This past spring, Narmi hosted its inaugural 2023 Hackathon, which focused on bringing together employees from across the company to work on new and innovative ways to better serve our clients.
In total, 10 teams of employees representing marketing, product, operations, sales, and engineering presented ideas that ranged from a budgeting tool that buckets money based on key goals, to a tool that automatically reaches out to an inactive user before deactivating their account.
Notably, all of the ideas presented were built using Narmi Functions. The latest product in Narmi’s best-in-class offerings, Narmi Functions puts the power in the hands of financial institutions by allowing them to build bespoke features and custom integrations that serve the unique needs of their communities. Narmi also hosts these technologies, which frees up the burden from the financial institutions.
Over the course of the event, each team leveraged the unique perspectives and backgrounds of their members to deliver original ideas, presentations, and beta solutions.
Chris Griffin, Narmi Co-Founder, highlighted the importance of crowdsourcing innovative ideas and including diverse experiences in the ideation process.
“One of the key factors that makes Narmi so unique is the entrepreneurial spirit that every employee possesses.” – Chris Griffin, Narmi Co-Founder
“The hackathon was a great event that encouraged over 40 Narmi employees to come together with their unique perspectives, skills, and ideas,” he said. “It was amazing to see what they built in less than a day.”
In the end, two teams were selected as the winners of the People’s Choice Award and the Founders’ Choice Award, respectively.
The winner of the People’s Choice Award created a tool that harnessed the power of AI to produce personalized financial advice (specifically using the voices of celebrities).
Product Marketing Manager Sarabeth Perry was a member of this winning team. She spotlighted how the hackathon offered a unique opportunity for cross-functional partnerships and original outcomes.
“Bringing together participants from all different departments of the company really encouraged (and rewarded) out of the box thinking,” she said. “In this environment we leveraged our unique backgrounds, strengths, and ways of problem solving to deliver relevant solutions. By the end of the event, we emerged with use cases that could immediately be deployed, so we felt the tangible impact of our work.”
Martin Lindholm, Director of Technical Product Management, was a member of the team that won the Founders’ Choice Award. Their solution focused on creating and executing powerful lifecycle marketing deliverables based on customers’ interactions within their digital banking platform. Regarding the experience, he appreciated the emphasis the event placed on teamwork and collaboration.
“The hackathon was a great way to come together as a team around a customer problem and explore how Narmi Functions could help solve that,” he noted. “It was definitely encouraging that we were able to get our initial approach working within less than a day.”
