Sept 2004: Imaginatik Breaks the Language Barrier for International Innovation Management with Idea Central Global

First Multilingual Idea Management Application Helps Global Organizations Engage Employees in the Quest for Profitable Growth

BOSTON - (BUSINESS WIRE) - Sept. 27, 2004 - Imaginatik, the leading Idea and Innovation Management company, today introduced Idea Central Global, an advanced Idea Management software platform that fully supports multilingual environments. In today's global economy, businesses must share experiences across markets and cultures, engage overseas facilities, and incorporate offices in multilingual environments. Similarly, the most successful idea management programs must involve employees, customers and partners regardless of where they reside or with which language they are most comfortable. With Idea Central Global's support for speakers of English, Dutch, French, German, Portuguese and Spanish, companies can now run large-scale ideation events and ongoing innovation programs in multiple languages at once.

This is the latest release of Imaginatik's Idea Central idea management platform which helps organizations develop a systematic, repeatable approach to innovation that results in consistent profitable growth. Imaginatik employs an event-based methodology that focuses participants' attention to solve a specific business challenge in a finite period of time. Combining industry-leading software with a proven methodology, Imaginatik has architected and supplied successful idea management programs at more than 70 corporations worldwide.

"Idea Central Global gives all employees a voice in the development of ideas that drive the growth and success of their organization. Collaboration of this nature is an essential component of building a corporate innovation culture," said Imaginatik CEO, Mark Turrell. "Identifying lucrative new products or improved business processes is rarely the result of a single idea - ideas need to be developed, expanded, analyzed and tested to become high quality, implementable concepts."

With Idea Central Global, multilingual interaction is now possible throughout the entire user experience:

• At the application level - Idea Central Global has an easy-to-use interface which requires no training for end users. When users log on, all menus, buttons and interface text automatically appear in their chosen language, making navigation fast and intuitive.
• At the event configuration level - Through a large number of configurable features, including idea form questions, evaluation options and custom workflow e-mails, Idea Central can easily be tailored to match the needs of different idea management events. These flexible options are all available for multilingual setup, enabling the presentation of content and structure in the users' chosen language. This ensures that participants fully understand the purpose of the exercise and invites them to express themselves in their preferred language, thereby increasing high quality participation.
• At the idea and collaborative content level - Idea Central fosters a collaborative culture and improves the quality of the submissions through a host of collaborative features. For example, people from different parts of the organization can read and comment on ideas. Participants can start a private mail communication with the contributor of an idea by simply clicking on a link. In addition, the Send-A-Link feature lets participants alert each other to ideas and comments of mutual interest. The IdeaMinder functionality allows people to track idea threads so that they are updated automatically when new comments or peer reviews are posted, encouraging and speeding up interaction between participants. Idea Central Global allows designated team members to translate the best ideas and feedback into other supported languages to facilitate sharing and collaboration across language barriers. Human translation avoids the inconsistency and unreliability of today's machine translation technology.

Availability

Idea Central Global is available today for full license purchase or event rental, for in-house installation or as a hosted ASP service.

About Imaginatik

Imaginatik is the long-time leader in enterprise Idea Management. Its flagship solution, Idea Central, is designed to elicit ideas and insights from employees and extended enterprise partners, provides a shared collaborative space to develop ideas, and is equipped with sophisticated tools to evaluate and select the top ideas for implementation. Idea Central has won the Basex Excellence Award 2003, and is in use in clients such as Georgia-Pacific, W. R. Grace, ChevronTexaco, Bayer AG, and Goodyear Tire & Rubber. Imaginatik's software and consulting services have helped clients discover significant sources of additional revenue, as well as tangible cost savings, process improvements and an increased product pipeline. Imaginatik is also committed to developing strategic solutions in the field of innovation, working with academic institutions such as the London Business School and the Cass School of Business, London, and leading practitioners of corporate innovation. To learn more about Imaginatik and Idea Central please visit www.imaginatik.com or call (617) 275-7140.

Press Contact:
press@imaginatik.com

Sales Contact:
sales@imaginatik.com