One-to-One: Collective Customer Wisdom for Product Innovation: Accept Software

I had the chance to talk with …
Bryan Plug, President and CEO of Accept Software about
their
Innovation Management solution. The company is focusing on helping
companies take advantage of the collective voice of customers (also
known as “crowd sourcing”) to drive product innovation. Accept’s
strategy is to help companies make sense of the vast amount
of digital information available to them - and then leverage that
knowledge to increase profitability through innovation. I
have written in the past about companies’ desire to drive “product
innovation as a process” - what Accept is offering looks like a
big step in the right direction.

What do they Do?
People are talking, and that knowledge is being captured. Whether
the conversation is on a blog or other Internet forum,
or whether they are talking to somebody inside the
company, records of the conversations are becoming digital asserts.
Social media - online communities that share and discuss ideas -
are exploding on the Internet. Likewise, a more significant amount
of customer interaction is being stored in enterprise systems such
as CRM (Customer Relationship Management, which includes call
center support) and SLM (Service Lifecycle Management) software.
Wouldn’t it be great if somebody could help mine that information
and help drive products based on real customer needs? Sounds pretty
compelling, given the amount of money that companies spend on focus
groups and market research is only netting a small percentage of
products that are considered successful in the market.

What do they Offer?
There are several legs to the solution that Accept offers. These
include solutions to:

• Discover the voice of the market - which
  includes semantic data mining and analysis to capture input from
  the digital ecosystem of consumer information
• Engage the community - providing support to
  develop a forum if not already in place
• Capture ideas - to identify the potential
  products or features to bring to market for further
  consideration
• Process ideas - including aligning and
  prioritizing the product portfolio, part of Accept’s historical
  strength

What secret sauce does Accept bring to the table? In
conversations, it is clear that they understand that simply
capturing more new ideas is not the end game. I speak
with a lot of companies that describe their scenario as “we have
lots of ideas - maybe too many - we just don’t know which are the
good ones.” This is where crowdsourcing can really shine. Not only
does Accept help to capture the ideas, they can analyze feedback on
idea proposals. For example, if the market is asking for a feature
like “instant on” in their conversations, that idea can be proposed
back to the community for refinement and validation. Who likes the
idea? Who is commenting on it? Are some people’s ideas more
accepted than others? It’s this kind of knowledge that can help
guide innovation. More ideas might be a good thing, but
getting early validation and feedback on the ideas promises much
greater value. 

Through automation, many more ideas can be tested with much
larger communities than in traditional market research.
There is still a difference between what people say they will do
and what they will actually do - so I believe there will always be
a place for direct interaction with people. But this concept
promises to take advantage of the vast asset of customer knowledge
currently being generated and turn it into actionable market
knowledge tied to product strategy. Stay tuned, this can
have a big impact on profitable product development.

Who do they Work with?
Accept is early in the rollout of this new technology, and working
with a variety of companies. They tell me the industries that they
serve best are those that require rapid innovation and
where rapid is rewarded by higher margins - which I am
sure most of you can relate to. The solution is not limited to any
particular vertical industries, and Accept has been working with a
number of high tech and medical device companies based on history.
They are also working in CPG (Consumer Packaged Goods) and
Financial Services industries, which promises to be a sweet spot
given the high demand for fresh new products in both
industries.

How does this Fit in the Ecosystem?
I believe this offering fits in well with other innovation-oriented
initiatives I have written about including Microsoft’s
Innovation Management Solution, OVO’s
view to “innovate on purpose” and Invention Machine. It can
also act as a strong complement to a PLM
solution.

I have included one of the graphics for Accept’s website. It is
their view on how the Innovation Process fits within the product
innovation landscape - which I think is a good start at identifying
the overall product innovation ecosystem.

So that’s what I hear from Accept Software. I hope you found it
useful. What do you think? What else should I have asked them?