Companies that rely on innovation have an advantage over their competitors. They can adapt to emerging opportunities in the market faster than businesses that are “stuck in the past.” If the top management fosters creativity among employees, it results in product improvements, better customer service, and an overall increase in business efficiency. Let’s take a look at the top 7 ideas that can become drivers for innovation.
Ideas for Your Corporate Website
Personalization is the most innovative approach when it comes to your corporate website. You probably want to create a seamless customer experience and improve the lifetime value of every client. You can’t do that without analyzing customer behavior first.
- Use specialized tools and AI-enhanced analytics to take a deeper look at your customer’s journey and create accurate buyer personas. Use this data as the foundation for your personalization efforts across multiple marketing channels. The benefits of this approach include an increase in customer loyalty, a higher rate of repeat purchases, and overall better customer satisfaction.
- Tools like chatbots and callback widgets can simulate human-to-human interaction 24/7. Even when shopping online most customers prefer a welcoming experience similar to visiting a brick-and-mortar store.
- Using customized pop up blogs lets you collect customer data to create personalized offers, send messages to regular visitors, build loyalty programs, increase your social media following, and more.
Tailor your Online Store to Different Devices
Using personalization works wonders for any business, and often yields spectacular results in e-commerce projects. If you take into account what kind of device your customers are using when they make purchases or browse through your store looking for information, you can create models that will predict their behavior. You can show them different products based on what device your customers are using, what time of day it is, where did they come from to your site, and more. By creating a personalized customer journey for your e-commerce website you will increase your conversions and revenue.
Promote Creative Employees
Top managers and business owners should encourage their employees to “flex their creative muscle.” According to research on innovation, companies have to integrate the efforts of their management and creative ideas of their employees on multiple levels for this approach to work.
A good starting point would be selecting several employees based on tests, performance reviews, or your personal opinion and forming brainstorming teams. These teams should include niche experts and open-minded employees that can think “outside the box.” While not everybody is suited for creative thinking, it can be unlocked through training and experience.
Changing your hiring process to include people with “unorthodox” backgrounds might bring innovative thinkers into your business. Traits to look for may include unusual hobbies, creative habits, fondness for arts and crafts, and inventiveness.
Build an Idea-Sharing Platform
Most companies under-utilize their Intranet. You can turn it into a hub of creativity and innovation by creating an idea-sharing platform.
A good platform must have a mechanism for submitting and reviewing ideas. It should also include options for voting and commenting. There are dozens of pre-made platforms available online. Alternatively, you can task your IT team with building one from scratch. You can improve the effectiveness of this idea-sharing platform by introducing brown bag lunches or other informal meetings for your employees and managers to facilitate discussions.
Reward Innovative Thinkers
Company workers might be slow to adapt to a new environment that is designed to foster innovation. Reasons for that include personal introversion and limited understanding of the global business goals. But if you reward your most creative employees, others will become more open to the idea of innovation in the workplace. Your employees will voice their opinions more often, and collaborate with each other. Even a personal thank you note as a reward can be a good start to boost the morale of your employees.
Implement a Screening Process
Not all ideas are created equal. You don’t want to reward “pipe dreams” and useless ideas. Also, your employees should feel that their input is appreciated. By introducing a formal idea screening process, you will show that creative thinking is valued in the company. Invite industry experts and marketing professionals to perform screening of ideas. They should be viable and approved by the majority of the focus group. Alternatively, you can crowdsource your screening process by letting every employee vote for their favorite ideas and suggestions.
Collect and Analyze Data
Today every business is a Big Data business. You should expand the reach of your data analytics to include not only your clients but also your employees and business partners. Using AI-enhanced ERP platforms will help you uncover trends and patterns in human behavior and interactions.
You should encourage integration between your marketing, HR, and IT departments. Being able to collect and analyze important data will help you find your most valuable clients, trustworthy partners, and creative employees. Innovation should be grounded in data to help you achieve the best results possible.
Conclusion
The innovative approach can be used in every aspect of your business from improving the interactions with your customers to increasing the productivity of your employees. If you want to find new creative ways to reach business goals, foster an open-minded collaborative environment and gather actionable data. Implementing a screening process and rewarding innovative thinkers will help you increase revenue and better serve your customers and shareholders.