Students compete in international contest on technological solutions
Check below the article published by the USP News Agency (Agência de Notícias da Universidade de São Paulo – USP):
USP students are competing with pairs from five countries. The online voting took place on March, from 14 to 21
The time when solving problems in companies only fell to its executives is gone. The current global trend is design thinking: a company presents a problem it’s facing and people outside it offer real solutions. Two USP students accepted one of those challenges and are currently representing Brazil in a global contest with competitors from other five countries: India, France, the Netherlands, United Kingdom and the United States. Internet users from all over the world will be able to vote for the best project from the 14th to 19th of March. The two most voted pairs will reach the final stage of the competition.
The contest called Innovators Race is carried out by Capgemini, an Information Technology company based in France. Directed at university students, its major objective is to find a technologic solution for a local company in each of the five countries.
In Brazil, the 21 pairs who took part in the first stage of the race developed a project for the cosmetics manufacturer Natura. Eight of them were chosen to be evaluated by Capgemini experts. Later on, 4 projects were chosen by a different group of experts and amongst them, the Brazilian pair was chosen.
The project that was chosen to represent Brazil was created by Rodrigo Spillere and Augusto de Paula Junior, who are taking a MBA in Governança em Inovação Tecnológica com Sustentabilidade (Governance in Technologic Innovation with Sustainability), offered by the Laboratório de Sustentabilidade (Sustainability Laboratory - LASSU) of the Escola Politécnica (College of Engineering - Poli) at USP. The students created a platform for smartphones that optimizes the work of Natura’s sales consultants and consumers. It also includes an e-learning center that provides training for the professionals and a finance management tool to help them manage their own money.
Watch the video of the project (in English)
“I’ve even changed the schedule of the course so that our students could take part in the race”, explains professor Tereza Cristina Carvalho, coordinator of LASSU. According to her, it’s an interesting opportunity to practice in real life, because the students will be placed in direct contact with design thinking, a resource that is being used more and more by market. “The idea is to show our students what happens outside as much as we can”, she highlights.
Tereza Carvalho points out that since they have to get votes to be qualified to take part in the competition it can be difficult in the first moment. However, the fact that they have to do so is very positive, because it encourages them to take initiatives. “This is a key characteristic of successful entrepreneurs, because they have to believe their own idea to be able to sell it.”
Real Challenge
The real problem Natura wanted to solve was to boost sales maintaining the current format, which consists of having consultants as intermediaries of the relation with consumers. “We found out that in the current model, the dynamics from purchase of the product until its delivery is too long”, explains Rodrigo Spillere. “The consumer needs to know a consultant, meet with this person and take a look at a print catalog to choose the product; after this, the consultant places the order, waits until the product arrives and only after these consumers will have it in their hands”.
In the project developed by the students, the idea is to enable consultants to have a small stock and operate as a small e-commerce, simplifying and making the sales process easier. Based on geolocation techniques, consumers will be able to find the closest consultant to them and place the order through an app.
An intelligent mechanism will show consultants the most sold products per region and season. During summer, for example, sunscreen lotions sales increase.
Another interesting aspect of the platform is the e-learning service that will offer consultants video-classes about sales, guidance on how to improve their business and how to manage their stocks in a better way.
Sustainable solution
Augusto de Paula Junior points out that the project was conceived taking into consideration all of the spheres of sustainability. “From the environmental point of view, geolocation prevents consumers and consultants from travelling long distances to sell and this helps reduce greenhouse gases emissions. With the online catalogue, there will be less printing. In the social aspect, the platform will help consultants by offering the e-learning and the financial managing tool. And in the economic aspect, it will help the entire chain: consumers, the company and consultants”.
In the next stage of the race, people will be able to vote for the six pairs, but only once for each of them. In order to vote, Facebook or LinkedIn credentials will be required so that the system recognizes users and prevents people from voting more than once for the same video.
The two pairs that get the most votes from the 14th to 21st of March will go to Paris, visit Capgemini headquarters and take part in a technical evaluation of the technological tool they’ve developed. The winning pair will be awarded US$ 25 thousand and a training program at Capgemini in San Francisco.
Published in Technology, USP Online Destaque (USP Online Highlights) by USP News Agency on March 10th 2016
Versão Português