Sx3's Relatively new software package

Northern Ireland's most creative employees could be set to challenge history's best known thinker - Albert Einstein - thanks to a new software package developed by local IT systems and services provider, Sx3.

Launched during the week of Einstein's birthday (March 14) and National Ideas Week, Brainwaves is the 'brainchild' of Sx3's Paul Hawthorne and is a specially designed programme enabling employers to capitalise on the innovation of their workforce.

"Most progressive organisations recognise the value of employee suggestion schemes for enhancing staff morale and also for boosting individual and corporate performance levels," Mr Hawthorne said.

"In practice, however, many companies aren't taking advantage of these benefits, either because they don't have a formal scheme in place or because it isn't sufficiently user-friendly or efficient.

"As a result, innovative ideas often don't see the light of day. Brainwaves is an ideal solution as it is intranet-based, enabling ideas to be submitted, allocated to decision-makers, assessed, stored and classified all via the web. This simplifies the whole process - once installed it is almost self-managing - and makes it more visible and time-dynamic."

The Viridian Group has adopted the Brainwaves software under its Viridian Visions suggestion scheme.

Robin McCormick of Viridian Visions said: "Adopting Brainwaves has streamlined the administration of the scheme and made the whole process, including the extraction of workable ideas, much more cost and time-efficient.

"Brainwaves also allows much greater participation and inclusiveness for employees as, not only do our administrators have continuous and up to the minute access to suggestions, but so do the 'suggestors' who can track their idea via their own intranet home-page."

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