Global Consumer Goods-Innovation Management

Customer is the US subsidiary of a global leader in the development and manufacture of hair care, hair color, skincare, color cosmetics and fragrances for the consumer and professional markets with nearly 8,000 employees spread across 7 manufacturing plants, 6 distribution facilities, 5 research and development centers, as well as corporate headquarters.

In addition to becoming faster and more agile, they believed they needed to create a “culture of innovation” and get a greater number of ideas flowing through the idea development system to produce more successful projects and product introductions, operational efficiencies, and general business improvements. To do this, they needed to involve the entire organization into the idea generation process. They wanted a structured, enterprise-based idea screening process - integrating R&D, Marketing, Sales, Finance, Human Resources, and Operations - that did not require physical meetings to review ideas. They also needed a way to store ideas for searching and retrieval at later stages to avoid reinvention and duplication of effort and a means for idea generators to monitor the project at all stages which would increase ownership and participation throughout the organization.

DataLan designed and deployed InnovaOPN, a SharePoint-based Innovation Application, opening its ideation to more workers, while streamlining and structuring the review, progression, and visibility of ideas across the enterprise and reducing the cycle time to implementation of those ideas.