The systematic process of collecting, evaluating, and prioritizing ideas offered by stakeholders or discussed by team members during tactical brainstorming sessions is known as idea management.
Idea management is crucial since these strategies often include finding innovative ways to satisfy your customers' requirements or making significant enhancements to your product. Because your strategies directly benefit from a change that your customers desire to see, it keeps your operations relevant. To ensure that no idea is sidelined or missed, it is important to have them with you in a structured way, which is where the best idea management software comes into play.
Importance of the best idea management software
1. Organization of ideas
The best idea management software offers a systematic and centralized platform for gathering ideas from multiple sources, including staff members, clients, or partners. Various idea management platforms enable the systematic documentation, categorization, and storage of ideas, preventing the loss or forgetting of important ideas.
2. Real-time collaboration
The use of idea management tools fosters teamwork and participant involvement. The best idea management software makes it possible for people to collaborate in real-time, add their thoughts to each other's ideas, and remark on them.
3. Transparency
Idea management tools provide transparency and visibility into the ideation process.
- Participants can track the progress of their ideas, see which ideas are being considered or implemented, and understand the decision-making process behind idea selection.
- Such transparency promotes a sense of fairness and inclusiveness within the organization.
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4. Evaluation of ideas
The best idea management software frequently has options for rating and sorting ideas. To evaluate the viability, potential impact, and alignment with strategic objectives, they may use-
- voting processes,
- grading methods, or
- criteria-based assessments.
These evaluation methods assist in locating high-value concepts and ranking these concepts in order of importance for future development and application.
5. Foster innovation
Idea-management tools stimulate continual improvement and foster an innovative culture by expediting the idea-management process.
- They offer a setting for continuous concept development, improvement, and application.
- You can use new ideas to boost growth, improve your goods and services, and maintain your competitiveness in a changing market.
6. Enhanced decision-making
The best idea management software produces useful information and insights into ideation processes. Metrics like the number of ideas created, participation rates, evaluation results, and implementation success rates are all captured by idea management tools. Using this data, you can make decisions to pinpoint trends, patterns, and areas where innovation efforts can be strengthened.
The best idea management software
1. EasyRetro
EasyRetro is a straightforward and simple application for organizing brainstorming sessions, sprint retrospectives, and other collaborative meetings with remote teams.
You can use EasyRetro to talk about what went well and what didn't during a typical sprint session. It will be simple to spot roadblocks and talk about potential modifications that will let you advance without difficulty.
While dealing with these challenges, it's also an excellent opportunity for everyone to observe and comprehend the process and cooperation.
Create boards: Use one of more than 100 different pre-defined templates to create private or public boards.
Fully customize your board: Create as many columns as you like, give them new names, and alter their colors.
Sort cards: Sort cards by creation date, vote total, or order. Filter cards by text as well.
Drag and drop cards: Cards can be moved to different columns, moved within the same column, and cards can be combined.
Export your board: Export your board in the following file types: PDF, CSV, PNG, EXCEL, DOCX, or to a Confluence page.
Standout features
- Create teams and invite as many people as you want.
- View and sort all of your previous retros in an easy interface.
- Set the maximum number of votes per person before voting on cards.
- Run quick surveys directly from your boards.
Pricing
ã…¤ | Free | Team | Business |
Price | ₹0 | ₹590 | ₹4484 |
Teams | 0 | 1 | 3 |
Public boards per month | 3 | 5 | 15 |
2. Idea Drop
Idea Drop, one of the leading online idea-management tools, attempts to assist you in prioritizing fresh ideas and thinking strategically. By setting up ideas in a clear pipeline through crowdsourcing, gamification, communication, and assessment tools, Idea Drop helps you get ready to act on your ideas.
- Ideation and sharing ideas: Your program for innovation runs on ideas. Widening your horizons has never been simpler. All thanks to Idea Drop's simple yet efficient idea-capturing method and beautiful interface.
- Enrich ideas: Their sophisticated system automatically surfaces the most promising ideas, making evaluating and curating ideas at scale easy. Unleash the potential of crowdsourcing for joint invention by recognizing and evaluating your best concepts.
- Turn ideas into reality: Idea Drop offers a streamlined, organized approach to idea management by effortlessly aligning with your custom workflow.
Standout features
- There are numerous ways to contact members.
- Several task management tools include a point system, scores, and deadlines.
- Real-time data to monitor the effectiveness of your implemented ideas.
- There are numerous ways to order the ideas you view using scores, categories, and filtering.
Pricing
This tool offers a variety of paid options, but you must speak with their sales team to see how much each one costs.
3. Ideanote
Ideanote is one of those idea-management tools that enables you to prioritize and work with several product "areas" to explore every facet of the idea-management process in greater detail. Ideanote seeks to gather potential new ideas from coworkers, clients, and stakeholders from across the web, prioritize them, and add them to your funnel. It is less of a brainstorming tool and more of a digital suggestion box.
- Ask for ideas in a snap: The team will appreciate how simple it is to immediately gather suggestions for new goods, more sales, or better workplace culture.
- Involve the right people: Start right away and transform one team at a time into innovators. When ready, scale up to global innovation initiatives with tens of thousands of clients.
- Move the best ideas forward: With enterprise-level idea management for your team, organize the chaos. Implement the best ideas by moving them through your customized funnel, prioritizing them like a pro.
Standout features
- Automate routine tasks.
- Team folders to organize categories and departments.
- There are numerous ways to examine, sort, filter, and rank fresh ideas.
- Fantastic for gathering online customer reviews from many sources.
Pricing
ã…¤ | Free | Business |
Price | $0 | $49 |
Members | 10 | 15 |
Teams | For small teams | 25 teams |
4. IdeaScale
IdeaScale is undoubtedly one of the best idea management software solutions on the market today.
You can use the application to compile the ideas from your team, vote on them to determine which has the most promise, and then assess and put that idea into practice. Collaboration, ideation, workflow management, idea ranking, mind maps, discussion threads, trend tracking, etc., are a few of the main features of IdeaScale.
- Platform setup: To create and carry out effective innovation workflows and campaigns, they teach and certify your team.
- End-to-end platform training: A new platform can be intimidating. Therefore, they collaborate closely with your team to tailor your community and campaigns to your needs.
Standout features
- Idea Ranking.
- Status Tracking.
- Workflow Management.
- Polls/Voting.
- Discussion Threads.
- Collaboration.
- Evaluation Workflow.
Pricing
5. Rapidr
Rapidr makes it simple to create outstanding products, aids in understanding what customers want, and ultimately supports smart product choices.
This idea management tool makes gathering, arranging, categorizing, and prioritizing consumer feedback simple.
It is a comprehensive customer feedback management platform with ideation, roadmap development, and release information all in one location.
Idea collection boards: Create unlimited boards to collect ideas, feature or integration requests, problem reports, roadmap suggestions, and other information.
Idea voting system: Allow customers to vote on suggestions, requests, and comments.
Built-in authentication: Rapidr offers a simple, pre-configured authentication solution to identify users who send comments.
Standout features
- Merge duplicate ideas.
- Export voter list.
- Embeddable idea widget.
- Leave comments on ideas.
- Custom branding.
- Invite teammates.
Pricing
ã…¤ | Startup | Business | Enterprise |
Price | $49 | $199 | Custom |
Members | 5 | 50 | Unlimited |
Time | 1-month | 1-month | Custom |
6. OpinionX
OpinionX, one of the best idea management software, helps teams to rank the things that matter most to their customers, coworkers, and communities. It is the only Customer Problem Stack Ranking (CPSR) tool. CPSR is a form of survey that gives you a list of the issues your consumers are having. Most of the issues they wish to address will be near CPSR, while the less important issues will be at the bottom. CPSR is a reliable method for figuring out what matters to individuals. That is how they help you generate and work on the best ideas.
- Make decisions confidently: Create a ranked list with an actionable score using user input, roadmap tickets, interview quotes, and more.
- Understand differences: Compare the priorities of various participant groups, such as free users and paying customers.
- Let participants fill in your blind spots: At any time during your project, solicit new opinions from participants to add to your stack rating list.
Standout features
- A collection of tools for ranking and analyzing the most important information to your users.
- Divide a big list of possible votes into several simple head-to-head votes.
- Using agree/disagree voting, determine the statement with the most support.
Pricing
ã…¤ | Free | Pro | Scale |
Price | $0 | $30 | $60 |
Members | 50 | 100 | 1000 |
Time | 1-month | 1-month | 1-month |
7. TeamRetro
TeamRetro is a safe, enterprise-ready online agile retrospective and team health check solution for colocated, remote, and hybrid teams. Thanks to this easy integration with guided retrospective procedures, your retros will always be worthwhile. You can run insightful health checks with TeamRetro to get team feedback and guide data-driven actions.
TeamRetro interacts with your current workflow to enhance team and product improvement over time.
- Online retrospectives: Effectively lead meetings with your team, whether in person or in a remote setting, and make sure they are action-oriented. With its time-saving, intuitive, and real-time features, you can simply assist conversations and concentrate on forward-moving actions.
- Team health checkups: Discover what inspires and challenges your team using industry-standard or custom health dimensions.
- Data-driven insights: Data from your retrospectives and team health assessments can be recorded. Analyse group opinion, enforce discipline, follow up on action items, and assess time investment returns.
Standout features
- Automatic idea grouping.
- Fully customizable.
- API Access.
- Secure datacentres.
- Fully encrypted.
- Team arrangements.
Pricing
Team Retro | Single Team | Small Org | Large Org |
Price | $25 | $60 | $90 |
Members | 25 | Unlimited | Unlimited |
Time | 1-month | 1-month | 1-month |
Team | 1 | 3 | 6 |
8. Shuffleboard
Shuffleboard is the best online idea management tool that helps you gather suggestions, vote on results, and rally your team behind the next great idea.
It enables you the option of an open-ended question on each slide that anyone can respond to. It is highly beneficial as everyone concentrates on the same slide. It helps you to think big and ignore complicated software. With Shuffleboard, everyone can take part because it's so easy.
- Stack and reorder ideas: Drag to reorder the cards or to create a stack of related concepts. It's just as easy to type in a reply as it is to text someone.
- No login is required: To join a session, you don't need to log in. Participants don't require instruction. No application is needed to download or set up.
- Timers and votings: Encourage conversation and reach an agreement while preventing detours. On their device, each person may view the timer. Votes remain secret until everyone casts a ballot.
- Drag to combine: To combine two ideas, drag one on the other. The original author or concept will not be lost.
- Drag to reorder: Create your board by dragging to rearrange the ideas.
- Join with a QR code: It only takes a picture or a click to join a meeting.
- Meeting templates: You can start a meeting immediately with their pre-built, ready-to-use templates.
Standout features
- Super simple.
- Nothing to install.
- Super secure.
- Works on every device.
- Autosave.
- Instant synchronization.
Pricing
ã…¤ | Trial | Premium | Pro |
Price | $0 | $29 | Custom |
Participants | 3 | Unlimited | Unlimited |
Time | Forever | 1-month | Custom |
Boards | 2 | Unlimited | Unlimited |
