"We're doing this now because the watch industry is in its own world," he said. "When you design watches, it's more about styling. But in the last 10 years, technology gave us the opportunity to do more innovation, and suddenly you need something to deal with it."

One example of innovation is the addition of wireless heart rate monitors in some Timex watches, which allow consumers to track their heart rates during exercise. "That takes quite a lot of engineering effort to keep it small and keep it working," Becker said.

Other Timex innovations include the industry's first watch to use earth satellites to compute the wearer's speed and distance, as well as Indiglo watches that are internally illuminated so they are readable at night. By using Accolade, Timex expects to shave up to 30% of the time needed to develop a watch and get it to market, Becker said.

Bryan Seyfarth, marketing director for Bloomington, Minn.-based Sopheon, said Accolade can boost customer revenues from new products by helping to ensure that sales and marketing targets can be met before the products ever reach production. "Being focused on innovation is one of the most common objectives that business executives have today," Seyfarth said.

Accolade, he said, brings together cross-functional team members, from brand managers to engineers to manufacturing staff and finance specialists, on a global design project, he said. The software helps organize information in a central database so decisions can be made on whether to grow or kill a project. "This kind of decision-making aspects of our software ... is one of the key ways that we increase returns on innovation."