What is business innovation?
Business innovation is the process of reinventing your business and adapting new business models, new management techniques, new technologies, and new forms of stakeholder participation in order to build a stronger and more profitable business.
A brief history of business innovation
In his article entitled There is a New Way to Reach Your Customers – so Find It!, author Paul Sloane, who often gives talks about innovation explains, “many great business innovations started as new ways of reaching customers. In the l19th century, people living in rural America had to go into town to their local store to buy goods they needed. A young railway company agent, Richard Sears, decided to try a new approach. Together with a watchmaker, Alvah Roebuck, he set up a mail order catalogue. The catalogues were novel, exciting and appealing to clients. Sears Roebuck became the world’s largest retailer.”
A great example of modern business innovation
According to futurethink.com, Apple is proving to be one of the most innovative businesses. They got their start in computers, but when they came up with the iPod, they broke into the music, audiobook, movies, and telecommunications businesses. Apple is committed to improve the customer experience. They dig deep and assess latent needs before customers – or competitors – can even imagine them.
OneDesk: Facilitates business innovation
Business innovation starts when a company identifies what areas they need to improve on. In order to find this out, they should ask the people who know best – their customers. OneDesk is unique in that it allows all stakeholders to connect within one application. Employees, customers and business partners can collaborate using the latest social collaboration technologies and work together to develop products that will outperform their competitors.
To quote Paul Sloane: “We tend to think of innovation in terms of new products and services but new routes to market can be far more effective means to gain competitive advantage. There is a new way to reach the customers you serve today and the customers you want to reach tomorrow. Spend some time focusing on this issue, brainstorm new routes to reach clients and new ways to sell. It could be the best innovation investment you make.”
OneDesk allows businesses to have a new way of reaching and managing customers, employees, feedback and projects. Integrated CRM capabilities combined with ideas and requirement management tools make for an ideal enterprise software that strengthens the business community.
To learn more about how you can innovate your business with OneDesk, simply try it out for free.
We want to know: How does your company go about achieving business innovation?