New Innovation Hub platform powers organisations to drive sustainable growth and increase competitive advantage post pandemic

Vizibl, the leading SaaS platform for Supplier Collaboration and Innovation, today announced its new Innovation Hub. This helps organisations unlock the value of their supplier ecosystems to source ideas, launch new initiatives, and manage the projects that turn ideas into outcomes and deliver on key business goals.

The Innovation Hub enables businesses to source ideas externally through Opportunity Capture Forms. This is important as externally sourced ideas account for around 60% of enterprise innovation, and enjoy a 40% faster time to market, per McKinsey research. These Opportunity Capture Forms allow suppliers and partners to submit project ideas to address business needs or respond to specific ‘problem statements’ posed by the business.

With this, contributors are given a framework for their creativity, encouraging proposals of more mature initiatives. This speeds up their journey to fully realise innovation projects, delivering value back to the business in a shorter time.

Upcoming functionality will allow users to capture these ideas from anywhere, including suppliers that aren’t using the platform. With the Vizibl Innovation Hub, companies can collaborate effectively with stakeholders and lines of business, manage new opportunities at scale, and clearly demonstrate the business impact of all collaborative innovation efforts.

Commenting on the new platform, Mark Perera, founder and CEO for Vizibl said: “The unprecedented nature of COVID-19 has forced companies, and industries, to rethink and transform their supply chain models and supplier ecosystems for good. The new Innovation Hub will allow organisations to drive sustainable business growth across their supplier ecosystems, whilst also increasing competitive advantage and market growth through supplier diversity. This will empower procurement teams with advanced collaboration and innovation capabilities that outperform their industry peers in both top and bottom-line performance, helping them to really add value and drive their procurement initiatives forward.”

Using Vizibl’s platform to gather ideas from suppliers means organisations can collaborate to launch initiatives that drive cost savings, productivity, business growth, and their sustainability agenda. Additionally, these initiatives can support organisational goals around supplier diversity by easily capturing opportunities to work with new suppliers from different communities. In addition to external opportunities, the Vizibl platform can be used to engage different functions within an organisation, allowing procurement teams to drive cross-functional business agendas internally.

Vizibl is taking a phased approach to releasing new features in the Innovation Hub roadmap in order to provide valuable tools to customers, sooner. There are several features that are already available, such as the standalone Opportunity Capture Forms, allowing procurement teams to receive all the information they need when existing suppliers submit ideas. Once an opportunity is accepted, Vizibl enables the easy transition from an idea into a fully-fledged project. The platform’s real-time dashboards enable procurement teams to see all potential supplier innovation initiatives, alongside reports that track the progress of approved opportunities and the value they are generating.

Over the next two iterations of the Innovation Hub, Vizibl will release an ‘Initiatives’ component, which allows organisations to automate the process of inviting suppliers to submit opportunities. The following version will allow idea capture from suppliers that aren’t yet working withVizibl, enabling their collaboration via a secure external submission portal.

The Innovation Hub platform is being announced at COLLABORATE 2021, which has a host of high-level industry speakers exploring the value of supplier ecosystems. Topics on the agenda include sustainability, innovation, social impact, and cost-savings. Highlight speakers at this one-day virtual summit include:

  • Marc Engel, Chief Supply Chain Officer, Unilever
  • Magali Anderson, Chief Sustainability and Innovation Officer, LafargeHolcim
  • Ninian Wilson, CEO, Vodafone Procurement Company
  • Cesare Guarini, Director Sustainability Procurement, Philip Morris
  • Louise Koch, Director of Global Social Impact, Dell
  • Justin Goldston, Professor and Co-Ordinator of Project and Supply Chain Management, Penn State University
  • Deborah Dull, Circular Economy Expert and Principal for Manufacturing Product Management, General Electric Digital
  • Karina Larsen, Former EMEA Supply Chain Head, Johnson & Johnson
  • Industry leaders from Santander, IBM, Novartis, Mars, & more

“We have a plethora of industry experts delivering thought provoking presentations and ideas, advice and direction to participants looking to change their supplier ecosystem, transform their supply chain models and drive sustainability and growth. Our COLLABORATE speakers will cover topical subjects such as resetting ecosystems, powering growth through supplier innovation, cost optimisation and supplier collaboration programmes; giving organisations the guidance they need to drive towards a more sustainable future,” concludes Perera.

Building on last year’s inaugural summit which attracted over 900 attendees, COLLABORATE is the world’s leading summit on supplier collaboration. This interactive event experience explores everything around supplier collaboration, delivering keynotes, actionable takeaways and online networking with industry visionaries and experts.