ATDC

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The Advanced Technology Development Center (ATDC) is hosting its ATDC FinTech-RetailTech Hackathon competition from Nov. 10 through Nov. 12.

The competition is sponsored by Atlanta-based Worldpay US — the global payments technology and services company and creator of ATDC’s Financial Technology (FinTech) Program — and Menlo Park, California-based Google’s Cloud Platform, a suite of cloud computing services that run on the same infrastructure that Google uses internally for its end-user products. (REGISTER HERE)

With both the financial and retail sectors undergoing a tilt-a-whirl of change, this year’s competition is focused on FinTech and retail technology (RetailTech).

Participating teams will compete for cash, gadgets, and professional-services prizes valued at more than $100,000. The grand prize winning team will receive a prize package that includes $7,000 cash.

Participants will decide which ideas to tackle using sponsors’ APIs. They can work on their own projects or work on challenges presented to them by the hackathon sponsors:

WORLDPAY US’ CHALLENGES:

(WORLDPAY API Challenges/Conditions: https://www.worldpay.us/fintechhack2017)

  • Challenge:
    • The Situation: Of the 27.9 million small- and medium-businesses in the U.S. today, we know that they share similar challenge:
      • They want to know their customer better to help tailor a better experience.
      • They want to know their business better to optimize limited resources like money, labor, and inventory.
      • They all need more time in their day to focus on what they do best.
      • They would like to be able to respond to future scenarios with confidence.
  • The Challenge to Solve: Develop an innovative application or solution that enhances a consumer’s purchase experience (in-store or online). The tools could range from a unique consumer facing application to a business strategic solution that merchants may utilize to improve their business practices that drive sales and customer satisfaction. You may utilize any advanced hardware your team has available (such as beacons or wearables), and any Worldpay API feature including Vault and Recurring Billing, as well as 50 user-defined fields that could be leveraged for data analytics or business insights.

GOOGLE’S CHALLENGES:

(GOOGLE Terms and Conditions: https://cloud.google.com/terms/)

  • Challenge: Voice-driven ordering
  • The situation
    • Retailers and Quick Service Restaurants (QSRs) are seeking to leverage speech recognition and natural language processing to support customer ordering flows. These solutions will increase order accuracy, lower labor costs and provide a transcript of these transactions.
  • The challenge to solve
    • Utilize Speech API and Dialogflow to develop a voice driven ordering kiosk for a retail location or a restaurant. Customers should be able to speak with the kiosk to place an order, resulting in a properly formed order record. Challenge will be judged strongly on the robustness of the AI agent’s conversation ability and the accuracy of the order output.
  • Challenge: Retail Simplification:
  • The situation
    • Customers are overwhelmed with retail messaging (email, sms, digital marketing of all sorts) across different retailers and brands. This includes various forms of messaging from promotions to loyalty programs. Message confusion and sifting has become a problem.
  • The challenge to solve
    • Utilizing Google Cloud, develop some form of simplification that enables a customer to reduce the clutter yet allowing the retailers or brands to continue to reach customers and obtain sales through these existing means
  • Challenge: Retail Community
  • The situation
    • Retailers and brands are seeking to further reach customers and provide value in interesting and different ways. This includes building communities while avoiding the “marketplace” mentality of just another value connection between the product and customer
  • The challenge to solve
      • Utilizing Google Cloud, develop a way to bring together an experience or community connection that provides value to the retailer/brand and customer in an exciting and unique way.