Description
AGENCY: IDN South Africa
CLIENT NAME: Horizon IMS / Switchlab Innovation Program
BRIEF
AfroCentric Health has been providing healthcare administration services and health risk management solutions to South Africa’s leading medical aids and corporates for over 40 years.
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Objectives:
1. Replace the existing manual idea management process with an online portal to capture ideas
2. The portal must be able to generate metrics to measure the impact of the program
3. Create an online idea/IP registry
4. For transparency and to inspire collaboration, all ideas need to be accessible.
5. Ensure that entries are received, tracked and recorded in a consistent manner that enables fair evaluation by the judging panel.
STRATEGY
Switchlab energizes employees to focus on innovation; delivering real value and diversified commercial opportunities.
It encourages all employees to submit ideas resulting in material difference to the business in the hope of qualifying for cash rewards (up to half a million ZAR)
Switchlab’s intent is to explosively enable an innovative culture though a seamless online user experience.
In order to manage costs for the client, 5th Dimension custom designed & developed an idea management system (IMS) & provided it under a license agreement, instead of procuring an off-the-shelf system.
Designed for whitelabelling, it was deployed at AfroCentric Health under the Switchlab “Idea Engine©” moniker, to facilitate the idea capture, evaluation, adjudication & reward program elements in one portal (over & above the brief & under budget).
It runs off a secure extranet site with an API into the Active Directory Service & Payroll. The ideas submitted are a crucial organizational asset so there are rigorous information security, data recovery and Intellectual Property protocols in place.
The system has multiple user roles (Ideator, Admin, Judge, SME, SuperJudge).
5th Dimension’s IMS is now called Horizon©. It is now deployed at additional clients and has been spun off into a dedicated profit centre.
RESULTS
Annual Target:
250 entries, with 75 rewarded and 20 approved for Phase 2 and beyond
Performance:
322 unique users, 438 ideas generated, 416 entries submitted for evaluation in the first cycle, 229 rewarded, 72 quick wins implemented and 31 ideas progressing into Phase 2
The costs for the period was R485 000 (includes the IMS cost), against commercial value (revenue generated & cost savings initiated) of R16.3 million, which is the highest value generated by a Switchlab cycle. This represents a cost of program (COP) of less than 3.1% and an ROI of 32.6.
CAMPAIGN ELEMENTS
Back end Idea Management System off an internet website/web portal designed for whitelabelling and deployment in external client environments (Intranet and Extranet) and integration into client API’s/systems, or it can also be run offline.