So, hopefully you read my previous blog on Innovation and creating an innovative culture..  It is essential to success in this market.

WHAT IS INNOVATION: A new way of doing something.

Let’s look at a great example of innovation.   In 1968 at the Olympics in Mexico, a man named Dick Fosbury set an Olympic record with a move that others called “unorthodox”.  He began experimenting with alternative, unconventional methods of high jumping as a high school sophomore. Rejecting the straddling approach, which had been the standard for the prior forty years, he tweaked the old-fashioned scissor kick.  The result of his creativity and willingness to try something different, was a completely innovative method of high jumping called the “Fosbury Flop” that is still used today.

INNOVATION IS PERSONAL and what lead to the creation of amazing companies like Microsoft, and Apple. In the challenging business world we live in, it’s time for all of us to be innovative.  Maybe you don’t think you have the influence in your role to create major innovation.  Start small.  Look at where tasks are done repetitively or processes that seem disjointed and broken.  Create ideas on how you could improve the task or process. Talk to co-workers and get their ideas.  Create three options on how to solve the problem with pros and cons to each solution.  Calculate the return on the investment.  This should include man hours saved multiplied by an assumed rate, estimated opportunities it creates, expenses saved, less costs to implement.  Determine the best solution and pitch your idea.   When companies are looking to downsize and need to determine who to cut, employees that provide innovative ideas which save the company money or help the business find new opportunities are less likely to be on that list.

INNOVATION IN REPORTING:  For years we have leveraged tools like Excel to do our corporate reporting and budgeting processes.  It works, but can be painful when cells are overwritten, formulas change …    Or maybe your organization has 5+ reporting solutions depending on the system the data is coming from.   You may have “Business Intelligence” tools thinking you were innovative.   That’s just step one.   Start looking at ways you can have an innovative culture within your BI environment.  IBM Cognos Event Manager can eliminate the manual distribution of reports by automatically triggering reports to be emailed to recipients on a specific date, or when specified data changes.  How about integrating your BI reports into Power Point for your monthly meetings?  This would allow you to simply refresh your Power Point monthly saving significant time in meeting prep.  Did you realize you can integrate IBM Cognos Planning with IBM Cognos 8 Business Intelligence?  If you own both, why don’t you leverage their integration?  So, if you are looking for INNOVATION in Reporting, check out some of our webinars for more ideas at this link.

INNOVATION IN BUDGETING: Are you still doing the annual budget in Excel and spending hours prepping hundreds of spreadsheets for departments to complete?  Only to wait for the users to send the mega files back to you where you get the fun task of consolidating them while praying that they didn’t add rows or columns.  It’s time to INNOVATE!  IBM Cognos provides solutions that allow you to use powerful OLAP technology leveraging your knowledge and the corporate familiarity with Excel.  Each user can complete their templates and data is automatically aggregated.   By simplifying the process with powerful tools, you can move away from the annual budget to a rolling forecast.  Start modeling your business with models that do true “What if” analysis.  And how excited would the CFO be if they had a process that took the forecast process all the way thru to the Income Statement, Balance Sheet, and allowed you to Forecast Cash?   For more information on creating an innovative culture and innovation in budgeting, check out our events and webinars.

See Part 1 HERE