Another NetSuite Social Impact Hackathon 4Good is in the books. This year’s global employee Hackathon broke records for the most participants: 168 NetSuite employees in 11 countries making up 27 teams.
The teams supported two NetSuite nonprofit customers, CalFoods Logistics(opens in new tab), a logistics intermediary serving food banks across the state of California, and Hope Rehabilitation Center(opens in new tab), a modern rehabilitation center in Pakistan that provides high-quality artificial limbs and prosthetics as well as therapy to Pakistanis at a reasonable cost. The NetSuite teams collaborated for more than 48 hours virtually with the end goal of helping their assigned organizations help more people with their products and services.
CalFoods Logistics ensures that food banks are equipped with nutritional and other supplemental food items needed to serve clients. It’s a cumbersome process to allocate and deliver food boxes to 48 food banks across the state, so CalFoods Logistics sought a more manageable way to process and track its food box program. It specifically requested that the Hackathon teams come up with an improved budget process.
The LAMBS team scored a win helping CalFoods Logistics get healthy food to those who need it.
Hope Rehabilitation Center (HRC) supplies individuals who have suffered life-changing injuries or debilitating conditions with prosthetic limbs, orthotic supports and therapeutic scar management. It does this by making treatments and products available at low cost to the community.
Due to its nonprofit status, however, the organization is required to make its products available for all to buy. The problem is that for-profit companies are purchasing these low-cost products and reselling them at a higher price. To address this challenge, the group asked the Hackathon teams to create an online store where patients can buy orthotic supports and scar management supplies directly from HRC. The store needed the ability to identify size, delivery location, phone number and delivery preferences; create a smooth experience for both the nonprofit and the patient; and ease the back-end delivery process.
The judges had many powerful solutions for the two organizations to review, but in the end the winning teams were LAMBS for CalFoods Logistics and Funk Masters for Hope Rehab.
“I loved how the team came together from the start and collaborated on a real-world issue that we solved in just 48 hours,” said staff consultant Erik Power, part of the Funk Masters team. “It was an amazing opportunity that everyone should try to be a part of. Whether you're a recent hire or have several years of experience, there is something to learn for everyone."
The winning solutions will bring powerful resources to bear for both organizations. CalFoods Logistics will be able to deliver more essential food items to food banks with the LAMBS prototype. Hope Rehab will have a powerful external facing webpage that will allow patients and their caregivers to browse inventory. The prosthetics will provide a better quality of life and, by having the supplies online, the organization can now reach more patients than ever before.
“We are amazed at how much work each team did in such a short time to come up with a solution,” said Charisse Ross, CalFoods chief operations officer, speaking to the impact the Hackathon will have for her organization. “The winning team’s solution is going to help streamline our process and eliminate having to manually reconcile and create reports. The amount of time saved can be used to help feed more people in California.”
Both Social Impact organizations are thrilled to have had the opportunity to participate in the Hackathon 4Good and are looking forward to implementing their winning solutions.
Oracle NetSuite Social Impact(opens in new tab) supports nonprofits and social enterprises of all sizes globally. The Hackathon 4Good is part of the Suite Pro Bono program, which brings employees and customers together to help Social Impact customers use NetSuite more effectively.
To learn more about the Social Impact software donation and pro bono services and to refer a nonprofit, visit www.netsuite/socialimpact or email socialimpact_ww@oracle.com.