NU Students Top Accenture’s Program the Future Competition
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| Winning app to help SMEs up their game in the digital age |
A team of students from the National University (NU) in Manila emerged as the overall champion and took home the App of the Future prize in Program the Future: The Accenture Technology Campus Challenge.
Accenture awarded top honors to NU’s Wizard Circle – Team Babbage for their Agent Tracer Pro application, which aims to help business owners track their employees on field. Aside from winning Php 150,000 in cash, team members Stephen Vinuya, Jayvee Baluyot, Aerian Mari Tablante and Eugene Dumlao will fly to Singapore to visit the Accenture Internet of Things Center of Excellence. Their school, NU, also received a cash prize of Php 50,000.
Meanwhile, Team Rainslair of iAcademy, with members Meris Soneja and Gian Legaspi, was chosen as the Games Revolution Category Winner. The duo developed Overseer, a multi-faceted mobile game that tackles a company’s operations from balancing daily tasks and overseeing employees to achieving good revenue. The students received a cash prize of Php 150,000, while iAcademy received Php 50,000.
Now on its 3rd year, Program the Future: The Accenture Technology Campus Challenge encourages students to use the power of digital technology to help improve the way people work and live. This year, the competition challenged students to come up with innovative applications that can help small and medium enterprises (SMEs) improve their operations and customer service in the digital age.
Colleges and universities from Metro Manila, Bulacan, Cebu and Iloilo joined the program’s 2016 edition. From a total of 170 entries for the competition’s two categories, only 10 App of the Future and five (5) Games Revolution teams were chosen to advance to the final round.
“Through Program the Future, we want to nurture student innovators, trailblazers and game changers. As in the past, we were impressed not just with the students’ ideas, but also with their team work, passion and creativity,” said Ambe Tierro, Senior Managing Director and Accenture Technology Lead in the Philippines.
Each finalist was mentored by an Accenture executive who helped put the finishing touches on the applications before the students presented and defended them before a panel of expert judges led by Tierro and Prof. Abel Sanchez of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); other judges were key Accenture’s Technology executives -- Digital Lead JP Palpallatoc, Platform Lead Carlo Castro, and Delivery Director Avanade, Stephen Alba.
The competition also gave special awards to Team J3G of the Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Maynila (e-Metropolis game) and Team-dero of the University of the Philippines Visayas (Tindero web app for sari-sari stores) for developing applications that reflect the latest technology trends identified in Accenture’s Technology Vision 2016 report. Bringing home the People’s Choice Awards this year were MaiTeam of the University of San Carlos in Cebu (Garage car wash mini-game) and Team Gideon of the University San Jose-Recoletos (Involve application to help retain employees and boost their performance). All four teams won Php 20,000 each.
Program the Future: The Accenture Technology Campus Challenge focuses on different themes each year. In 2014, students were tasked to develop applications to help the education sector; participants were challenged to help address environment and health and public safety issues in 2015.
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