Perhaps the best example of this for us was the Ideas Channel we rolled out at Insurance Australia Group. One of the key requirements was based on the fact that management did not want the uptake of the application to impact service levels in front line environments, like call centres and retail stores.

Considering the initial skepticism (manifesting in a tiny budget) we were faced with after they had already had a poor experience from a large (and expensive) solution provider, we knew how critical this key requirement would be and how little onging support we’d receive if we could not clearly demonstrate that it had been met.

So what was the metric by success against this requirement would be measured? Time…customer service levels, and in terms of requirements, there is little that matters more to the contact centre and retail aspects of the business than how well it manages service levels and handling times.

Add to that the need to allow participants an interface that facilitates the capture of ‘flash of brilliance’ moments that come during customer and customer information systems interactions, and you are looking at delivering a user interface that is so easy to use, it requires little thought, thereby reducing the risk of dilution of insight as it is transposed to the application.

Mindful of this,  we firstly needed to understand the demographic of users…call centre and retail consultants.

Surprisingly, a large proportion of consultants where in a bracket that rarely use any PC applications outside of those provided to them on their work machines… we had discovered our lowest common denominator in terms of user application savvy and designed the user interface to enable that group.

When we rolled out the application, we provided several channels through which users could plug in if they needed help using the app, and closely monitored service levels.

On a user base of nearly 5000, no-one came through on any of the help lines and there was no impact on service levels, even though after 2 weeks, we had captured more than 200 individual insights and generated three times as many conversations within the app.

So the lesson here is…know your audience and the size of the lowest common denominator group…design to the needs of the largest lowest common denominator group based on their environment and experience…and most importantly…measure….measure….measure.

Having delivered small and large scale end-to-end solutions, one of the key issues we have observed is dilution of purpose through poor preparedness.

Getting a business excited and motivated about managing innovation & insight is a bit like an invitation to a party; lots of hype, great looking collateral and viral invitations, claims of fun and merriment. That’s because the invitation to party is the easy part and by virtue of the fact that it occurs BEFORE the party starts, the anticipation that comes with it can set some very high expectations indeed because the author wants to be sure they don’t ‘under-promote’ for a low turn-out.

I know we’ve alluded to this before, but we have to flag this as a warning again because of the feedback we get from businesses which have accepted the invitations, only to find the punters leaving early because the party itself is nothing like the invitations suggested.

Too many businesses subscribe to software that allows them to capture insights and feedback from customers and employees, without adequately preparing the business to effectively manage the expectations this sets in the minds of their audience.

If you asked me to take time out to help you come up with ideas on how you could improve your business, and I shared those with you…never to hear another word from you, i’d be pretty annoyed and unlikely to share my insights with you again.

That lack of response & involvement just might give me the impetus I need to explore your competitors.

Ask yourself, are you REALLY READY to send out those invitations? Here are a couple of questions you might want to have answered before you make the commitment:

• Does the software you have selected (about to select) provide tools to support and automate expectation management?
• Does the company that provided the software offer support not only for the tooling, but also for the business processes that sit behind and support the tooling?
• Have you got someone to act as your community manager?
• Do you/the business, understand the need to provide ongoing financial support to ensure the tools and processes can evolve with the business and your audience/s?

If you don’t have answers to these questions…, STOP…OPEN AN EMAIL….AND TALK TO US FIRST. Drop us an email and we’ll get back to you within 48 hours to discuss your situations and what you need to do before you reach out to your audience for innovation and insight.

eric@kmsystems.com.au

Thanks for visiting and for your commentary; clearly this area holds some interest and opportunity, so I’d like to further the discussion by inviting you to share your insights and relevant experience in getting social software and Web2.0 culture across the line in your business.

I’ll tweet your submissions on our (soon to be launched) CrowdZEN Twitter site, and my personal one and together we can help more people persuade decision makers and wallet holders to move into this space.

It can be quite intimidating for not so web savvy business leaders (particularly for ‘old-school’ operators) to consider adopting social media within the business when the only exposure they have to these tools is through the knowledge that employees are loitering on Facebook and Twitter during work time.

How can we best manage that cultural barrier to convince the business to adopt social web technologies to create a culture of community in order to harvest and harness the creative potential of the crowd?

Like any new relationship, positive, sustainable change is achievable if time is taken to ease the shift in attitudes.

Grafting some complimentary social software componentry onto existing, everyday systems and/or processes is an approach I am adopting within Government. I am working on a project to enable a simple, browser based requisitionong system to track building maintenance requests and forecasting.

Pretty simple system really…click through request, a description and approval with some workflow tooling in the back end. What we intend to include is a voting and comments system and some predictive technology as we’ve used on our innovation management platforms whereby users can see the status of their requests, and everyone else’s and vote and or comment.

One good example of how this can work for the business is where there exists a persistent issue in say a fifteen-story building. We will receive ad-hoc requests, from different people through various channels that end up with different people. The impact of that issue on tenants is diluted as there is no consolidated picture.

By providing one entry and broadcast point where people can view and support the requests of others, systemic or chronic  issues can be more quickly and easily identified and actioned.

For those who are still reluctant to move into this space, this approach represents a nice, bite-sizing of social software integration that can pave the way for future proposals while developing a greater sense of community within the business.

I read this article today in the New York Times and was heartened by the appetite out there, even at what I would deem to be a very early stage in terms of global adoption.

So…I have designed what I believe to be the most advantageous interface and associated processes, funding will be the next step in the process.

Stay tuned.

Early in my career, I was directly involved in managing escalated customer complaints and was naturally presented with numerous opportunities to improve business processes and products. After trying to get a few ideas up to the right decision makers, I became frustrated with how poorly managed customer and employee improvement ideas were being managed, so the management of ideas and the promotion of creativity became my focus.

Stepping back and reflecting, inviting managing and processing ideas per se, are clearly only a component of an overall innovation management mix. Many opportunities do not come in the form of an idea, so need to be analysed at their source and translated into an opportunity.

This makes the positioning of the feedback mechanism important with respect to what it is you invite the community to contribute. For Insurance Australia Group, Dave and I focused on idea management. We now however agree that many improvement opportunities were missed simply because:

• it was not explicitly communicated to initiators that ANY feedback was welcome, or
• initiators were unable to translate other feedback into an idea or improvement opportunity, which loops back to the first point.

Teaching people to translate say, a complaint into an improvement opportunity is not practical in terms of the provision of a feedback tool. We can, through the community drive a culture of creativity and provide a safe environment for people to articulate their thoughts, whatever they may be, and leave it to the business (and the back-end process) to facilitate the translation.

This approach drives increased participation and conversation as there is no set criteria to restrict insight…it’s becomes an open forum where all forms of feedback are invited.

We have been so steeped in this stuff now for years, in varying capacities and from different perspectives, it’s about time for KMSystems and Gain Storming to collaborate outside of the corporate walls.

Since our first meeting back in 2006, Dave and I have designed, developed, tested, promoted and rolled out various iterations of feedback systems. We have systematically assessed each of our key, potential competitors and watched how their offerings have evolved; looking at what works best and applying that to what we already know to develop what we believe represents end-to-end, online feedback management in it’s most advantageous embodiment.

We are still doing some testing and assessments and will keep you updated once we’re live.

Not bad for a bespoke system. Why has it pushed aside other more established and well funded innovation management platform providers, like the Salesforce and Deloitte offerings?

Well, here’s why:

• it was custom designed for the corporate environment
• it is truly end-to-end, being that it manages all aspects of innovation from idea initiation to idea management, reporting and as a carrier of the creative culture
• it is easy to use for initiators and for the business – simplicity has always been my key requirement and once any aspect looked like it was going to be too difficult for participants, it was back to the pub with the butchers paper and crayons for a review and revise session over a beer or three with Dave
• it is easy on the eye with simple and descriptive icons
• its in built processes drive accountability in the business, so no idea gets filed away in someones desk never to see the light of day again
• it recognises creative effort through reporting and community tools
• the business owns the data
• the system delivers approx 95% self sufficiency in terms of changing the look and feel and function/structure

So, nice award, now…what are the risks?

…it’s not just a system, it’s a culture

The main risk is that without the right community manager, the initial momentum and excitement will be gradually diluted. The person or team adminstering the tool are also responsible for promoting/marketing the tool, feeding back relevant information to participants and the business in always changing and interesting ways.

That person or team need to be the very visible face of the tool so that the community have a human link to the platform.

…it can be harder to keep employees interested and motivated than your customers

This is very much a self-promotion thing and if your adminsitrators are the modest, shy and retiring types…the system is doomed. Building and driving a culture of creativity across any large organisation requires energetic and motivated individuals who aren’t scared to constantly promote themselves and the system.

Customers catch fleeting glimpses of your marketing strategies, however employees are a captive audience and as such, things get familaiar, tired and staid quickly. Keeping the culture fresh….also applies to the system itself…

…keep it fresh

Another significant risk which I alluded to in the previous post, is that the business does not accept the need to fund the evolution of the system itself. In terms of web technologies, the system I designed for IAG is quite dated today and there are significant opportunities to improve user experience and back-end functions.

This is about keeping the technology aligned to what participants are experiencing in the web space outside of the work environment; with web technologies improving so quickly, it doesn’t take long for participants to make the distinction between old technologies and new. If you fall over here, you will lose your audience very quickly.

Having said all that, congrats to IAG, hope you can win again next year.

The first system I designed was a category driven platform that worked like this:

Add an idea (Idea Initiator):

1. select a category for your idea

2. select a sub-category (based on previous selection)…etc as relevant

3. add a title for the idea

4. describe the idea

5. submit the idea

6. receive confirmation email

Managing the ideas (Category Owner):

1. assign a category to a dedicated category owner

2. recieve email notification – (time to action clock starts ticking)

3. reviewes idea and contacts initiator for more detail as required

4. applies appropriate action to idea

5. initiator receives notification of action/comments applied to idea

6. action & comments are posted for community view & comment

>>Opportunities to improve:

In time sensitive environments like call centres, taking time to find the right category for your idea can be time consuming and distracting. I have observed that the most relevant, customer-focussed ideas come from areas where there is direct contact with the customer, but often those flashes of raw brilliance while the customer is on the phone or facing you, can be diluted by the time you dig through the category tree and arrive at the description section.

Looking at the Category Ownership aspect, the opportunity to improve provides for increased flexibility, visibility and accountability around the way ideas are managed and shared within that community.

This improvement can be enabled through the use of tagging.

At a high-level, this is the way tagging can make it quicker and easier for the idea initiator to articulate the opportunity to improve.

Add an idea (Idea Initiator):

1. input the description of your idea

2. submit

Meanwhile, throughout the business, interested parties have ‘subscribed’ themselves to certain keywords/phrases that are relevant to their part of the business and for which they would like to receive alerts should an idea come though that contains those keywords or phrases in its description.

Managing the ideas (Category Owner):

1. subscribe to keywords/phrases of interest

2. receive notification of match/es

3. comment and/or take ownership of idea

4. apply relevant action and comments

This way, categories are flexible and actually determined by initiator input, as opposed to being dictated by the system.

Additionally, anyone in the business can ‘subscribe’  to any keyword or phrase, giving more people more visibility of ideas that are coming through. Criteria can be set in the system to indicate which subscriber each idea is most relevant to based on their subscriptions and where they sit in the business.

Once someone decides to take ownership of an idea, the rest of the business gets immediate visibility of that fact and can interact directly with the owner in need.

In terms of system design and architecture, this model is a significant improvement. It is true web2.0 in the way content is driven and managed by the entire community, rather than constricing input to architectural design, organisational structure and categorisation.

After obtaining funding and support to develop the initial system, the challenge for the innovation/community manager will be to get the improved system across the line. A forward thinking decsion maker/wallet holder, will have no hesitation approving the new system, and in fact will be open to ongoing system enhancements and improvements as web technologies and communities dictate. I do however feel for those of you who had to struggle to get your initial system approved; this is a change piece that you have to work through and gain support for.

I have developed detailed mock-ups of an improved system that operates as described, if you want to know more about the design and processes, email me: ericimbs@gmail.com

Once exchanged, a series of activities takes whereby those commodities change hands once, or a number of times, in raw or processed form in order to reach the end user/consumer.

Every bottle of juice or packet of bacon, started as a raw commodity that was transformed into  consumable product.

Similarly, every product & process began in raw form…an idea.

I don’t want to waffle on about this; you know where I’m headed. I have a head full of ideas on ways ideas can be traded for commercial benefit in a high volume environment, but more on that later.

I think it was Seth Godin (Unleashing the Idea Virus) who said the currency of the future is ideas and I think we need to start thinking about how we can harness what essentially is a raw material with unlimited scope and potential in terms of what it can deliver through the processing phases.

Back to trading ideas as commodities: next step for me is to create a wireframe mock-up of a commodity trading platform under these umbrella requirements:

• it is easy to put forward ideas
• there is a checkin/verification process (uspto integration???)
• a clear and documented trail to establish and maintain ownership
• people submitting ideas are rewarded
• people buying ideas have ample protection
• it is a community tool
• no-one gets preferential treatment in terms of opportunity to present ideas

Now, I can design and develop proof of concept and a high level business requirements document, but I will need ample funding for this one…

Having designed large-scale, bespoke innovation management platforms coupled with the added mandate of promoting the system and driving the culture, has made it easy to observe the way idea initiation behaviours mature and how much more well considered each idea becomes (provided the feedback is constructive and consistent).

We also observe a reduction in duplicated ideas as the community spends more time viewing others’ ideas and commenting or promoting the original idea rather than duplicating.

The graphic below illustrates the typical behavioural path that motivated participants tend to follow:

• I will use this tool to put forward all my great ideas
• I have had some constructive feedback &/or recognition for my creative effort
• I’ll put more ideas forward
• I keep getting feedback/R&R
• Taking time to reflect on quality of previous ideas
• I’ll do some checking before I submit my next idea (perhaps to reduce duplication, assess viability, do a reality check, etc)
• Quality of feedback/R&R improves as the quality of my idea increases, but I am submitting fewer ideas
• I have become better at identifying AND framing opportunities

This evolutionary path can only be successful if supported by robust R&R & Feedback mechanisms.

On a global scale, we can now have a serious conversation about Ideas being the new Safe-Haven commodity…stay tuned for my next post.