Crowdsourcing Software

Crowdsourcing Software

Crowdsourcing is the concept of asking a group of people (a “crowd”) to help solve problems, distribute tasks or generate ideas, via an open call. The term was coined in 2006 and today is used, almost exclusively, in relation to online requests and virtual crowds.

Smart businesses are successfully using crowdsourcing tools to gather new ideas from a wider pool of knowledge than traditionally possible. It’s quick, inexpensive and often delivers better results, thanks to a greater ability to collaborate.

Wazoku Idea Spotlight uses the power of crowdsourcing to help you generate and refine ideas from your own crowd (your employees) to develop a distinct competitive edge. Ideas can be captured from both bottom-up, on any subject at any time, or top-down, through specific topic requests.

Managed, focused crowds

The problem with crowdsourcing an undefined group is that not everyone has an equal level of expertise. For example, imagine asking the web community at large for suggestions on how to conduct brain surgery. It’s unlikely you’d get many useful responses.

The key is to use managed, focused crowds with appropriate knowledge on the subject.

Wazoku Idea Spotlight allows you to capture and manage ideas wherever they originate in your organisation. After all, who knows your company better than the people who work in it? Your employees can collaborate over new ideas and vote on the ones they’d like to see put into practice. And to make sure your crowd stays focused, Idea Spotlight identifies and uses your internal experts to ensure that only the best, most relevant ideas make it to a decision maker.

A culture of innovation

Crowdsourcing Software is less effective when used as a one-off to solve a problem. And if the process for capturing ideas is haphazard or lacks transparency, you can further lose engagement and trust from your crowd.

Instead, it should be seen as a continuous process so a culture of innovation develops throughout your crowd over time. The stronger this culture, the easier it becomes to implement change and the more engaged your crowd becomes.

Using tools like Wazoku Idea Spotlight, it is easier to educate and foster buy-in for change from your employees. Ideas that come from your crowd are more likely to be supported and driven by your crowd. Idea Spotlight also makes the process for submitting, evaluating and implementing ideas completely transparent. The people behind the best ideas get recognition and, using our unique Recommendation Engine, together with deep analytics, we help you to identify the individual innovators, influencers and decision-makers within your business.

Want to learn more? Download our “beginners guide” to Idea Management!