Product Roadmap – July 2023

Product Roadmap gives Wazoku an opportunity to provide updates on the upgrades we’ve made to our platform and outline where we plan to take things next. In the July 2023 edition, we highlight the work we’ve done on some recently released functionality, discuss updates that are coming to the Challenge experience, and discuss our future with everyone’s favorite hot topic right now: AI.

It’s been five months since our last Product Roadmap. In that time, Wazoku’s Product team has been busy, delivering new functionality and laying the foundations for the big projects we want to tackle next.

Recently Released

First up in this blog, I want to highlight the work that we’ve been doing since February that has led to functionality which has been released. These releases have been:

• Anonymous Idea Submission – this allows individual users to submit ideas without having their names publicly attached to them, allowing those who are more nervous to still submit ideas that, historically, they may have just kept to themselves.
• Analytics Enhancements – there are now more styling options in our industry-leading Advanced Analytics dashboards, meaning that you can align your data with the look of your own branding.
• Contextual Help – these workflows are designed to guide users through the platform, in the form of checklists and walkthroughs.
• Enhanced User Registration Experience – particularly relevant for those that use ‘username’ and ‘password’ instead of SSO, as well as those with Co-creation communities, these improvements make the registration process easier, including multi-factor identification and verification codes.
• Microsoft Teams App + Bot Integration – this will be released by Microsoft in the coming weeks and will allow users to use Wazoku without leaving their Teams profile. Our bot will also push notifications to them from within Teams, keeping them up to date on content that they’ve created or engaged with.

Challenge Enhancements

This forms part of a wider project which is to upgrade the Challenge process as a whole. However, for now, I want to be specific on the few areas of initial focus. We’ve been aware that, particularly on the management/admin side of the platform, the UX experience hasn’t been as easy to follow as we would like.

Therefore, we’ve introduced new features, including ‘Save as Draft’ and Challenge Statuses in the ‘Discover’ section, in order to empower Challenge Managers and Admins to take control of the Challenge management process. Expect to see these updates, as part of a wider Challenge process upgrade, in the next month or so.

Evaluation Scorecards

Over the years, we’ve had feedback on the Evaluation process and how to improve it. We have listened, and we’re now ready to discuss planned improvements to this process. We’re moving away from a prescriptive Evaluation process to one that allows you to mix-and-match the rating scales used for different parts of the Evaluation. This means that you can have a mixture of text questions, check boxes, and numerical ratings, all interspersed throughout the evaluation.

We will also introduce side-by-side view of evaluations alongside the idea that they correspond to. This means that you can see both the idea and your evaluation at once. This ensures that evaluators don’t have to move between tabs or pages in order to carry out their duties.

Finally, we will also be embedding analytics into the idea itself. This provides crucial context to Evaluators before a final decision is made on whether to progress or decline an idea. This allows the lead Evaluator to see how the rest of the evaluation team has viewed this idea, creating more informed decision making in the evaluation process.

Scouting

Scouting is something that we’ve been discussing for a while. However, now we are looking to release our first version of Wazoku’s Scouting offering mid-to-late next month. A key element of this is the ability to capture companies-as-an-entity, including automatic registration of new joiners with the company domain in their community.

This means that you have a single view of how you’re engaging with these companies, the kinds of ideas that their members are submitting for you, and whether they’re actually helping you to solve problems.

Secondly, we’re providing a vetting process which allows you to automatically vet new companies that register to be part of your cohort. This helps in both ensuring that you are scouting companies that are suitable for you, and also it allows us to recommend companies which are already approved by your business to help solve Challenges for you.

AI Co-Pilot

Artificial Intelligence is the hot topic for everyone right now, and we’re no exception. There is a huge amount of potential for AI, managed properly, to enhance the Challenge process for everyone. The first way in which we will deploy AI to make these improvements is our Co-Pilot.

Sometimes, especially if you have a number of Challenges running at the same time, it can be difficult for end users to find the right Challenge for their idea. The Co-Pilot allows them to submit the basic details of their idea, and then using proprietary AI models, we’ll be able to recommend the Challenge that best suits this idea.

This is especially useful in encouraging collaboration between people who may otherwise have just submitted similar, duplicate ideas. It also means that, if you’re getting a number of ideas that don’t really fit any of the Challenges you’re currently running, but answer a different problem, that it can inspire a new Challenge which you can then run on the platform.

DeepL

Wazoku currently has the capability to translate into 17 different languages. This is a vital component of our Product, as it ensures that innovation isn’t impacted by language barriers. To reap the benefits of a global network, you need to bring in different voices who may have a different first language to you.

To make it easier and more secure to deliver end user content in any language, we will shortly introduce an integration with DeepL. This ensures that we are offering the most secure multilingual site translation available on the market today.

In this blog, I’ve provided a run down of everything that the Wazoku Product team has released since February. I’ve then looked ahead at what we will be releasing soon, as well as some future big projects that we’re working on. To discuss any of this further, please get in touch with either support@wazoku.com or your Innovation Consultant.