CA Clarity PPM for NPD: Idea-to-Launch Management

Too often, organisations confuse invention with innovation.

They focus on generating new ideas or patents, without developing a repeatable process for both creating real winning products and for killing poor ideas early in their lifecycle. The best-performing innovators have learned to optimise the entire idea-to-launch process, to maximise the return on their investment in innovation.

CA Clarity PPM for NPD is designed to help your organisation improve its innovation process from beginning to end.

Our solution uses robust idea-to-launch process and workflow management that ensures your team members understand what is expected of them and when.

• Standard document templates ensure that all key deliverables are complete and consistent
• Performance metrics and scorecards encourage your team to make informed and objective gate decisions
• Automated routing and notifications eliminate the omission of critical development steps

Process and Workflow Management

While rigor is important, the idea-to-launch process must, by its very nature, be flexible. That’s why CA Clarity PPM for NPD allows your company to establish multiple idea-to-launch processes tuned to different product types (e.g. 5-stage for high-risk, 3-stage for simpler products).

Because these processes and workflows are easily configured by end-users, your company can continuously evolve them to match the capabilities and maturity of your business model. This allows you to continually improve your innovation performance, based on your own experience.

Idea Capture and Management

All successful ventures start with a good idea. CA Clarity PPM for NPD not only provides you with a central place where people can submit their product ideas, but also manages the routing, elaboration and idea screening process so that the best ideas can be prioritised and transitioned to the product portfolio for formal review and funding.

Stage and Gate Management

Leading innovators manage their idea-to-launch process using a series of development stages and go/kill decision gates

• A stage defines all of the activities, deliverables, budgets and resources required to complete it.
• A formal gate review conducted at the end of each stage determines whether the project should proceed to the next stage.

This approach reduces risk by incrementally allocating resources and budgets based on the achievement of specific development goals; it also reduces wasted development budget by stopping ill-conceived product ideas before they consume excessive resources.