Employees from ComAp recently had the opportunity to attend an AI Hackathon at the offices of Microsoft Czech Republic in Prague. Organised by ComAp’s Digital Office with the support of Microsoft, the event provided an excellent opportunity to explore the latest developments in AI and the various ways it can be leveraged in the workplace. We spoke to Tomas Hucek, a Program Manager at ComAp who helped organise the event, to learn more.

Tomas, can you share what inspired the team to organise the AI Hackathon?

The main idea behind the event was to explore the ways in which different people within our company can utilise AI to improve their work in their day-to-day job roles. I was already aware that quite a few people within ComAp were using AI in different capacities, and we wanted to organise a couple of workshops not only to identify the early adopters of AI within the company but also to help facilitate the successful use of AI in their roles. So, we organised two events: the first was the Envisioning Workshop, which happened on the 15th of October, and the second was the recent Hackathon. Both events were collaborations with Microsoft Czech Republic, who are obviously experts at the forefront of AI, and they took place at their premises in Prague.

What were the main objectives of the Hackathon? 

Well, we already had a few ongoing top-down projects in mind that had been selected by the executive team, for example, utilising AI for demand forecast optimisation, which is a project sponsored by R&D’s Marek Novotny and led by Jana Skokanova. Another project is using AI to assist Sales with quoting, which is sponsored by Lukas Kral and led by Martin Kolovratek and Martin Sevcik.

In addition to these top-down initiatives, we also wanted to identify the different ways in which the early AI adopters within the company are already using AI to make their lives easier and the tools they are using to do so. I have to say, it was pretty eye-opening to see the number of people who are already using AI to improve their work. So, we thought, what a great opportunity it would be to get these people together to join forces and work on new and innovative solutions based on AI.

What was Microsoft’s role in the event?

As we use a lot of Microsoft products at ComAp—our infrastructure is based mostly on Microsoft—we’ve maintained great cooperation with them for some time. Microsoft has been investing heavily in AI, and since they intend for their customers to adopt their AI tools, they offered their premises and specialists, who supported us before and during the event. It felt like a great match and an excellent collaboration.

What were some of the most impressive or creative solutions that the participants came up with during the hackathon?

It would honestly be hard to single out one, as there were many things that impressed me! At the beginning, I was a little nervous because I thought the tool we were using was more suited for developers and required some prior knowledge of programming and AI. However, all four teams were able to come up with something interesting. Two of the solutions stood out to me in particular…

Can you tell me a little about them?

Certainly! One of the concepts came from the R&D team, led by Marek Polák, who collectively did an excellent job of realising their ideas. Their concept was to create an AI agent capable of reading data from Confluence—the system they use to store information about our product designs and other documentation. The AI agent would sift through this data, compile relevant information, and present it in a single document. This would be incredibly useful for Developers when starting work on a product.

The other solution that really stood out to me came from the Technical Support Team, led by Miroslav Mengr. They proposed a tool that analyses the sentiment of incoming emails and conversations related to support tickets. This tool could track and identify whether a customer was happy with a solution, had a neutral response, or was disappointed. It would also be able to pinpoint the original issue in the ticket as well as the solution provided by technical support. From this, they could build a database logging problems and their corresponding solutions.  This is something that could then be built upon with an additional AI tool, which would help provide solutions for incoming inquiries. They presented a demo of their tool already in the CRM, and it was impressive, I have to say.

I can imagine. Both of the solutions you’ve mentioned sound very interesting.

They are, and they both show a lot of promise for the future, as do the other two solutions that came out of the Hackathon. I can talk a little about those too, if you’d like?

Please do. I’d love to hear about them.

One of the other proposed solutions that came out of the Hackathon was from the Project Management Team in R&D, led by Martin Adámek. This team had the idea of a chatbot with knowledge of the project management methodologies and processes within our company, which would eventually also know about all the existing and past projects we have worked on. For example, you could ask the chatbot for estimations, and it would refer to similar projects we have already worked on, providing guidance based on those projects in terms of time frames and helping you make better estimations.

Another great concept was led by Milan Malina from the Legal Department and focused on analysing legal contracts. In other words, the team proposed creating a tool to help identify whether certain legal documents contain specific clauses. This would be very useful for making decisions about entering contracts, as some of these documents are very long. The tool would essentially allow users to identify clauses easily at the click of a button, saving a significant amount of time.

These are all useful ideas. It was clearly a productive workshop.

It was! I’d also like to mention that all four of the solutions have become projects that we intend to deliver early 2025, which I’m very excited about.

Something to look forward to! They all seem like they’d be highly beneficial projects, and projects that reflect the innovative spirit of the people at ComAp.

Even the fact that we had so many people interested in the event, I think, spoke to this spirit. I don’t think it’s easy for somebody to sign up for an event like this. It’s something that requires someone to push themselves out of their comfort zone, and I think that is a valuable quality and something that is truly important when it comes to innovating and trying new ideas.

If you were to have one key takeaway from the event, what would it be? What stood out to you the most?

It would be that AI is cool. Don’t be afraid of it!

I can’t argue with that! Everyone should use AI.

Exactly! AI is like the new electricity; nobody really knew the impact electricity would have on the world at its conception, and now our lives depend on it. I really see AI in the same light. We don’t fully know yet the scope of what will be possible, so right now, we must find out what works and what doesn’t.

Thank you for the Interview, Tomas.

My pleasure. I would also like to thank everyone involved in the organisation of the Hackathon, specifically Olga Vítková from Microsoft, Václav Chaloupka for his support, Tomáš Bílek and Lukáš Nešpor for their contributions during the event, Jan Vasavský and his team for preparing the development environment, and everyone else who participated in the Hackathon. Without their support, it would not have been possible!