Imaginnovate

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

My company is SpencerHall. We are a consumer research and innovation firm. We specialize in primarily qualitative research to get fresh insight into consumer needs and motivations and then leverage that information to create new products and marketing approaches. There’s 12 people in the company.

What is your position?

I’m a cofounder and managing partner of the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with Imaginnovate?

One of the approaches we have is an online software package called Transforum that allows us to bring together a lot of divergent viewpoints to collaborate in this online format for true brainstorming. We have had the Transforum platform as a consulting tool for a number of years. We are now modifying it to be a subscription based model that we want to be able to scale up and let clients use the software to run their own innovation sessions.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement in greater detail.

Imaginnovate took our platform, which had some clunkiness in the administrative side, and helped to figure out how to streamline it and build in more functionality for both participants and moderators.

How did you come to work with Imaginnovate?

I was working through a third party designer that introduced me to Immaginovate. What became clear was that the designer was actually becoming an impediment. He had other priorities going on and things were bottlenecking through him. We decided to part ways with the designer and work directly with Imaginnovate. To their credit, they did a really nice job. We really didn’t miss a beat. I don’t have any technical understanding, so they had to do a lot to explain about what needed to go on to create the results that I wanted, but it was a midstream change and they did a terrific job handling it.

Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative in financial terms?

We’re still in process. We’re able to use the platform but continue to evolve it. Right now we’re in the $20,000 to $30,000 range.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

We’re getting a lot of very positive feedback. The site itself is very engaging. Imaginnovate, on their own initiative, dramatically improved the logic flow of navigating through the site. That wasn’t even something we asked for. They said that when they looked at it, they thought it was a little clunky. The changes they made were dramatic. So the feedback we’ve been getting is that it’s very intuitive. It’s eye-catching because it allows for visuals to be posted as well. People understand how to navigate through it. We’re building in more capabilities and streamlining different elements of it.

What distinguishes Imaginnovate from other providers?

The president of the company has met with me in person a couple of times when he’s been in the States. Having that direct contact has been really helpful because we’ve been able to have conversations about where the work can go. I feel like Imaginnovate isn't just doing what I ask, but they’re anticipating my needs. I really like that. I feel like we’re sharing in the vision versus them just doing tasks. The other thing they’ve done is that they have a dedicated project lead, and he and I have a weekly call every Monday morning to talk through what’s being done. We have a live session. They’ve very accessible. Even if it’s night their time, they’ve been very available. I think their technical skills are excellent. It’s exciting that you can imagine something and they can make it a reality.

Is there anything Imaginnovate could have improved or done differently?

I don’t think so. It’s been a learning process in terms of getting the feedback that we’ve gotten. As we’ve done that, some things have happened that have surprised us and they were very quick to respond to those items.