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News

25.01.2010

„Smart Ideas help SAP run better every day“ powered by target Idea Management

Idea management at SAP is set up as a service organization that offers the right contacts, processes, systems, and services so that good ideas from employees can be successfully implemented. A global idea management program with regional focus and a modern future-oriented Web infrastructure promotes success even in financially difficult times. SAP implemented “target Idea Management,” the idea management software from target software solution, in 2001.

 

For more than 35 years, the name SAP has stood for innovation, success, and creativity. As the world’s leader in business software and third-largest software provider in the world, SAP develops tailor-made software solutions for more than 92,000 customers around the globe.

Companies are only as successful and innovative as their employees. Surveys, analysis, and awards have proven that SAP is one of the most innovative companies in the world. Innovation not only applies to products, solutions, and services, but also to the organization and its management, as well as corporate communication and culture.

With the implementation of idea management software at SAP in 2001, ideas and improvement suggestions from employees from all parts of the global organization are given equal opportunity. As a result, a dynamically growing company like SAP can mobilize the creativity and potential of ideas from its employees not only for improving their own work environments but also for improving the company as a whole. In this way, the company can develop even more successfully. Employees can submit ideas that help optimize internal processes. New innovative ideas increase efficiency, quality, security, as well as sustainability – and last but not least can also save costs. The fundamentals of the implemented idea management process have remained consistent until 2007.

The target Idea Management system landscape comprises a central application with German and English language variants and an ideas database to which all employees have access through the corporate intranet. All ideas are submitted, processed, and valuated online. Submitters enter their ideas directly in the system and assign them to reviewers. Reviewers then create their reviews of the ideas, and determine the value of these ideas and correspoinding premiums.

The Idea Management team consists of a small central group and a growing pool of 80 assigned reviewers.

In 2008, SAP relaunched its idea management with new management. Oguzhan (Ozzy) Genis assumed leadership of the Idea Management team with ambitious plans: set up a truly collaborative idea management process, use Web 2.0 technologies including RSS feeds and widgets, create a central reporting function, and implement the idea management process at all SAP Labs locations. Brazil, China, Hungary, and Israel are now using their own idea management systems and can implement innovations at their locations. target was able to accommodate these complex requirements. 

In addition, idea management has been implemented in other, rather unconventional, ways at SAP, for example, in the SAP Marketing organization located in New York. The group wanted to use the idea management platform as a means to share and reward best practices. To support this rather untraditional idea management request, SAP IT and target worked together to implement the necessary customizing within a very short timeframe. 

Over the years, idea management at SAP has achieved both acceptance and significance, not only through marketing campaigns for the process itself, but also in targeted cost-savings actions and campaigns to increase efficiency in development, for example.

Ozzy Genis is quick to point out that “smart ideas help SAP run better every day,” repeating a motto that hangs on many walls of SAP locations – from China to Brazil.

SAP’s idea management program is also a member of the German Institute for Business Economics (Deutsches Institut für Betriebswirtschaft or dib) and received top honors in its first year of participation in the annual comparison of industry statistics. 

“SAP Idea Management is technically and structurally similar to offerings from other leading providers. However, the ability to set up idea management as a service organization with Web 2.0 capabilities in the future is something unique and cutting edge in Germany.”
Christiane Kersting, Head of Idea and Innovation Management, dib (Deutsches Institut für Betriebswirtschaft)