Report on ROI

Eventually someone will ask: “Is this working?” And if you can’t answer that, it’s hard to justify the effort. Track two things: engagement (who’s participating and how often) and outcomes (what impact the ideas had).

Let’s be honest. Tracking innovation impact is near impossible. It more realistic in industries like manufacturing or energy, where outcomes are often easier to quantify and a replaced machine might clearly reduce downtime.

We recommend you start simple. A report with “# of idea collections, # of ideas received, # implemented ideas by goal”. Use tags, forms in the last stage, or statuses (recommended) to group ideas by outcome such as “Implemented: Cost Savings” or “Implemented: Satisfaction”.

Say you ran three challenges last year. 600 ideas submitted. 20 implemented. One idea anecdotally saved 3 hours of work per week for 100 employees. You don’t need perfect data. Just enough to show progress and make the case to keep going.

When it comes to soft metrics like “people were engaged” they won’t be enough to prove value. But you can still get useful signals. A quick culture check, e.g. “Do you feel your ideas are heard?” won’t give you ROI, but it can reveal whether your innovation efforts are strengthening overall employee retention.

As things mature, you can go deeper. Connect with your task or project management tools. Assign hard values like hours saved, error rates reduced, or sales deals connected.