Orangina cultivates Profitable Innovation Process

Beverage producers are continuing to focus on new product innovation as a principal way of increasing market share. A 2006 annual survey of R&D in the beverage industry from Stagnito Communications determined that 47 percent of soft drink manufacturers can develop a product in less than six months. However, overall, only half of the products emerging from R&D are commercialized, and one of every three soft drinks reaching the marketplace fails. To strengthen governance of the company's innovation process and increase the business returns from new products, Orangina Group, one of the largest soft drink producers in Europe, is deploying Sopheon's Accolade product life cycle management system. The group-wide implementation will encompass head-office sites and R&D facilities in France, Spain, Belgium and the Netherlands. "Accolade's ease-of-use, flexibility, and powerful reporting capabilities simplify the innovation process and, in doing so, they operationalize it," says Fergus Chapman, group marketing capabilities manager at Orangina. "As a result, we can concentrate on the innovation itself, and reduce the time spent on processes. Accolade enables us to focus on the 'what' rather than the 'how' of innovation."