to the achievement of successful outcomes.
With these aspects in mind, we put our heart and soul on making Ideawake the consumer-first choice.
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Ideawake is an intuitive idea management software that supports the innovation requirements of companies in every stage — from startups to Fortune 500. The platform provides a complete set of features, that include crowdsourcing, idea lifecycle tracking, file sharing, status development, real-time chat, data analytics, and more.
In Ideawake’s platform, you can access innovation best practices, case studies, and proven processes developed to enhance the idea maturing. These resources combined with the easy-to-use interface make operations a breeze.
The innovation solution has an interesting approach to idea collection and refining. Through gamification, you can incentivize employees’ participation by giving them points for completing activities and helping move ideas forward.
Once employees identify an opportunity to innovate, they can simply post a new challenge, and tag colleagues that they wish to participate in the idea development. These colleagues will receive an email notification, and can instantly provide feedback to posted solutions, rank entries, and collaborate with other employees in real-time.
To optimize each process, employees can also customize steps for every challenge, from collection to implementation. If you are ready to break growth barriers and easily transform your employees into innovators, give Ideawake a try or schedule a demo to see it in action.
Visit Ideawake2
The second solution in the list is HYPE Innovation, another cloud-based idea management software dedicated to helping businesses to effectively walk through the innovation lifecycle as a team.
This software provides users with features such as discussion threads, idea ranking, voting features, project tracking features, key metrics, and participation reports. This convenient set of functionalities make brainstorming, collaboration, and implementation processes a painless experience for employees.
With HYPE Innovation’s platform, users can customize every idea campaign. Idea owners can define teams, project duration, discussion methods, and implementation channels for each idea posted. There are also convenient filters that allow users to select participants by department, skills, or even geographic location.
Besides all the filters to streamline campaign creation, HYPE Innovation includes an idea evaluation tool to help managers decide which ideas deserve higher investments. But this tool is only available for HYPE Enterprise clients.
HYPE Innovation represents a good alternative for companies that are looking for a complete idea management solution and that are ready to make a significant investment.
Visit Hype Innovation3
Confluence is Atlassian’s knowledge management solution. Focused on integrating multiple departments’ efforts, Confluence is great for teams looking to streamline innovation through effective collaboration.
To publish ideas, employees can create dedicated spaces and invite team members to collaborate. Ideas can be shared through meeting notes, product requirements, and research reports. And other team members can review and give feedback directly on documents.
There are also page trees, which create a hierarchical list of pages within a space.
Confluence was designed as a flexible collaboration workplace, which means it has many different functionalities. This can represent an advantage for some teams but it can become confusing for some employees, and end up decreasing engagement.
With that, Confluence’s wide range of functionalities and technical features make the software best for product management teams. If your team already uses Atlassian’s products, such as JIRA, and your team works well with it, you should try out Confluence as well.
Visit Confluence4
Rever is an idea management platform designed to serve industrial and manufacturing companies.
Organizations use Rever’s platform to involve frontline workers in the continuous improvement of operational processes. Considering that frontline workers are the ones in contact with operational challenges, listening to their innovation insights is a smart move.
The software includes idea sharing, idea ranking, status tracking, file uploading, and workflow management.
With Rever, frontline employees can use their mobile devices to take pictures of improvement opportunities and upload them to the system as an idea. They can also assign other team members with just a few clicks, which facilitates collaboration.
When employees participate, managers can distribute recognition points to incentivize engagement. Managers also have access to insights on performance impact. This software not only optimizes industrial operations but also integrates frontline employees on broader company matters, which significantly increases satisfaction and reduces turnover. Rever is the go-to option for industrial companies looking to make their frontline employees actively involved with ideation.
Visit Rever5
Crowdicity is an innovation management software that was acquired by the experience management leader, Medallia. The platform has a thorough set of features and is available in both English and German.
The software offers live chat, idea sharing, file uploads, configurable polls, and content filters to its users. However, Crowdicity lacks some quantitative tools that are offered by other alternatives.
With Crowdicity, employees can easily post ideas and assign team members to collaborate. Then, team members can vote on their favorite solutions to push the best ones to the top.
The software has an excellent user interface, with a fast learning curve. However, it does not provide users with insights on idea management best practices and processes, which can represent a challenge for employees with little experience in idea management.
With that, Crowdicity is an excellent option for teams with extensive innovation management experience, who know all about planning an innovation workflow.
Visit Crowdicity6
This knowledge management platform offers an old-style system but has a good set of innovation management features. The software is built on Microsoft Azure, which means it plays well with other Microsoft technologies.
NanoNotion’s features include knowledge bookmarking, statistics availability, selectable metrics, commenting, archiving, tagging, voting, and advanced searching. However, most of these features are available only through the Enterprise add-on.
On NanoNotion, idea campaigns are called “Notions”. Employees can use supporting materials such as content from SharePoint, One Drive, or URLs when sharing an idea through a Notion.
As other employees interact with Notions, the idea owner receives recognition points. The more engagement an idea receives, the more visibility from upper-level management it gets, which means a better chance to be implemented.
NanoNotion is an innovation management solution for teams that want to leverage other Microsoft applications to streamline innovation management. And if you think you will bother with their old-style system, you should sign up for their free trial before making a commitment.
Visit NannoNotion7
Miro’s approach to idea management software is different from most alternatives we covered so far. Instead of offering a complete system that guides users through innovation phases, Miro features an open digital whiteboard. The solution enables distributed teams to brainstorm and plan projects together, but it has some limitations.
With Miro, users can write down their ideas, leave insights on other employees’ inputs, and even add supporting content to the board, such as spreadsheets and interactive prototypes.
Users can create a board from scratch or choose one of the pre-loaded templates that they offer. The platform also comes with an integrated library of wireframes, icons, and other content to help employees on the idea development.
Miro’s platform also allows you to save the whiteboard as a PDF or convert it into a presentation. That can be helpful when you want to keep a plan, idea, or roadmap that your team mapped out during a meeting.
This software is a great alternative for product management teams since the whiteboard can also be used to build story maps, customer journeys, and product roadmaps. It is also an interesting option to make the ideation process of remote teams more interactive.
Visit Miro8
The last idea management solution on the list is Codigital, which is another great alternative for small-to-medium sized businesses.
Besides streamlining companies’ idea maturing processes, this platform offers resources to facilitate the engagement of a large audience during conferences, seminars, or workshops.
Codigital Software has an evolutionary approach to the ideation process. By asking an open-ended question, such as “How can we improve our website?”, a new idea campaign is created, and employees can submit their answers to the question.
Once there are a few answers available, the system asks participants to choose their favorite between two ideas. Then, the best answers go to the next phase, where employees get to develop ideas further. Answers can be merged, split apart, and modified until a consensus is reached.
Codigital offers three plans, and the most basic one is free. This plan offers the ability to hold one idea campaign at a time, up to 50 participants, one month of data storage, and one single project creator. This software suits best companies that want to address pre-determined challenges. It is also great for growth teams that want to get insights from different departments.
Visit CodigitalHaving a structured process to prioritize ideas has become paramount for every business’ growth. Have you thought that someone in another department might have a simple answer for a challenge that your team has been struggling with for months?
You cannot let ideas die due to a lack of integration. That’s where idea management software comes in. They help your business bring your people together to find the best solutions for daily challenges. But you can only get the results you expect if you find the proper software for your company.
To make the right decision, these are the steps you need to take:
Understand your company’s needs. This means getting a clear grasp of the nature of challenges that an idea management software would help your company solve. You might need the software to get answers for specific questions, or to integrate more employees on decision-making processes, or to find general opportunities to innovate.
Determine your stakeholders. Think about which employees you want to be involved with the idea development workflow. In some companies, only the growth team, for example, uses the idea management software while in others the entire company contributes with ideas. Some industrial companies buy the software exclusively to get insights from frontline workers, for example.
Outline your desired features. Once you know what are your company’s requirements you can get a better sense of what features you need in order to meet these business objectives. Some of the basic features you should look for include crowdsourcing, customizable idea development stages, real-time chat, idea ranking, data analytics, idea lifecycle tracking, and gamification.
Look for an excellent user experience. It is crucial that your idea management solution makes implementation and employee buy-in painless. Collaboration is the engine of idea development, and if you want employees to be actively engaging with the process, the software must provide an enjoyable user experience. Gamification and effective user support are two indicators of positive user experience.
Consider the vendor’s size. There are many idea management software vendors available in the market. Some vendors, such as Ideawake, are prepared to work with large enterprises and others are not ready to handle enterprise-grade security, scalability, and mobility. Small vendors have advantages such as increased agility and flexibility, but the chances you have of encountering software bugs and facing inconsistency are high.
Define your budget. Understanding how much you are ready to invest in the software is an important step in choosing the ideal one. Once you have a few favorites, make sure to evaluate the return you will get with each one of the alternatives. This will help you come to a final decision.
You just need a few clicks to start driving better business results from the wisdom of your workforce.