New Zealand King Salmon Implements Accolade

14 August 2007
For immediate release

New Zealand King Salmon Implements Accolade® to Boost Innovation and NPD Productivity through the Automation of the Stage Gate® Process.

Sopheon Asia Pacific, a software and services company, announced today the successful implementation of Accolade, Sopheon’s product life cycle management (PLM) system, at the New Zealand King Salmon Company, manufacturer of an extensive range of value added products under its brands of Regal, Seasmoke and Southern Ocean.

New Zealand King Salmon selected Accolade to maximise the productivity of its NPD programme through Improved Idea management, automation of the Stage Gate® and Portfolio management Process. The New Zealand King Salmon Company has deployed Accolade initially to 25 users across several functions including Technical, Operations, Marketing and Finance at its headquarters in Nelson, New Zealand.

“The company chose Accolade because of its user friendly nature and the fact it demands every new product Idea be scrutinised with the same metrics and rigor.” said Richard Smith, Technical Manager, for The New Zealand King Salmon Company.

“We are not short of ideas given our salmon’s tremendous versatility. Accolade assists by comparing metrics on each project enabling the portfolio of projects to be ranked with ease. The result being that weak projects are prevented from progressing through the innovation process and competing for resources which may hold up those ideas with greater potential, thereby making the portfolio overall more productive.”

Don Everitt, General Manager of Sales and Marketing says, “our goal is to avoid the commodity trap so many primary producers fall into. We decided long ago that we need to make our products noticeably different from our competitors while getting closer to consumers and filling needs in their lifestyle. We have always been an innovative company and designing better products has been fundamental to our success. We believe the Accolade Stage Gate process will assist us in screening new ideas, building strong business cases and to proceed with the development, design, testing and launch of new products. We are proud to be the first purchaser of this application in New Zealand”.

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