New Sopheon Strategic Roadmapping Software Enables Users to Quickly Adjust Strategies in Response to Changing Market Conditions

Accolade^® Vision Strategist^TM Version 5.0 Makes “Living” Market, Product and Technology Roadmaps a Reality 

Sopheon, the international provider of software and services for product lifecycle management, today announced the introduction of a new version of its Accolade Vision Strategist strategic roadmapping software.  Referred to as version 5.0, the enhanced solution offers functionality that simplifies the creation and maintenance of roadmaps.  Its enriched graphic content and support for the standardization of mapping language make roadmaps easier to understand and increase their accuracy as forecasting tools.  According to Sopheon, one of the principal values of the new software is that it enables users to quickly reshape market, product, and technology strategies in response to ongoing developments in the marketplace.    

Dynamic Roadmapping Translates Into Strategic Agility and Competitive Advantage 
As the economy gathers strength, many companies are beginning to shift their strategic focus away from cost cutting toward a renewed emphasis on organic growth.  The margin for error is  thin.  Resource levels are constrained, and markets remain turbulent.  Rapid, informed response to change is a critical success factor.  In a recent McKinsey Quarterly survey of chief executive officers, nine out of ten ranked agility as essential to business success and said that it is becoming increasingly urgent. 

Sopheon’s Vision Strategist solution enables strategic agility.  For most organizations, the development and maintenance of roadmaps is coupled with strategic and operational planning as a once-a-year event.  Obsolete almost as soon as they are published, such maps have diminishing value and can prompt costly wrong decisions.  Roadmapping experts have long regarded dynamic, “living” roadmaps, characterized by continuous updating, as an elusive ideal.  The latest version of Vision Strategist makes them a reality.  The software allows roadmaps to be embedded as deliverables within the innovation process, raising their visibility and encouraging users to update content as part of daily operational activity.  Working with reliable, current data, decision makers are able to move quickly and confidently from insight to action in response to changes in the marketplace. 

Enhancements included in Vision Strategist 5.0 provide a range of planning advantages to users.  Features being introduced in the software will enable organizations to:

• Achieve wider adoption of planning and roadmapping processes.  With Vision Strategist 5.0, roadmapping becomes an integral part of the user’s day-to-day work life.  Maps reside  next to active new product project plans and other gated-process documentation where they are more visible and accessible.  Simplified data input and a range of other new features make roadmaps easier to update and share, and encourage broad participation in the planning process.  As a result, more individuals within the organization see how their roles are impacting strategies and can take action when those strategies are at risk.     
• Develop easily understood, insightful views of the future.  Graphically rich representations of future market, product and technology opportunities include depictions of the relationships among roadmap elements.  Visuals stretch the thinking of decision makers, enabling them to identify strategic gaps and zero in on the long- and short-term implications of various investment scenarios.  Standardization of mapping language and graphic symbols helps to ensure that strategies are communicated clearly and consistently across the organization.  
• More effectively synchronize strategies with supply chain and other external partners.  With Vision Strategist 5.0, market, technology and product plans are easily shared across functions, operating units and even with external entities, facilitating contribution and adjustment and strengthening alignment.  Roadmaps are transferred onto “smart” Excel® worksheets and transmitted in a secure mode that supports open innovation.  External partners can use these already familiar worksheet capabilities, free of the need for technical support, to provide updates or to create new roadmaps on their own.      

Roadmapping is increasingly recognized as a core aspect of best practices within product lifecycle management (PLM).  According to Michael Burkett, a vice president and lead PLM analyst for AMR Research, “Product portfolio management should include techniques like roadmapping for planning product mix over a multiyear horizon and evaluating where mature products may be replaced by the new product portfolio.  It provides a consistent and formalized mechanism to evaluate the necessity and viability of product change.”*   

“The continued uncertainty in today’s markets is placing more emphasis on the importance of strategic roadmapping,” said Bryan Seyfarth, director of product marketing for Sopheon.  “The planning support provided by this latest version of Vision Strategist not only promises to strengthen roadmapping adoption and effectiveness, it makes it possible for users to adjust strategies and tactical plans far faster than the competition can draft a course of action.  The value of deploying Vision Strategist can be boiled down to this:  it helps to align innovation strategy and operational decision making, and unlocks new business growth opportunities for today, tomorrow and beyond.”

Sopheon’s Vision Strategist is the most widely used roadmapping support technology in the marketplace.  Examples of companies that have adopted the software include Electrolux, BAE Systems, Corning, Honeywell, Lockheed Martin, Motorola, Northrop Grumman, PepsiCo and Textron. 

Accolade Vision Strategist 5.0 is available immediately for purchase and implementation.    

*“Does Your PPM Process Include End-of-Life Planning?,” by Michael Burkett, AMR Research, April 2008

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