Helping new ideas take hold

Truly successful companies constantly search for inspiration and innovation to improve products, services and the bottom line, but they often fail to tap one of the best sources of great ideas - their own employees.

It was recognition of this potential that led to the formation of the New Ideas scheme at BT more than ten years ago. It was updated in 2005 and made available online.

Matt Bross, BT Group chief technology officer, says: “We are looking for any ideas, however big or small, which have the potential to impact on all parts of BT - including improving existing or developing new work practices, improving products, services and customer experience, cutting costs or helping us to work more effectively with partners and suppliers.”

The team running the New Ideas scheme has been so successful over the past two years that they have started getting requests from corporate customers to export their innovation know-how.

Gordon Wright, innovation consultant with Group CTO, says: “We are innovation practitioners and customers recognise the value of that experience. The BT scheme covers 100,000 employees and we have undertaken innovation projects right across BT on a variety of subjects. This has provided the team with a deep-rooted experience in innovation consultancy, so it makes sense to exploit that expertise further.”

Embedding innovation

With a breadth of services including Technology Scouting, Prototyping, Ideation and Articulation of Innovation, coupled to Ideas Campaigns and Research Engagements, the team has the capability to embed innovation into organisations, getting clients up to speed very quickly.

Wright says: “Our main focus will always be BT, but we can share what we have learnt over the past four years with organisations that want to empower their people. We can help them take ideas through the analysis process into solid business cases, which can get support from senior management.”

The New Ideas scheme has a simple premise - ideas suggested by employees are put to the evaluation community, and if an idea is approved and delivers benefits, the employee gets a cash reward ranging from a few hundred pounds up to £30,000.

The primary idea categories are:

• New products and services
• How we work smarter together
• Improving customer service

The team has also added a sustainability category for potential environmental projects. The recently announced solar energy project at BT’s North American headquarters in El Segundo, California, began as an employee suggestion, for example.

Mining the inspirational ideas of employees in this way has brought significant returns. Since 2005, there have already been 6,000 idea proposals, four £30k awards, over £100m in potential revenue generation and over £10m in measurable cost savings.

Wright believes there is still plenty of potential inside BT. “Our success so far has been based on one per cent of our 100,000 employees suggesting ideas - think of what could be achieved if we could increase that participation.”

The team has a number of ways of encouraging participation, including internal marketing and a campaign engine to bring employee attention to particular issues faced by the business.

Wide impact

Wright says: “It is important to remind employees of what they can contribute. If an engineer in the field has an idea that could save five minutes every call, think of the impact that change could have if applied to all our engineers.”

The database of all proposed ideas can also be used as a resource and Wright encourages all parts of the business to use the New Ideas team as a service to solve problems, create new products and services and help increase efficiency.

The ideas are only the starting point, of course. It is the team’s experience and track record in taking the right ideas and turning them into financial benefits that gives them an additional edge.

In an era where the concept of open innovation is a key element of 21st Century business, bringing BT’s expertise in innovation discovery and exploitation to a wider audience is clearly...a brilliant idea.

Three rewarding ideas:

• Tina Barbour was £500 better off after suggesting a way to cut lost time for call centre advisers and improve customer satisfaction. By keeping a customer connected while moving their call to a mobile so a landline can be tested cut wasted time for agents and customers.
• Openreach business development manager Dean Francis earned a £30,000 reward for his idea for a new billing process, which was built into the Openreach customer service system. It has generated millions of pounds in savings since it was first implemented.
• BT Design’s Mark Cullender recently won £5,000 for his idea to use a different payment system for BT’s licences for its radio links. New regulations meant the payments to Ofcom could be spread over a year, rather than all at once, saving BT £75,000 annually.