No one was more surprised by this year's winning entry in PSCU's KnockOut competition than the champions themselves.
"This was our first time participating at KnockOut, so we didn't expect to make it to the end, especially with the caliber of teams around us and the ideas they were generating," said Heather DeValcourt, marketing specialist at the University of Louisiana Federal Credit Union. She and four others comprised Team Cajun Power and won the event by designing an online loan-decisioning and funding app.
"Our participants were selected by managers representing each credit union department: operations, lending, accounting and marketing," said DeValcourt. Her teammates included fellow employees Kim Congdon, Carmen Guilbeaux and Donna Robin. PSCU Account Executive Gary Austin rounded out the winning team.
KnockOut, originally inspired by hackathons, was designed to solve problems in the payments industry. This year, 18 teams, comprised of approximately 200 people in two locations, sparred and brainstormed for 24 hours.
At the end of long sleepless day, five semi-finalists were announced: Team BECU, Team Pineapple (representing PSCU), Team Boomshakalaka! (representing Financial Center First Credit Union), Team Cajun and the Honolulu-based Team Rock'em Sock'em (representing PSCU and Hawaii State Federal Credit Union). Each team was required to produce a short presentation video that was uploaded to the KnockOut website for voting.
"These finalists had one week to tweak their videos as a result of any questions from the judges. Then there [was] a TKO round, which is an internal panel of judges from PSCU," said PSCU Strategic Innovation Program Manager Mindy Weaver. The open voting began after that, with three finalists' videos uploaded to the web where PSCU employees and other participants can vote. On Sept. 30 – roughly two weeks after the event – the winners were notified.
"Team Cajun Power's solution was able to resonate with the judges and the credit union industry," said Weaver.
"The winning team hit the right chord in that the solution was big enough to have a strategic play that PSCU could leverage," said Tommy Yi , KnockOut judge and director of user experience for the Austin Texas-based Projekt202. "It wasn't so 'blue skies' that it couldn't be implementable in the next six months to a year."
Yi, who served as a judge for the second consecutive year, was joined on the panel by representatives from PSCU, First Data, CFE Federal Credit Union, Apple, Oceanit and the Hawaii CU League.
Team Pineapple and Team BECU won second and third place, respectively. Weaver noted Team Pineapple's API platform – which can be integrated with PSCU solutions – caught the judges' attention, as did Team BECU's single payments hub aimed at simplifying payment processes.
"I walked around to the different teams to get a sense of what they were doing, but I didn't want color the experience," said Yi. "I wanted to understand not how their solution was going to benefit their local credit union, but the industry as well."
Going To Market
Last year, Team Mo ProActive's Sope Box earned the KnockOut title with its self-serve collections solution. Now known as Self-Serve Delinquency Resolution, Weaver said this application is an active PSCU project that is currently going through an enterprise process.
Team Cajun Power's app, she noted, is on the same trajectory, although the goal is to shorten the time to market.
"The challenge is that the PSCU road map for the next year has already been decided by the time KnockOut comes around," said Weaver. "So we have a timing challenge due to that, but we are definitely striving to be better at that."
Each Team Cajun Power member received a $1,500 travel voucher for their "dream vacation," while members of Team Pineapple each received an iPad Pro and Team BECU members received $250 Visa gift cards.
"We are all still looking at our travel vouchers in disbelief," said DeValcourt. "I don't know where I'm going yet, but it will probably be somewhere warm and relaxing."
