LOS ANGELES, March 25, 2015 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- In 90 minutes or less, what types of apps could an average business user create to solve a real-life business problem? That was the challenge issued by Intellect, formerly known as Interneer, a leader in SaaS BPM software and Smart Enterprise Apps, at its first annual Configurathon™ rapid app creation contest held recently at Intellect Innovate 2015, the company's 4th annual user conference.
At the contest, Intellect customers, partners and prospects put their best foot forward to create an innovative enterprise-grade business-ready app that would bring home the grand prize package worth $5,000. With only 90 minutes on the clock, a laptop computer, and the Intellect Web-based Business Process Management software solution, contestants were required to build an enterprise-grade, business-ready app comprising a user interface, workflow and reporting, and which could be partially or completely deployed to mobile devices.
Similar to a Hackathon, a Configurathon™ is a contest for app creation but where the contestants don't actually write code or program, but instead configure apps through a 100% drag and drop environment. Apps were scored on the following criteria: Originality (20%); Technical skill (25%); Business Impact/Potential (20%); User Experience (20%); and Presentation (15%); winners were determined by a panel of independent judges from academia and industry, and announced at the company's Innovate 2015 Gala Dinner and Award Ceremony on March 10, 2015.
Winning Apps Revealed
App inspiration came from both issues contestants encountered in their professional and personal life.
Third place honors went to Attendee Check-in App designer Grant Ogren, a technical consultant.
The runner up was Simon Lyons, a business analyst. His app was designed to improve collaboration and data flow among personal trainers and their clients.
The winning app was submitted by Gary Spaid, a CIO Advisor at Alligar and Intellect partner. His Sales Pipeline App was designed to track sales efforts and deal flow. Judges were particularly impressed by the app's extensive reporting capabilities viewable on the web or mobile device that included pie charts and bar charts – offering users a quick, easy way to understand the key metrics for sales opportunities at each stage of the deal cycle. The app's interface optimizes mobile screen space, the workflow guides the user entering the data through the necessary activities to ensure proper follow-up, and the interactive reports provide analytics to determine and prioritize sales opportunities most likely to close in a given time period, (i.e., quarter end).
"It's incredible how much business value was delivered by the apps showcased at the Configurathon in such as short amount of time and no programming," said Shari Lava, Director, Vendor Research from Info-Tech, who judged the event.
"Rapid BPM app development is all about enabling self-serve applications in the business. While resource constraints have typically been a major obstacle in the past to BPM projects, new offerings – such as Intellect – are changing this. The capability for rapid BPM based apps seen today is due to advances in data integration, mobile, and growing pervasiveness of analytics and their embedded prevalence in all kinds of systems has improved BPM usability and dramatically shortened the timeline for ROI," said Lava.
"On behalf of Intellect, we congratulate all the winners and want to thank all of our valued customers and partners for their participation in our 1st Annual Configurathon," said Romeo Elias, Intellect President and CEO. "With the launch of our new Intellect 8 BPM platform, we're bringing even greater capabilities, for improved ease-of-use and time-to-value to empower organizations to deliver Smart Business Apps, delivering the responsiveness business needs today. We're looking forward to seeing a whole new crop of innovative apps built with Intellect 8 at our next Configurathon in 2016."
About Intellect
Intellect, formerly known as Interneer, is a leader in SaaS BPM software that empowers business people to innovate with Smart Enterprise Apps. Intellect's new Intellect 8 BPM platform offers the industry's most advanced capabilities for connecting apps, people and processes.
Intellect's award winning Intellect 8 BPM platform enables non-programmers to create, use, and manage a wide variety of enterprise apps with built-in forms, data, workflow, and highly customizable reporting – all with the ability to integrate with legacy enterprise applications. Intellect offers a user friendly drag-and-drop interface that requires no programing or software coding, enabling organizations to quickly improve business automation, operational productivity, employee efficiency, compliance, customer engagement and self-service.
Intellect business apps can be deployed as a native mobile app in minutes on any iOS and Android device. Native mobile apps are critical for organizations that require secure, enterprise-grade mobile apps that function even when internet connectivity is lost.
Hundreds of customers, including Circle K, Jacobs Engineering, FirefightersFirst Credit Union, Silliker, American Specialty Health, Georgetown University and Host Hotels, rely on Intellect to build and manage business apps that automate business processes, optimize operations, and enhance revenue generation. To learn more, please visit www.intellect.com.