As “Le Figaro” mentions in its revue, in a stagnating market fragilized by price war (rates have decreased by 1.2% in 2015), industrials and distributors bet on new products to relaunch sales and straighten their margins. 2200 innovations have been introduced in 2016 during de SIAL, which represents an increase of 24% of the number of new products compared to 2014.
According to wikipedia, A phase-gate process is a project management technique in which an initiative or project (e.g. new product development) is divided into distinct stages or phases, separated by decision points (known as gates).
With that method, the New Product Development projects can be divided into 9 stages or phases:
- New Product Strategy – Innovators have clearly defined their goals and objectives for the new product.
- Idea Generation – Collective brainstorming ideas through internal and external sources.
- Screening – Condense the number of brainstormed ideas.
- Concept Testing – Structure an idea into a detailed concept.
- Business Analysis – Understand the cost and profits of the new product and determining if they meet company objectives.
- Product Development – Developing the sample, this involves the putting together of ideas and materials to form a testing product to the market.
- Market Testing – Marketing mix is tested through a trial run of the product.
- Commercialization – Introducing the product to the public.
- Evaluation – Involves research to monitor the progress of new service offering in relation to organizational goals.
A similar approach is presented by the Conference Board in Canada.
Thanks to our project management module, we’re going to see how beCPG software can manage your innovation approach, notably the development of new products and new packaging in Food and Cosmetics industries.
Why resorting to project management?
Project management allows managing many aspects of the project:
- Scheduling;
- Role and responsibility of each project speaker;
- Documents as brief marketing, formulations, technical sheets, trial results, artwork;
- Budget
Schedule
The schedule allows the definition of the project tasks by decomposing each of the phases in tasks and subtasks so that a visual representation of the project structure is possible (WBS: Work Breakdown Structure). It allows to communicate to each team member the goals and the roles of everyone. Thus, everybody is on the same page.
When a task starts, its actor is notified by workflow and by email with a description of what he has to do and with links to deliverables he has to achieve. These workflows are configurable without development by the project manager.
Project evaluation (SWOT)
Each project is evaluated according to criteria defined by the project manager.
Formulation and technical sheets generation
The beCPG software supplies a formulation module to calculate allergens, ingredients, nutrients, costs and allegations of the product from its recipe.
As soon as regulatory data and costs are calculated by beCPG, technical sheets are generated automatically, for example, le technical sheet for the client and the factory sheet.
Document management
Document management allows the storage of all the documents linked to the project: brief marketing, formulations, technical sheets, trial results, ready for printings and so on. Documents are classified as folders and subfolders according to the record classification determined by the project manager.
Users can consult easily the documents thanks to the inline preview and they can edit them in Microsoft Office or Google Docs. As soon as a document is modified, the previous version is archived in the versions history which enable to have a complete traceability of the modifications (who modified the document, when, why).
Different views permit to view a document.
To save some time during the creation of a project, it’s possible to create project templates to initialize the schedule and the record classification plan.
Budget
The project manager has to keep in mind the budget allocated to his project. For that purpose, he can define the project forecast budget, expenses, incomes and follow the real budget.
Research
One of the most encountered problem for the users is the search of the documents. For that purpose, the research provides the preview of the documents. This latter allows the search into document’s metadata and into the document’s content (for example, in the text of a contract). The user doesn’t have to know the location of each document he’s searching for.
Activities
The activities follow-up allows to check easily the activity on a project (comments, documents modifications, change of tasks states and so on).
Project overview
The page project overview displays projects with current tasks, overdue, score, completion, products created, last comment, start and end dates. It allows project managers to track their projects during the review of project. From this page, you can filter your projects and export them in excel.
The page project overview displays projects with current tasks, overdue, score, completion, products created, last comment, start and end dates. It allows project managers to track their projects during the review of project. From this page, you can filter your projects and export them in excel.
