The climate is right for innovation

Gartner's Kathy Harris is pushing the innovation agenda in her latest blog.
"The climate is right for innovation and organizations that don’t change may lose their edge or even disappear. You can’t not innovate"

Kathy's innovation strategy is a bit ahead of its time.
Most companies are in the midst of the credit crunch. Their focus is on survival. Some will cut projects, some will cut staff. Long term planning usually gets chucked out the window in times like these. Innovation budgets are slashed. It takes real guts to be able to sit down calmly and think of innovation.

But when the panic dies down, and company execs realize that the new circumstances requires rethinking - they will find Kathy's strategy "spot-on". Companies will need to innovate in order to remain competitive. Most current business models are no longer sustainable.
"Innovation is the ability to see change as an opportunity - not a threat."
The current crisis (burning platform) is a great driver for innovation.

Innovation will not be simple and will not be easy. As Kathy states, "We must make courageous decisions, not just easy decisions. This means strategizing before we plan; planning before we act; and making decisions based on generating the highest return on future spending. And, we must do it quickly – the future starts now"..

Kathy's guidelines include these:

• Relying on solid prioritization and governance processes to guide future investments. If the economic crisis has changed the criteria for ranking your investments in projects or people, re-define the criteria and re-prioritize the investments. Don’t give up good governance, good judgment and best practices in a crisis. Don’t just react; act (courageously).
• Assign highest priority to investments and projects that enable your organization’s strategy. In fact, consider shifting additional resources to these strategic investments (speed them up) if the return on investment is especially good.
• Retain the people and skills needed to innovate, shape and create your organization’s future. Your most talented people are valuable assets — don’t give them up simply to reduce short term spending; instead, get them working on innovation and implementation of your most strategic projects.

Innovation means finding new and better ways to support business improvement and growth. A process of ongoing, planned innovation is vital to get the business out of the crisis.

One of the ways we advocate innovation is by using business process management software to automate the business processes. We see time and time again that bringing our software into a company causes a fundamental change in the way people think. It excites them. It enables them to take control of their business processes, change the way they work, make their work more efficient. It cuts costs, it removes bottlenecks, it enables employees to reduce their workload. It frees up time for them to create, think of new ideas, bring change to the business.

About PNMsoft

PNMsoft was founded in 1996 by experts in human workflow processes and specializes in Business Process Management (BPM) and Workflow Automation solutions for business users. The company is a multi-national enterprise with its headquarters in the UK, the R&D centre in Israel and a global network of business partners and associated offices.

PNMsoft is noted for looking beyond pure software issues, towards concerns such as customization and fast ROI.
The company has forged close and long-standing partner relationships, particularly with Microsoft, which has appointed it a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner. PNMsoft is also a member of the Microsoft Business Process Alliance.

About SEQUENCE

SEQUENCE is an intuitive BPM software suite based on a graphical flowchart-based platform. It contains powerful options to give users great flexibility in taking an existing business process and converting it from a manual flow to an automated flow.
SEQUENCE provides a full end-to-end BPM solution that includes exploring, modeling, simulation, execution, integration, monitoring and optimization functions.

For more about our BPM software, contact us or request our white paper