Research and Development Department

Research and development department overview
New products, advanced technologies and improvements are necessary to meet the customer requirements. In order to be competitive, any organization should search for new products and solutions taking into account availability of new materials and technology, changes in consumer demand and seasonal sales changes. The work of the research and development department in the organization assumes developing new products and improving current ones through different forms of research. In cooperation with other departments, researches become more effective. For example, the marketing department provides R&D with value information about changes in consumer demand and current requirements of customers. The research and development department should also be informed of new technology, materials and products that meet the customer's requirements and trends for the future of the customers needs.

Research and development department goals/tasks
The main goal of the R&D department is to provide the organization with pro-active leadership in the industry and strong competitive advantages through implementation of new technologies and solutions aimed to improve current product range and develop new products. The R&D department closely works with the quality assurance department in order to create a new solution for enhancing the sustainability and the quality of products. The tasks of R&D department could be split into two main groups: research and development.  The groups are closely linked with each other, however they have some peculiarities. The research activities allow the organization to find more effective ways to produce a product. The development activities are focused on how to implement these ways into manufacturing of the current or a new product.

Research and development department in company structure
Research and development are often very expensive and it takes much time to get positive results from them.  However most businesses invest a lot of money in research and development and build R&D departments. The organizations which have R&D departments in their structure, gain big advantages, because:

1. Products are commercialized faster
2. Products reach global markets
3. Contribution to customer confidence
4. Effective exploitation of technologies
5. They gain advantages over rivals

The research and development department will enable a more progressive and faster transfer of innovations into product development and exploitation.

Research and development department software
The progress of innovation research and product development requires a good balance between the team and management involved in R&D projects. VIP Task Manager provides this balance and allows to manage R&D projects and activities effectively.  The software helps to carry information on the latest developments and coordinate the resource assignment to new promising projects in efficient and timely way. VIP Task Manager can be used as R&D project management software for organizing the workflow of the department. The software gives the following options:

• Building project tree
• Management of multiple projects for researches in single database
• Using templates and samples for regular researches
• Possibility to export task lists to Excel sheets
• Scheduling and planning R&D projects
• Prioritizing task lists with capability to add custom fields. Using formulas in calculations
• Building custom workflow and add new task statuses
• Tracking and monitoring tasks for current researches per employee
• Attaching Word, PDF, images or any other files to the tasks

1. Research and development department staff
2. Research and development department functions
3. Researches for and development of new products
4. Product maintenance and improvement
5. Quality and regulatory compliance