Fundermax | Learn from each other and become more innovative

Courage to innovate, creativity and innovative spirit

The Austrian company FunderMax is world market leader for high-quality façade panels and offers a decorative range of products for interior design. The company, headquartered in St. Veit an der Glan in Carinthia, can look back on 130 years of company history. Right from the start, are Courage to innovate, creativity and innovative spirit firmly anchored in the company philosophy. In doing so, FunderMax focuses on sustainable raw materials, the highest quality, innovative design and sustainable production. The company is owned by Constantia Industries AG, one of Austria's largest privately owned industrial groups, and employs approximately 1,400 employees. FunderMax ensures the best quality “Made in Austria” and won the State Prize for Corporate Quality in 2018.

No downtime, but continuous improvement

As a company with many employees in different departments such as production, research and purchasing, Over time, the previous CIP became more lengthy and less flexible. In addition, the 2020 pandemic made the company's ability to improve and adapt processes particularly difficult. A modern and digital tool should help break up existing structures and to try something new. Simple application and quick implementation were important. With AnyIdea, the KVP should be made campaign-ready and the challenging period of the pandemic as chance be used.

We were very impressed by the commitment, flexibility and inventiveness of our employees in this situation. With our idea campaign Learn from each other We wanted to make even better use of this potential in a structured way and learn from the ideas of our colleagues as an organization as well as personally.

- Gernot Schöbitz, managing director

Ideas Hype

The big goal was: Involve all employeesto take lessons from the crisis and strengthen the innovative spirit. Expectations were high — generating creative ideas and good communication between employees was the overall goal. that Sending ideas should be as easy as possible and even on the go via app be possible. This means that employees on construction sites or in production can also easily share them. AnyIdea even exceeded these expectations: With over 500 ideas and a great positive response, AnyIdea was able to convince everyone. Die Idea campaign not only proved the ingenuity of the employees, but also solved thanks to gamification A true hype within the company and ensured a lot fun When you send ideas, like and comment.

Learn from each other

In autumn 2020, the campaign called “Learn from each other” started with a duration of six weeks. All employees internationally were able to Ideas, suggestions for improvement, experiences and solutions Send on various topics. These three priorities were:

• careful use of valuable resources,
• occupational safety and health, and
• growth opportunities for the company.

In order to support the campaign in the best possible way, it was promoted in the newsletter and posters and flyers with QR codes relating to the campaign were posted. The promotion team monitored the performance of the campaign and supported the idea providers. Due to the main topics, the time frame and the promotion team, everyone was motivated and dared to get creative.

Finally, the team evaluated the received ideas in AnyIdea according to the criteria Feasibility, added value and creativity and gave feedback to the respective idea providers. Thanks to the simple evaluation, filters, sorting and the portfolio of ideas, you always had a good overview, despite the high number of ideas received. In addition, our work was supported by automated workflows and communication significantly facilitated by AnyIdea. The ideas cover topics such as healthy eating, flexible working models, digitized processes, marketing and partnerships. 10 ideas were awarded and some special prizes were also awarded. The lucky winners were able to choose for themselves which prizes the idea providers received at the official award ceremony. Requests included, for example, a team dinner or a cooking voucher.

Part of a big picture

The advantages and benefits of AnyIdea for FunderMax are: An absolutely simple and optimal Involving all employees in the idea-generation process (Ideation). The digital ideas campaign gave everyone a chance to participate and be heard, which can be a challenge, especially in a company the size of FunderMax. In addition, the ease of use, gamification and mobile apps motivated everyone to get involved. Especially all those who don't deal with the topic every day Innovation or idea management come into contact, became part of an innovation process and part of a larger whole. Without a digital tool like AnyIdea, the over 500 ideas generated would probably not have been presented and implemented in this form.

Discover and seize opportunities

Among other things, Fundermax used 2020 to create future Development potential to discover and use. Some quick wins have already been implemented — for example, digital services have been introduced or optimized for use in the home office and the range of healthy foods in the company has been expanded. Work is constantly being done to formulate and implement further ideas, e.g. on a cooperation program with universities. With AnyIdea, FunderMax has managed to break up existing structures, rethink ideation and innovation processes and To learn from each other in difficult times.