Chemstar's Accelerated Product Development through Data-Driven Project Scoring in Alchemy

Chemstar is an innovative provider of environmentally friendly, high-performance starch-based polymers. The company is committed to accelerating new product development and expanding into new applications. To achieve this, they have made strategic decisions to shorten their new product development process and grow their R&D and sales teams. They have also digitized their project workflows and implemented a data-driven project scoring process using Alchemy's project scoring software. Chemstar is dedicated to continuous improvement and uses quantified insights to make informed decisions about which projects to pursue.

Chemstar, a provider of environmentally friendly, high-performance starch-based polymers, was faced with the challenge of accelerating their new product development and expanding into new applications. To achieve this, they needed to shorten their new product development process and expand their R&D and sales teams. The company was also looking to digitize their project workflows and implement a data-driven project scoring process. The goal was to track the entire process, from a new customer request through product development and delivery, and to provide quantified insights into the end-to-end process. This would enable executives to continuously improve the innovation process and make informed decisions about which projects to pursue.

In 2018, Chemstar implemented Alchemy, a project scoring software, to digitize their project workflows and establish a data-driven project scoring process. Alchemy's dashboards allowed Chemstar to track the entire process, from a new customer request all the way through product development and delivery. The software provided quantified insights into the end-to-end process, enabling executives to continuously improve the innovation process and make tough trade-off decisions about which projects to pursue. Alchemy was used to rank the full portfolio of projects, with appropriate data-driven criteria for different project types. For instance, customer enhancements could now be scored based on strategic value and technical feasibility, while foundational chemistry projects were evaluated on different criteria so they didn’t penalize efforts that weren’t certain.

• The implementation of Alchemy has resulted in a more streamlined and efficient project workflow for Chemstar. The software has enabled the company to drive priorities and resource assignments, and rank the full portfolio of projects with appropriate data-driven criteria. This has resulted in a more agile new product development process. The executive team can now balance short-term, customer-driven revenue from enhancements against the longer-term strategic bets on foundational chemistry using criteria that supports the trial-and-error nature of innovation. Furthermore, the software has improved communication and collaboration within the company, with chemists managing their tasks and sprints through the software and salespeople accessing Alchemy anytime for quick visual updates of each project and customer request.

• Chemstar is now able to track the entire process from a new customer request through product development and delivery.
• The company is seeing faster velocity on projects because everyone is on the same page and it’s no longer possible for things to fall through the cracks.
• Chemstar now has baseline project data as a foundation for a more agile new product development process.