Comarch Innovates for Sustainability at the Škoda BeeGreen Hackathon

This spring, a team of developers and designers from Comarch took part in the Škoda BeeGreen Hackathon, an international competition where participants collaborate to find innovative solutions for sustainable development within the Škoda brand.

The event was held at the O2 Universum conference center in Prague. Representatives from various innovative companies from the Czech Republic, Germany, France, and Poland participated, all eager to compete. The goal of the competition was to select a winning project that could contribute to the brand's development in alignment with the principles of sustainable growth.

Throughout the competition, team representatives had the chance to showcase their technical skills and creative thinking by tackling one of three challenges: "Exploring Nature," "Upcycling and Material Recovery," and "Consumption Monitoring."

The stakes were high, as the best projects had the potential to be implemented by Škoda as real-world solutions. 

Our team at Comarch, like most participants, chose the “Surrounding Explorer” challenge. The result was a mobile application, an extension of the MyŠkoda App. 

The developed tool allowed drivers to make productive use of their time while charging their electric vehicles. Presented with friendly, humorous graphics, the app offered users three activity areas during their car’s charging break: 

• A quiz on first aid and material recycling,
• Physical activities: stretching exercises or a short walk along a suggested route,
• Meditation with relaxation instructions and breathing control accompanied by music.

The project aimed to raise ecological awareness, enhance first aid knowledge, promote the health benefits of physical activity, and build a community of MyŠkoda app users.

We also included engaging incentives in the app: users received fun badges for completing each quiz stage, which they could add to their photos and share on social media. 

Our goal was successfully achieved, and we presented our work to the organizers. Our team was the only one to present the project as a working application, which every participant could test on their mobile device. This was definitely a distinguishing factor compared to the other teams. It is also worth noting that as a team, we demonstrated the ability to collaborate at every stage of project development – from conception to achieving the set goal, under time pressure – as the entire scope of work was completed in just 10 hours.

Comarch designers created a tool that brings real value to users. Furthermore, in the longer term, it may also benefit our client, Škoda. This tool touches on areas often overlooked in the current virtual space, such as building user communities and raising awareness of sustainable development, starting from their own "backyard."

In conclusion, it’s worth mentioning that the winning solution chosen by the competition committee also revolved around a similar theme, specifically the upcycling of used vehicle materials. The winning idea came from the Czech team of ETAS. 

Our conclusions are clear. 

We successfully leverage the experiences gained from such events in our daily work, creating products for our automotive clients and related sectors. We are inspired by the opportunity to interact and collaborate with other innovative teams. The exchange of views, experiences, thought processes, and technological solutions presented by competitors helps us identify new development opportunities for our products and potentially forge future business partnerships. All these factors increase our awareness of the industry's development in which we operate. 

During the competition, we formed an exceptionally cohesive, active, and engaged team, where work was pure pleasure, and achieving the set goal was only a matter of time. The insights we gained from this experience, both from a team and individual perspective, are incredibly valuable. This experience, built over the years, forms a solid foundation for creating new, innovative concepts and solutions in the future. 

If you want to learn more about our collaboration with Škoda, as well as other projects we are working on, visit our website or contact our team at technologies@comarch.com.