FREMONT, CA.— May 7, 2009 — Accept, the expert in idea management, portfolio, and requirements management software solutions, today announced it is expanding its online customer community to better gather and manage ideas from its customers and deliver the right products more swiftly. By incorporating Accept Ideas into its own product development process, Accept is able to use timely and specific customer feedback to shape product direction while also providing insight to its customers about new enhancements and releases.

Saving Time and Money

By involving its customer community throughout the entire idea management process, Accept is virtually eliminating the time it used to take to gather, circulate, vet, prioritize, refine, and determine the disposition of product ideas. Accept estimates this will save a minimum of one day per idea managed over a one-year period. By managing between 300 and 500 ideas per year, the company will save $270,000 annually.

• Accept expects to realize additional benefits as well, including:
• A reduction of 15-20% of each product manager’s time, by eliminating manual methods of idea management such as email and spreadsheets.
• Less time required to gather and prioritize product ideas.
• Focus of scarce development resources on highest-value work.
• Reduced risk of developing products customers don’t want.
• More successful portfolio management by aligning ideas with product strategy and portfolio investment.
• Reduced time-to-market by building desired capabilities into new products an entire development cycle sooner.
• Better alignment of products with specific market needs and timing
   
• Employing Best Practices in Idea Management

Accept employs best practice idea management as it expands its online customer community, including:

• Creating public or private communities to focus feedback and protect IP. Public communities, available to all, are most useful for open brainstorming. Private communities provide a secure method for focusing specific idea discussion while protecting vital trade secrets.
• Seeding the community with ideas. Seeding the customer community enables Accept to spark new ideas and begin generating conversations quickly, which in turn helps drive customer adoption. In addition, it provides an efficient channel for Accept product managers to prioritize their backlog of ideas.
• Starting internally, then expanding outside the company. By beginning with a small group of employees, Accept develops an active and content-rich community by the time its customers and other external stakeholders join.
• Establishing the idea management process in advance. Accept keeps the volume of ideas manageable by setting a threshold score an idea must reach in order to be considered.
• Communicating idea status back to the community. Accept keeps its customers engaged throughout the product development process by communicating the status of ideas as they move through the pipeline.
• Creating a place where ideas are nurtured – not abandoned. Standalone idea capture (e.g., a “suggestion box”) traditionally has been the place where great ideas went to die. By using concepts such as idea clustering, and by tightly integrating Accept Ideas with its Requirements Management software and Portfolio Management software, Accept ensures ideas remain closely connected to the product development process.
  
  Comments on the News

“Bringing customer conversations directly into the product development process has enabled our product team to focus development resources on the most important customer ideas,” said Bryan Plug, President and CEO, Accept. “With continuous insight we can align product strategy with market needs, virtually in real-time, and consistently and more quickly deliver the products and enhancements that our customers demand.”

“Statistics show that customers who interact with a company via a community are 50% more likely to recommend that company to others,” said Brian Glover, Director of Voice of Market Solutions, Accept. “An idea community is the best way to let your customers know you’re listening. We are listening to our customers – and looking forward to hearing more of their ideas.”