7 Innovation Validation Errors You Can't Afford to Make (And Horizon Fixes)
In today’s fast-paced digital landscape, efficiency and scalability are paramount for any agency looking to stay competitive. Manual processes, fragmented tools, and scattered data can significantly hinder the ability to innovate and deliver results. This blog explores the key challenges faced in in running Painted Door Tests to validate innovation and how leveraging advanced SaaS solutions like Horizon can transform these obstacles into opportunities for growth and efficiency.
1. Manual Setup Inhibits Efficiency and Scalability
The Problem:
Manual setup processes for painted door tests involve configuring various systems, tools, and environments by hand, which is both time-consuming and error-prone. This approach diverts valuable time from strategic and creative tasks, increasing the risk of incorrect configurations and system failures, ultimately delaying project timelines.
The Challenge:
Time-Consuming: Detailed attention is required to ensure correct configuration, consuming substantial time.
Error-Prone: Increased risk of human error can lead to bugs and system failures.
Scalability Issues: As projects grow, manual management becomes more complex and laborious, leading to inconsistent results.
Resource Intensive: Requires substantial human resources, increasing costs and impacting productivity.
Ongoing Maintenance: Each change or update needs manual implementation across all environments, increasing the risk of errors and downtime.
The Solution:
Horizon offers a high-end SaaS product that minimizes setup steps with a standardized process, ensuring consistent, efficient output and enhanced performance. Automating the setup significantly reduces time and errors, enhances scalability, ensures consistency, and frees up resources for more innovative tasks.
Using a variety of disparate tools and platforms leads to inefficiencies and complications.These include website builders like Unbounce and WordPress, tracking tools such as Google Analytics, user feedback tools such as Hotjar, Mailchimp for e-mail handling, and eventually using the native ad-managers from Google and Meta. Integrating and synchronizing data across multiple systems is time-consuming and prone to errors, increasing the risk of data discrepancies and communication gaps.
The Challenge:
Time-Consuming Management: Managing multiple tools diverts time from strategic tasks.
Data Discrepancies: Fragmented tools increase the risk of incorrect analyses and flawed configurations.
Scalability Issues: Ensuring all tools work seamlessly together becomes laborious as projects grow.
Resource Intensive: Requires significant human resources for maintenance and troubleshooting, increasing costs.
Onboarding Complexity: Unique learning curves of each tool complicate onboarding for new team members.
The Solution:
Horizon consolidates the entire toolset, from designing landing pages to setting up tests and accessing a live-updated dashboard and customer service. This unified approach reduces time and errors, improves scalability, ensures consistency, and frees up resources for more innovative tasks.
3. Non-Consolidated Data Buckets Hinder Holistic Insights
The Problem:
Managing non-consolidated data across isolated silos hampers the efficiency and effectiveness of innovation validation processes, making it difficult to access and integrate information, leading to inconsistent data quality and limited holistic insights.
The Challenge:
Accessibility Issues: Scattered data silos slow down the innovation validation cycle.
Inconsistent Quality: Varying standards for data entry and formatting increase errors and misinterpretations.
Limited Insights: Fragmented data hinders the identification of patterns and trends.
Increased Costs: Managing dispersed data requires more personnel for ETL processes.
Security Risks: Scattered data complicates compliance with data protection regulations.
The Solution:
Horizon consolidates data, improves accessibility, quality, and security through a centralized platform. It automates ETL processes, reducing manual effort and operational costs, and enhances holistic insights, driving more accurate innovation validation.
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4. Highly Individualized Consumer Journeys Demand High Effort
The Problem:
Delivering personalized experiences tailored to specific consumer needs and preferences requires substantial effort and resources, making painted door tests less effective and more costly for innovation validation.
The Challenge:
Complex Data Interpretation: Diverse reactions obscure clear trends, complicating data interpretation.
Misleading Results: Personalized journeys increase the risk of false positives or negatives.
Resource Intensive: Conducting tests across multiple segments requires significant investment in time and resources.
The Solution:
Horizon standardizes consumer journeys to optimize efficiency. It defines ideal consumer journeys that align with various products, services, and client needs, facilitating straightforward data interpretation and reducing resource requirements.
5. Lack of Benchmark Capabilities Stymies Performance Comparison
The Problem:
Without benchmarking, it’s challenging to measure the relative success of innovations. Benchmarks provide a standard of comparison that helps in understanding performance metrics in context, which is often lacking in painted door tests.
The Challenge:
Performance Comparison: Difficult to compare testing variables with industry standards.
Track Progress: Painted door tests fail to provide long-term perspective.
Data-Driven Decisions: Incomplete data leads to suboptimal decisions.
Setting Goals: Lack of benchmarks leaves agencies without a clear framework for success.
The Solution:
Horizon leverages data from a wide range of clients and industries to provide industry-specific benchmarks, ensuring researchers, digital and innovation agencies can make data-driven decisions, track progress effectively, and set clear goals. Industries like home appliance, food and beverage, cosmetic and insurance are represented (you find all case studies here).
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6. Absence of Real-Time Dashboard Limits Decision-Making
The Problem:
Painted door tests often lack the infrastructure to provide real-time data visualization and insights, leading to delayed decision-making and increased resource intensity.
The Challenge:
Delayed Decisions: Researchers, innovators and decision-makers must wait for manual data aggregation and analysis.
Resource Intensive: Manual compilation and analysis drain budgets and divert focus from strategic activities.
The Solution:
Horizon provides a robust real-time dashboard that visualizes all data across all consumer journey steps as it is collected, allowing for quick, informed decisions without waiting for manual reports.
7. No Consolidated Access to Live Data Impairs Transparency and Trust
The Problem:
Stakeholders often cannot access live data during painted door tests, resulting in delayed decision-making, hampered collaboration, and time-consuming report generation.
The Challenge:
Delayed Feedback: Slows down decision-making and potential missed opportunities.
Hampered Collaboration: Clients unable to provide immediate input or adjust strategies.
Horizon provides clients with direct access to live data through real-time dashboards, enhancing transparency, efficiency, and collaboration, allowing clients to stay informed and provide immediate input.
Summary
In summary, the challenges of manual setups, fragmented tools, and non-consolidated data can significantly hinder the efficiency and scalability of leveraging painted door tests for innovation validation and any product decision. By adopting Horizon’s comprehensive SaaS solutions, researchers, innovators and product managers can overcome these obstacles, streamline processes, and enhance innovation validation. Horizon’s automation, real-time data access, and standardized approaches not only improve operational efficiency but also empower service- and research providers to deliver innovative solutions and stay competitive in an evolving digital landscape.
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Daniel is the Founder & CEO of Horizon. He is driving the strategic development of the organization, establishing a thriving company culture with a team on a mission to help teams build products that customers really want. Daniel has a strong record in sales, marketing and building startups from zero to one. Before Horizon, he successfully founded and co-founded multiple companies, i.e. Candylabs, BikeBeat and Venture Advisory Partners.
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