MindMatters™ Introduces Software That Merges Innovation with ‘Stage and Gate’ Project Management

MindMatters™, a leading provider of software and services for innovation, recently announced the launch of their latest product, StageTrak™. The first on-demand software of its kind, StageTrak helps companies manage the ‘front-end of innovation’ as well as project management.

Jan. 20, 2011, Canonsburg, PA — Some companies today have no problem finding an abundance of good ideas, but struggle with how to select, implement, and manage the best ones. Others rely heavily on regimented project management, yet lack the crucial front-end components, like employee collaboration and voice-of-the-customer, necessary to feed the hopper of viable, vetted projects.

StageTrak™, new from MindMatters, solves both of these major problems by integrating innovation pipeline and project management into a single, easy-to-use process. This is accomplished with a unique blend of innovation best practices in use at today’s top companies, and an industry-proven stage and gate methodology.

According to John Gabrick, CEO of MindMatters, “We were hearing from some of our Innovation Management clients that when it came to implementing projects, they were at a loss. Most were doing a great job with collecting and evaluating ideas, but the process just didn’t extend far enough. They wanted an easier way to launch projects and control their progress.

Gabrick continues, “When we set out to solve this issue for them, we evaluated several project management tools and vendors. We soon realized that many just didn’t integrate properly with the innovation process, while others paid no attention to that crucial pipeline at all. So we created our own that does it right; StageTrak will now allow companies to find and identify the best ideas, collaborate on them, and turn them into actionable projects with one click.”

Once ideas become launched initiatives, organizations can then track and guide them through defined project stages, which are segmented by “gate” assessments. This gives management much tighter global decision control, as well as expanded visibility into their pipelines of developing projects. Users can select from templates or build their own stages and gates, based on the organizational processes and analyses they already have in place.

As one early StageTrak adopter states, “It’s surprising how many companies are still doing these functions and evaluations on paper or spreadsheets today. StageTrak is powerful because it replaced all of our disparate tools and processes with one easy-for-all web tool. It was like giving our innovation and project groups a major technology upgrade.

Aimed at small to medium-size companies, StageTrak is an affordable solution for tying together innovation functions with project control. According to MindMatters, Project Managers, Product Developers, and company leadership will all benefit from being able to track initiatives from concept to completion. The tool is widely available starting in January of 2011.

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For more information contact:

1-412-489-5900 x4
mmtsales@mindmatters.net