Software is the lever for delivering innovation

In HFS’s 2H, 2021 Pulse survey of 600 decision-makers across the Global 2000 enterprises, it is clear software is crucial to delivering on a firm’s innovation agenda. Relevant software facilitates the collection, collaboration, and consumption of information and ideas – making connections pre-digital means may have missed. Now these are mission-critical to the employee, customer, and the enterprise’s cross-silo efforts to learn quick, integrate quicker, and fail or succeed faster.

Data from 600 C-suite, vice presidents, managers, and directors in business and technology agree that software’s role in innovation is:

• To make employees more effective at their job so they can identify new opportunities and share these with others.
• To become more agile in responding to customer needs at the point of contact, not waiting for a centralized structure to provide guidance or issue formal orders.
• To get to the information needed to fulfill what they’ve been hired to do. The software that creates the greatest business value is easy to use, effective in collecting new information and works seamlessly with data assets to automate, augment, and answer questions that arise.

The Bottom Line: You must align your software strategy with your innovation strategy

Many firms have established innovation leaders, programs, and committees to identify where their companies can innovate. These firms promote a culture of innovation by encouraging employees to offer inputs that may lead to new intellectual property, services, or products. However, often success eludes them as they lack the tools, a willingness to execute, or a means to measure success. Only through software can the firm align the talent, culture, and data mindset needed for successful, and always-on, innovation.