Innovation contest: When employees shape the future with AI.

“Promoting international exchange and collaboration while inspiring the creativity of our employees in order to advance sustainable progress for our customers,” is how Carsten Tidow, Managing Director of EOS for Eastern Europe, describes the goals of the Group-wide “Wall of Fame” innovation contest. 

This year’s motto, “International Innovators,” was chosen to encourage employees from all national companies to develop their own innovative ideas for optimizing processes, increasing efficiency, and improving results. “No one knows the day-to-day business better than our employees,” Carsten adds. “It would border on criminal negligence to leave them out!”

The contest was held for the third time this year. The participants started by submitting individual projects, and the most successful of them were then divided into international teams to develop their ideas hand in hand with another country on a final project. At the final round, which was held at the beginning of June during the Connect Meeting for managing directors and talents, the finalists presented their projects and competed for proving the relevance of their ideas for the company.

The winners were selected by combining the ratings awarded by a panel of experts, the results of an international live vote for all 6,000 EOS employees, and the vote tally of Connect Meeting participants via the app. Sebastian Pollmer, Member of the EOS Group’s Board of Directors and responsible for Western Europe and member of the jury was there, and he sums up the final round with great enthusiasm: “The event was chock full of energy. Thanks to all of the participants for their excellent ideas!”

The ideas presented were diverse and ranged from virtual offices to AI software that assists employees with processing documents. The finalists came from a number of countries, including Germany, Slovakia, Spain, Hungary, and Croatia. However, it was the team from Poland and Romania, represented by Mădălin Marian GHIȚĂ and Paweł Rutkowski, that ultimately took the win. Their AI system named “Nicallai” ventures to automate the call center process. It strives to reduce the workload of call center employees not only by the fact that “Nicallai” accepts incoming calls but also actively initiates calls. 

Nicallai is connected to EOS’s own debt collection system Kollecto+ via an interface and can independently determine the identity of the contact person, provide information on existing cases, and negotiate individual payment plans. This innovation could increase telephone service productivity by nearly 90 percent in the future.

For the winning team, the real work is only just beginning as they are now given the chance to put their theoretical idea into practice. “We know what the next steps are and already have a clear plan of how we want to tackle them,” explains Mădălin Marian GHIȚĂ of Team Nicallai, technical team leader at EOS IT Services in Romania. “We are aiming to introduce the system within the next nine months.” By then, next year’s teams will probably already be working on innovative ideas for the next round of the contest.