Hackathon generate solutions for real world biz problems: Vishal Kapse

New Delhi: Simplified customer verification, ‘buzz bot’ for improving employee engagement and reducing call handling times... just three of the many ideas to solve real world business problems being implemented by business process management services company Firstsource Solutions Ltd.

All the ideas were generated at Hackathon, a “time bound collaborative event designed to unlock the collective creative intelligence of Firstsourcers”, said Vishal Kapse, the company’s senior vice president, process excellence.

The ideas have been adopted as new ways of working across the company, enabling clients to benefit significantly as well. “Just two ideas from one of the Hackathons generated a direct cost benefit of about USD 100,000 for one of our clients," Kapse told PTI.

An estimated 1,100 ideas have been generated over five Hackathons, each event ranging between four-six weeks from calling of ideas to sharing the final shortlisted ones.

Excerpts from the interview: 

Q: For Firstsource Solutions, what was the basic driver for conducting Hackathon? 

A: At Firstsource, we are committed to fostering a collaborative culture where we can tap into the curiosity of our people and create a chain reaction of improvement ideas. We believe that our people have the knowledge and collective intelligence to solve problems faced by our businesses - as they engage with clients, customers and the industry on a daily basis.

This was the genesis of Hackathon, a time bound collaborative event designed to unlock the collective creative intelligence of Firstsourcers.

Given that our first Hackathon was extremely successful, we have adopted the practice for regularly solving for problems. Till date, we have completed five events, each event ranging between four-six weeks from calling of ideas to sharing the final shortlisted ones. Typically, ideation runs for two-three weeks considering the complexity of the challenge.

Q: Could you elaborate on one of the Hackathon events done in collaboration with Amazon Web Services (AWS)? Was the Hackathon only for Firstsource employees, both in India and overseas? 

A: The Hackathon with AWS was open to over 3,000 of our employees across US, UK, India, Philippines and Mexico. The RP-Sanjiv Goenka group has also launched a white paper on this initiative in October, highlighting it as a best practice for consumption across all group companies. We will soon be collaborating with clients and partners in driving joint ideation events.

Q: What was the idea/solution that finally won? What real world problem/challenges did it solve and is the company looking to now internalise the new solutions in its business? 

A: As a result of the Hackathons, we have implemented 58 ideas, solving for real world business problems such as improving NPS (net promoter score), reducing call handling time, fostering purposeful collaboration within teams, improving transactional quality, and crafting a differentiated employee onboarding experience.

These ideas have been adopted as new ways of working across the company, enabling our clients to benefit significantly too. For example, just two ideas from one of the Hackathons generated a direct cost benefit of about USD 100,000 for one of our clients.

Q: What were the major outcomes, benefits Firstsource Solutions derived from the hackathon initiative? 

A: The most significant outcome of these Hackathons has been building a culture of innovation and ideation across the board.

Multiple teams now adopt various scales of this programme to solve for their specific needs or even reach out to the Process Excellence team to help them engage their teams on it.

Moreover, the intent to drive more collaboration among employees, promote risk taking ability and enhance excellence in their day-to-day activities have also been addressed through these programmes.

Among the 1,100 ideas generated over the five Hackathons, the three ideas that stood out and voted winning ideas were: -- Simplify customer verification - targeted towards improving net promoter score. This idea was generated for a leading telecom client where the effort for customer to verify was automated at first instance, resulting in quicker and streamlined resolution of issue. This helped in decreasing repeat emails and improving overall customer experience.

-- Buzz Bot - aimed at improving employee engagement. This idea was originally given to send break reminders to operations. However, it was improvised later for sending nudges to supervisors to engage with their teams. The design team used MS teams to automate these nudges and track the follow through actions.

Nudges are sent once a week on four different pillars of employee engagement that is purpose, community and connection, growth and development and appreciation.

-- TravelApp - inhouse app improving team leader productivity and employee experience. Team leaders were spending disproportionate amount of time in admin activities, one of them being arranging office transport for their team members.

The TravelApp enables employee to schedule their own transport and also provides them the flexibility to manage their own schedule adherence. This prototype was the winner of the event and the app is now under development.

Q: How are winning teams facilitated? 

A: We have designed the programme to reward behaviours that matter, to encourage and recognise the journey employees take.

Besides rewarding the winning team/idea with leadership endorsements and monetary rewards from our employee benefits platform FirstReward, we also recognise and reward employees who generated interesting ideas and employees who collaborated at a later stage to develop the idea.

However, our experience has revealed that the reward most coveted by Firstsourcers is seeing their ideas brought to life through implementation.

Q: Are you planning to hold Hackathons regularly? 

A: Absolutely. This is now our way of working and we are seeing a lot of inquisitiveness in this space. To embed these behaviours across our culture, we are launching a new age idea management platform and introducing new roles within the existing organisational structure to effectively drive Hackathons in a fairly decentralised manner.

We plan to run six-eight Hackathon events every year alongside of Ideasource, an avenue for blue sky thinking.

Q: How was AWS involved in the Hackathon and what benefits did you derive from their association in this initiative? 

A: AWS was our technology partner along with Ideawake (idea management platform) for one of our Hackathon events targeted to improve team leader and associate connect. The AWS Digital Innovation team helped us in facilitating the main design sprint and engaged 50 Hackathon participants on Amazon’s unique ‘Working Backwards’ mechanism for customer-centric innovation. They also facilitated sessions for senior leaders enabling 100-plus leaders to understand and learn from the innovation culture at Amazon.