During our milestone 100th Learning Hour, we debuted our new ideas portal, aptly named the Rootstock Idea Factory.

This innovative portal enables Rootstock customers to submit potential ideas for product development, ensuring their voices play a pivotal role in shaping the future of Rootstock’s product roadmap.

“We initially discussed the Idea Factory at our Rooted-In Manufacturing Conference,” said Raj Badarinath, Chief Product & Marketing Officer. “Now, we’ve rolled it out, making it easier than ever for customers to co-create the next generation of Rootstock ERP—and for our company to deliver capabilities that truly matter to our users.”

A Place for Collaborative Innovation

The Idea Factory offers a streamlined way for customers, partners, and internal Rootstock staff to contribute, prioritize, and collaborate on product ideas. Whether it’s suggesting a new feature, refining an existing capability, or solving a specific business challenge, the Idea Factory provides a process whereby customer feedback can be transformed into actual product development.

The Idea Factory is integrated into the Rootstock Success Community. Members must be properly logged on to participate. Here’s how to submit an idea via the Idea Factory—you can also watch a short video demonstration of the process.

  • Post ideas: Customers can easily submit ideas with a title and description. As the idea is entered into the portal, the system can detect if similar ideas already exist. In this way, users can view and collaborate on similar ideas that they come up with, rather than creating duplicates.
    • Categorize ideas: We ask contributors to categorize their ideas using a drop-down list, which includes broad areas like manufacturing, financials, and technology, and there are additional subcategories to further organize them.
    • Define the Impact. We also ask contributors to anticipate what type of business impact their idea may have on their operations and bottom line. This enables Rootstock to understand potential outcomes (e.g., we estimate this feature will help us reduce BOM creation time by 10 to 20%).
  • Upvote and prioritize: Once posted, community members—including other users and partners—can upvote ideas. The portal automatically ranks ideas, so the most popular ones appear at the top. To maintain a positive atmosphere and encourage idea-sharing, there is no option to downvote ideas.
  • Comment and collaborate: Beyond just voting, users can also comment on ideas, adding their perspectives or offering suggestions to further refine and enrich the concept. Community members can tag fellow users, enabling others to engage in this collaborative environment. By inviting input from all users, ideas become well-rounded through additional insights.
  • Year-round participation: The Idea Factory isn’t just a one-and-done event; it’s an ongoing process whereby users can continually contribute and vote on ideas throughout the year, making the factory a perpetual motion machine within the Success Community and driving Rootstock innovation.
  • Track progress: Customers can also track the status of each submission via the ideas list, which not only rank-orders them by votes but also provides the status—whether it’s up for prioritization, in development, or being implemented.

The Assembly Line: From Raw Idea to Finished Product

Ideas will be prioritized based on votes and alignment with Rootstock’s strategic objectives. The top ranked ideas will be presented to Rootstock’s Product Council during monthly reviews, where members will be able to discuss and evaluate ideas for potential inclusion in the product roadmap.

There may also be scenarios where minor requests can be handled without Product  Council review, as these may be smaller, simpler initiatives that can easily be acted upon. Ideas that are developed, implemented, and released will be mentioned in Rootstock’s future release notes, showcasing how customer-contributed ideas are impacting product enhancements.

Ohad Idan, CEO of Praxis Solutions (a Gold Partner of Rootstock), reflected on the value the Idea Factory delivers: “Allowing customers to recommend new features, viewing other customer’s ideas, and having the ability to track them from concept to reality is extremely powerful—it demonstrates Rootstock’s commitment to not just listening but actively delivering on customer feedback.”

A Transparent, User-friendly Experience

Another goal of the Idea Factory is transparency. Customers will be able to track the lifecycle of their ideas—from submission to final product release. The portal provides regular status updates, helping customers understand how their suggestions are progressing, and which ones are influencing Rootstock ERP’s evolution.

Oen Eugene, Salesforce Admin & Developer at Beta Bionics, received an early tour of the Idea Factory and commented on the user interface. “Rootstock users will find the portal easy to use and navigate, and they’ll be excited to see that the Idea Factory offers visible tracking of their submitted concepts—all the way through to an implemented capability.”

Building the Future, One Idea at a Time

“The Rootstock Idea Factory is not a >/dev/null,” said Badarinath. “It’s a powerful tool for driving meaningful change in our ERP landscape. It also marks the beginning of a more collaborative approach to Rootstock’s product development. By actively engaging with the Idea Factory, customers can ensure that their needs are at the forefront of our development efforts. This will also lead to a product roadmap that reflects the real-world challenges and opportunities faced by our users, resulting in a more responsive and effective ERP solution.”

Join us in the Idea Factory, where your ideas will inspire the next wave of innovation for Rootstock ERP.