No more queues – innovation using data flows rewarded by Tieto at Ultrahack
Tieto startups joined forces at hackathon event Ultrahack to create new innovative services for future retail. Team Quno was rewarded by Tieto on Sunday evening. The award-winning team created innovation for brick-and-mortar that makes queues a history.
Teams from more than 400 participants developed solutions for challenges provided by the partner companies at Ultrahack, a software development hackathon, held on the 6th through 8th of November at Machine Shop Bruno, Helsinki, Finland. Tieto challenged the teams to develop shopping experience at traditional brick-and-mortar-stores. Tieto hoped to receive innovative, user-friendly and gamified solutions for a better shopping experience.
”I was positively surprised by the quality of Ultrahack. The developers used their top skills to develop solutions for our challenge in an intense and creative way. The set-up and tools to create fantastic user-based services were really good. We wanted to get something really new and unseen out of Ultrahack – and we definitely did; especially in the fast development methods used by the developers”, says Taneli Tikka, Head of Industrial Internet startup at Tieto, who acted as a coach at Ultrahack.
At the end of the 48-hour hackathon Tieto rewarded an international team Quno. The winning team developed a technical prototype of software that via analysing photos and videos guides customers to the shortest queue during peak times. Additionally, by analyzing customer data flows the shops can display queue statistics in in-store monitors and hence guide customers to pay when the queue will be the shortest.
Tieto sees that the solution used already existing infrastructure in the shop, like displays and cameras, and combined it to new recognition and predictive technologies in an innovative way. The solution will make customers in shops or e.g. in amusement parks queue less and have a better customer experience. To the shop owners the solution will offer an opportunity to increase sales and develop more inspiring experiences to customers
”Our customers are living a time of change. They are facing a growing need to find new innovations and services in order to serve their own customers better. Participating at Ultrahack 2015 was a way for us to accelerate innovation as the event provided an excellent setting to develop new ideas and software. The award-winning initiatives give us input to create user-based retail solutions never seen before”, says Mikko Leinonen, Head of Customer Experience Management start-up at Tieto.
Ultrahack is a part of the Slush Hacks concept, which consists of several development events that transform Helsinki into the hackathon capital of the world, if only for the weekend. The purpose of the event is to make society a bit better, develop new business and to get exposure for the Finnish software development talent, as well as further the startup culture and pave the road for Finland in the modern information based economy. Tieto was involved as a partner of Ultrahack.
The winning teams of Ultrahack will present their ideas at startup event Slush on 11–12 November 2015.
Follow Ultrahack: https://ultrahack.org/
For more information:
Taneli Tikka, Head of Industrial Internet: taneli.tikka@tieto.com, +358 40 7719 828
Mikko Leinonen, Head of Customer Experience Management: mikko.leinonen@tieto.com, +358 40 5967726
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Tieto is the largest Nordic IT services company providing full life-cycle services for both the private and public sectors and product development services in the field of communications and embedded technologies. The company has global presence through its product development business and global delivery centres. Tieto is committed to developing enterprises and society through IT by realizing new opportunities in customers’ business transformation. At Tieto, we believe in professional development and results.
Founded 1968, headquartered in Helsinki, Finland and with approximately over 13 000 experts, the company operates in over 20 countries with net sales of approximately EUR 1.5 billion. Tieto’s shares are listed on NASDAQ OMX in Helsinki and Stockholm. Please visit www.tieto.com for more information.
