At Brightidea, we believe our product can only be the best that it can be if we incorporate the ideas of our valued customers. Therefore, we offer Brightidea IdeaSpace as a place for customers to suggest and vote on enhancements to our software. It has proven to be critical to our ability to stay close to our customers and their needs, because not only does it allow us to learn directly from our customers but also gives us a valuable opportunity to dogfood our own software. Matthew Greeley, our CEO, says, “I don’t think we could run our business without IdeaSpace.”
We often receive questions about what happens to ideas once they’re submitted to IdeaSpace, so we wanted to share a bit of what happens behind the scenes. This blog post provides a high-level overview of how our Product Team uses IdeaSpace, as well as a summary of the impact your ideas have made to date.
What Happens to Ideas That Are Submitted to IdeaSpace?
It’s important to us that customers’ ideas are not only submitted to IdeaSpace, but also thoughtfully reviewed, so the potential value of each idea has the best chance to be realized.
Receiving around 200 new ideas each year, IdeaSpace requires many people and a lot of coordinated effort to manage its inventory. Below, we provide an overview of the workflow through which ideas are reviewed, including an inside look at some of the activities that aren’t visible to customers but play a critical role in ensuring the effective management of their ideas.
Our Product Team engages with IdeaSpace as follows:
Every Idea Gets Reviewed.
It is important to the Product Team to stay on top of customers’ product feedback, so nothing gets past them! All ideas submitted to IdeaSpace are guaranteed to be reviewed by Brightidea’s product leadership.
As soon as an idea is submitted, product leadership reviews it by providing a 1-7 rating based on overall alignment with our product philosophy and vision.
Moreover, product leadership tags ideas, sometimes using Admin Tags which are only visible to system and site administrators, to classify ideas in such a manner that they are easily retrievable later. Tagging is a valuable exercise, because teams often search for ideas using tags when conducting research on specific areas of the product. An effective tagging system also facilitates powerful analytics for detecting patterns in customer feedback.
Brightidea’s product leadership team reviews every idea submitted to IdeaSpace by performing an initial screen–providing a 1-7 rating, adding comments and tags, and updating the idea category, which allows the ideas to be easily retrievable in the future.
A Lot Happens Behind the Scenes
Beyond the initial review, there are other activities that also contribute to the effective management of ideas in IdeaSpace, but they aren’t always visible to the end user. For example, the Product Team will engage with the idea and with relevant collaborators via the platform’s Private Comments feature to discuss initial insights and research for the idea, as demonstrated in the screenshot below:
Hidden from the view of end users, the Product Team privately discusses ideas to explore implementation of customer requests.
Community Feedback Plays a Valuable Role
If Brightidea’s product leadership team believes an idea has the potential to be pursued in a future release, the idea is presented to the community for feedback. When customers vote on each other’s ideas and leave comments, our team gets a better sense of what’s important to customers. Moreover, our team uses an “Additional Info” field (only accessible to IdeaSpace administrators) to capture a complete list of all the customer accounts that support an idea so that we can track customer needs.
If Your Idea Hasn’t Been Implemented Yet, Don’t Worry
Every product project starts with referencing IdeaSpace for relevant ideas and comments to inform scoping, design, and the opportunity to create value for Brightidea’s customer base. Therefore, even though activities and updates may not have surfaced to your view of the platform, ideas are constantly informing our product roadmap. Moreover, IdeaSpace is continually reviewed for updates, and prioritization decisions are dynamically made on an ongoing basis, providing the ability of all ideas to be reconsidered for implementation at any time.
A member of the Brightidea Product Team working on a dashboard redesign project; he scans the top-rated product enhancement ideas, using tag filtering on the Pipeline List View.
What Do the Different Idea Statuses Mean?
To know where any idea is in the IdeaSpace workflow at any time, you can refer to the status of your idea. Here is a full list of the idea statuses and their definitions:
How Ideas Are Implemented
When it comes to implementing ideas, our Product Team will often reach out to idea submitters directly to better understand the idea they submitted, especially as it relates to the specific pain points they experience. Our Product Team will continue to collaborate with customers throughout implementation stages to ensure that the implementation of the idea is successful and best fulfills their needs.
In addition, ideas are often released as beta features, where interested customers are invited to help test and provide feedback on new features. Thank you to all our customers who have provided additional feedback in the form of interviews and served as beta program participants!
Finally, when an idea is implemented, a Brightidea representative will notify the idea submitter of the implementation of their idea, as well as offer a personal thanks and congratulations!
We hope the above outline of the workflow behind IdeaSpace provides a bit of insight into what happens behind the scenes and answers some questions around our operations.
If you have any further questions regarding how IdeaSpace works, please feel free to reach out to your Brightidea representative.
Your Ideas Are Making a Real Impact
We also wanted to let you know that your ideas are making a big impact and providing a ton of value. On average, you submit 5 ideas per week and have submitted a total of more than 2,000 ideas over time. Since IdeaSpace’s inception, you have given us over 800 amazing ideas that we have been able to implement (yes – to date, we have implemented 40% of all ideas submitted)!
This is a true indication of the value that our customers bring to Brightidea’s product evolution. We love that our customers have made and continue to make a big impact by sharing their ideas through IdeaSpace.
A Special Thanks to Our Power Users
Lastly, we wanted to offer a special recognition to our top contributors. The following customers and partners have together contributed 606 ideas and 489 comments and have accumulated over 1,200 votes on their ideas: WDO (Damian Dugdale, Anna Andersson), PwC Italy (Luca Passoni), Transforme (Guillermo Beuchat, Gonzalo Jara, Pablo Poo), Siemens (Lucie Sanchez), and Becton Dickinson (Samuel Pi)! That is AMAZING! Big thanks and congratulations to these folks for being top contributors to IdeaSpace and continuing to drive innovation for Brightidea’s product.
Keep Your Ideas Coming!
We are grateful for all the ideas that you have submitted, and we thank you for helping us build a better product experience for our Brightidea community. We encourage all our customers to continue to submit their product ideas to IdeaSpace and to express their support for ideas from others with their votes and comments. You play a critical role in helping inform our product development. We look forward to continuing to partner with you to build the best product possible for you.
Do you have an idea to improve our product? Submit it now.
