Elguji Software’s IdeaJam Wins Coveted Lotusphere 2009 Awards Captures Top Honors with IBM Lotus CTO Innovation and Breakout Technology Awards

Vancouver, WA– Elguji Software announced today that its IdeaJam software application won the prestigious IBM Lotus Chief Technology Officer Innovation and Breakout Technology awards, at Lotusphere 2009, while also being named as a finalist for the Best in Showcase award. Taking Lotusphere by storm, Elguji Software’s IdeaJam, the industry’s first XPages application, proved that it’s helping to create a highly engaging and usable "Web 2.0" user experience for its customers.

“We purchased IdeaJam to deploy as the first employee ‘community’ application on our new global intranet. In the first two months of use, we’ve received a number of great ideas, votes and comments on various employee experiences and cost-saving measures,” said Scott Stewart, who works in the messaging and collaboration department for Kelly Services. “As a result, some of the more popular ideas have already been implemented.”

A virtual "suggestion box" designed to support open-innovation practices, IdeaJam allows businesses to collect ideas, solicit and manage feedback, and then use “crowd-sourcing” to rank ideas from employees, customers and partners. Once an idea is posted people can comment on the idea, promote or demote it. As a result, the best ideas rise to the top, enabling the company to respond quickly to market opportunities and threats.

“Innovation is crucial in the software business, and the Lotus Awards show how IdeaJam continues to leverage emerging technologies to provide greater value for businesses of all sizes,” said Matt White, CTO of Elguji Software, the developers of IdeaJam and an IBM Business Partner. “IdeaJam customers can save time and money by helping them to work together to share and prioritize ideas.” Elguji Software tests its own software on a public site (ideajam.net) to serve IBM and Lotus communities to improve its performance and get feedback. By innovating quickly through feedback channels with their customers, Elguji releases product updates regularly to stay at the top of its industry.

While popular, blogging and instant messaging tools do not allow people to gather, sort and categorize ideas in one central place companies that implement IdeaJam can use it internally or broadcast it to the world in an open forum. Ideas can range from simple questions to complex topics. In addition, because IdeaJam is based on open standards, businesses can use their existing infrastructure and be up gathering ideas within 15 minutes of installation.

The IdeaJam user interface is complemented by open-data access in RSS, Open Document, and Microsoft Excel formats. Users can extensively – and very easily – customize the application using the IBM Lotus Notes client, without any programming required. IdeaJam provides multilingual support, and many details of the IdeaJam process and user interface are easy to reconfigure for different-use cases.