Accolade. Decision Support for the Business of Product Development. Knowledge-Powered Solutions to Maximize Returns on Product Development Investments

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1 Accolade Decision Support for the Business of Product Development Knowledge-Powered Solutions to Maximize Returns on Product Development Investments

2 Accolade...your total PD solution. The landscape is filled with suppliers promising to improve your product development process. The tools they offer assist with specific aspects of the process, such as product data management, product design, shared visualization, project management, or workflow. They enable process implementation, but their focus is typically on the tactical rather than the strategic aspects of product development. Ideas come in and products go out. It's a continuous cycle that depends upon effective analysis and judgments about which concepts to advance and which to kill, which products to fund and what types and level of resources to invest. In the end, the business of product development is a collection of strategic decisions. These decisions are critical to the management and execution of your complete product development effort. Ultimately, they mean the difference between success and failure. With better decisions comes a greater yield of winning products. To grow revenue from new or improved products, product development organizations need to: Minimize investments in products destined to fail; and Improve project-selection decisions to drive the right ideas through to commercialization. To find answers to those strategic questions that determine the cost effectiveness and revenue contribution of your product development effort, look no further. When it comes to just-intime decision support and the management of your total product development process, Sopheon Accolade stands alone. Sopheon Accolade Doing the Right Products Right Accolade's principal components include software tools designed to improve quality and ensure adherence to your product development process and a world-class decision-support network that provides guidance for making informed product decisions with speed. Accolade improves the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of the product development process you have implemented in your organization through automation. It provides a workspace where project teams can collaborate, communicate and complete project assignments and deliverables. You can reduce cycle time and the project labor required by using smart documents to accelerate the creation of project plans, status reports and other key deliverables. As critical decisions approach, project information is consolidated and provided to executives to support portfolio analysis and go/kill decisions. Accolade promotes effective decision-making, from executives to team members, by embedding critical decision support within the stages and gates of your process. It capitalizes on your existing know-how by providing a knowledgebase where staff can find answers to questions or peers with expertise to support project work. It integrates external, objective analysis and opinions by providing access to research specialists and a world-class network of industry experts for help in filtering ideas, assessing market opportunities and validating technical and business assumptions. Combining these capabilities, we create the only single solution that enables access to both internal and external documented information and human expertise to support decision-making within your process from ideation to commercialization. DECISION SUPPORT With Accolade, you can efficiently bring the right products to market faster than your competition. PROCESS- SPECIFIC SOFTWARE EXPERT SERVICES

3 Sopheon Accolade for Product Development Ideas In Accolade's principal components a process engine and a just-in-time, decision-support network organize documents, resources and metrics, and provide access to internal and external published information and human expertise to ensure quick, informed decisions from concept to product launch. By applying Accolade system capabilities, you can more efficiently and cost-effectively bring new products to market. Process Modeler Model the stages and gates of your product development process. Idea Management & Screening Generate, manage and evaluate all ideas. Resource Planning & Project Management Integration Manage the resources in your pools against demands. Portfolio Management Evaluate products in the pipeline against strategic objectives. Knowledge Network Best-Practice Content, Access to Information and Experts Inform critical decisions using on-demand support to speed your way to the most relevant internal and external information sources. Products Out Support for Product Development Success Process Consulting Sopheon's product development process experts provide the know-how and insight to help you build a sound process and portfolio model that aligns product development with your business strategy and improves process efficiency and results. Our solution consultants evaluate and benchmark your current product development and portfolio management process. They provide an independent view of your processes compared to those of bestpractice companies within your industry and make specific recommendations for process improvement. Best-Practice Content Sopheon Accolade comes pre-loaded with best-practice research and process methodologies to assist your product development efforts. Benefit from over 20 years of product development research by Dr. Robert Cooper, the world-renowned authority on portfolio and process management, who literally wrote the book on product development best practices. Accolade comes with Cooper's Stage-Gate process model and best-practice implementation manuals built right in, allowing you to jumpstart your system implementation. Accolade also comes equipped with 25 templates for key process deliverables. Developed and proven by Sopheon through 18 years of service to its clients, these templates provide best-practice guidelines for the content of each deliverable as well as instructions on how to complete them. Implementation Services Sopheon's implementation services are designed to fast-track your way to improved productivity. Because of Accolade's configurable design, you can be up and running in less than 12 weeks. Organizations with a mature product development process experience even shorter start-up timeframes. Service capabilities are aligned with four essential implementation phases: requirements definition, configuration, installation and training. Support may also include defining or refining your process model and the automation of corresponding document templates. Our comprehensive implementation process ensures easy, effective adoption of the Accolade system.

4 The Benefits of the Accolade System Reduce costs and increase the number of new product winners. Accolade can reduce wasted development spending by up to 50 percent by providing early-stage identification of winners and losers. This allows you to focus resources on viable projects, avoiding investment in those that are destined for failure. Align portfolio decisions with strategic business objectives. Accolade s online dashboard provides on-demand, real-time reporting for complete portfolio analysis to ensure that projects are aligned with the latest business plans or changing market conditions. Accolade s central database of key process metrics helps you monitor and prioritize projects, properly resource them, and keep them aligned with your project strategy. Improve critical-path decision-making to support project screening and accelerate time to market. Accolade supports decision-making, from executives to team members, by embedding critical intelligence within each stage and gate of your process so you can make fast, informed gate decisions and execute with speed. Leverage best practices in product development. Accolade is preloaded with process and deliverable best-practice research and guidelines. It includes Cooper and Edgett's best-practice process model and manual, and Sopheon's library of templates, providing best-practice guidelines for the content of each deliverable as well as instructions on how to complete them. Manage information and intellectual capital for reuse throughout development. Accolade captures project learnings as you go, helping you avoid duplication of work effort and the repeating of developmental mistakes, building intellectual property for use in future projects. Improve product-development process adherence and execution. Accolade automates the management of all process activity, monitoring process adherence and facilitating consistent execution of each step. Reduce time spent on administrative activities. Accolade uses smart-document technology to accelerate the creation of project plans, status reports and other key deliverables. As project information is generated, the system automatically draws down relevant data to pre-populate deliverable templates and portfolio reports, dramatically reducing time spent on administrative tasks. Increase team coordination and productivity. Accolade supports quick, effective team collaboration by providing built-in tools that communicate roles and assignments, capture project discussions, share documents, facilitate online meetings, and leverage supplemental internal or external supporting resources.

5 About Sopheon Sopheon is a leading international provider of content, expertise and software tools that help organizations improve the business impact of product development. Sopheon serves nearly half of the technology-driven companies on the Fortune 500, enabling higher, faster returns on product development investments through technology and human-based decision support. When applied to product development, these capabilities allow you to create an environment of innovation and get to market faster. Sopheon Corporation (US) 2850 Metro Drive Minneapolis, Minnesota USA Tel: Fax: info_us@sopheon.com Sopheon NV (NL) De Gelder A.J. Ernststraat 595-G 1082 LD Amsterdam The Netherlands Tel: +31 (0) Fax: +31 (0) info_nl@sopheon.com Sopheon UK Limited (UK) Stirling House, Stirling Road Surrey Research Park Guildford, Surrey GU2 7RF UK Tel: +44 (0) Fax: +44 (0) info_uk@sopheon.com Sopheon GmbH (DE) Industriepark Höchst, F821 D Frankfurt am Main Germany Tel: +49 (0) Fax: +49 (0) info@sopheon.de Copyright 2002 Sopheon Corporation.