HYPE Enterprise vs. Smartsheet

Well Suited

• Idea Generation campaigns aimed at solving a specific problem. Contributors can be limited to certain groups, or it can be open to the whole organization.
• Open Innovation campaigns aimed at getting solutions from external sources (add-on module required).
• Continuous improvement process specific to functional areas.
• Processing, sorting, evaluating and scoring ideas.

Not Well Suited

• Surveys
• Managing Projects

Incentivized

The Smartsheet platform is extremely similar to Microsoft Excel, so if you are familiar with Excel, you will pick Smartsheet up quickly. Even if you aren't Smartsheet has a relatively simple user interface, meaning just about anyone can learn it. One thing to note is that the interface is that some may consider the interface so simple that they feel the need to look for more robust platforms. If you have a small to medium project that needs to be manages in a central hub, Smartsheet would be a great fit. If you have a very large project, I might consider looking into more advanced platforms.

Incentivized

• Hype Innovation allows for a full onsite implementation behind a firewall and does not need to communicate to an external server. This is a major advantage for a defense company.
• Hype Innovation is easily configurable by a systems admin with very limited knowledge of the product.
• Product Updates are rolled out quarterly and offered to all clients.
• Hype Innovation has a specific instance of their Hype software platform that is aimed at their clients and improving Hype itself. Feedback from their management is very quick.

Incentivized

• The easy to use dashboard has enabled us get comprehensive view of projects across the entire business.
• It has streamlined internal communication with ease of sharing information across different teams.
• Smartsheet automates our workflows, enhances collaboration and ensures there are no data silos.
• I like that it saves time for us and ensures we spend less time switching between apps.

Incentivized

• The concepts and projects module requires an overhaul to be more flexible. This is on their product roadmap.
• The software would benefit from the addition of an MS Exchange integration for receiving idea e-mails.
• Customisation of the layout and possible custom components is challenging.

Incentivized

• Smartsheet set up is similar to Excel, yet when you upload an Excel file, things like conditional formatting are lost. Smartsheet has its own conditional formatting, and you have to reinstate the rules. It would be great if those would apply automatically once a file is uploaded
• Some Smartsheet management and access rules can take some tweaking to work properly. This may be a case of offering more info to admins so they can apply these better and with more efficiency

Incentivized

Smartsheet has made my work life easier. Reduced my email significantly. Smartsheet and SaneBox have got me leaving the office with 0... Yes 0 emails in my inbox. My inbox would reach 150-250 email per day. Smartsheet brought that number down significantly and SaneBox took it the rest of the way. Do yourself a favor and check out SaneBox, too.

Smartsheet is very easy to learn. However, while I have been able to pick it easily, Microsoft Excel and Project super users that I have trained on Smartsheet get bogged down in the differences and can find it frustrating. Explaining the differences ahead of time and why Smartsheet is being chosen instead of a different software seems to counteract those reactions

Incentivized

They're a smaller company but they've always given great service when we rarely need to reach out. Pretty good online content but a bigger user base would help to produce more content in a self-sufficient community much as we see with Salesforce. To be fair we haven't needed their direct customer support very often. The sales guys are nice and not too pushy!

Incentivized

Work with the Smartsheet support team to get the best overall. If no one in your organization has used Smartsheet before, the support team will get things started. We had a couple of people who had used this product before and it was a great help in getting our framework together how we wanted to use it.

After evaluating numerous idea management and innovation management platforms, the main reasons we chose Hype Innovation were:

• On-premises installation (Viima did not allow this);
• Cost (Viima and IdeaDrop had substantially higher costs for the amount of users we required);
• Ease of Configuration (Viima was easiest to configure, but IdeaDrop was a challenge.);
• Customer Service (From initial contact to roll-out was 5 weeks).

Incentivized

Smartsheet is a dedicated project management tool that is built on spread sheet principles. When compared to Microsoft's own offering, Smartsheet came out on top in some areas like dedicated project management features vs having to build custom features to Microsoft 365. However when you compare them on price, Microsoft 365 definitely has more value than Smartsheet.

Incentivized

• Longstanding issues with products and services have been made visible to the wider company and many solutions have been identified.
• A common idea management platform has allowed management to gauge the level of employee involvement and cross functional communication.
• Safe storage and archiving of ideas has enabled the company to keep track of inputs over time and refer back to ideas that were not relevant at the time of generation.
• The added workload of managing the innovation platform has meant that more money has had to be spent on the individual responsible for the platform.

Incentivized

• Our positive ROI has decreased the overall cost in project management as it reduced the amount of MS project licenses we needed.
• We have also seen a positive ROI on using the cloud storage and it automatically supports proper version control.

Incentivized