Banchile Inversiones has managed the assets of companies and individuals throughout Chile for decades. During that time, helping their clients meet their financial goals has been a top priority as they continue to provide one of the largest mutual funds markets and stock brokerage businesses in the country. And as part of their commitment to continuously improving customer service, Banchile Inversiones launched innovation management software within their organization to find new and better ways of serving their customers in several key areas.

Before they started using innovation management software, however, Banchile was gathering feedback through word-of-mouth and through emails. They found, of course, that this system didn’t scale and with their new program they engaged more than 30% of their workforce and launched five new customer programs in less than a year.

However, it reminded us that some organizations still might be using email in order to gather ideas for their innovation programs and we wanted to discuss why email just isn’t the right solution for companies that truly want to manage change.

No Multi-Directional Conversations. Email is still the number one communication tool within any organization, but it’s not a collaboration tool. Group conversations are closed and they grow cumbersome very quickly. With innovation management platforms, others can comment and build on an idea transparently and that discussion helps validate the best ideas that will turn into projects. This sort of collaboration just can’t happen in email.

Email Doesn’t Offer Quantitative Structure. Innovation management platforms offer quantitative means of organizing qualitative information – whether it’s gathering votes, assembling tags, gathering ratings, and more. Email can only accrue more threaded emails and doesn’t offer company-wide insight or organization.

No Tracking. There is no system within an email that offers clarity about what action items need to get done, by whom, and what progress an idea has made towards implementation. A good innovation management tool is like the Domino’s Pizza tracker – it lets you know where an idea is in the process of delivery, what needs to be done to it, who’s participating in each stage, and when you can expect to see it in reality.

To learn more about Banchile Inversione’s IdeaScale implementation, download the case study here.