Unlocking innovation: Lessons from Emixa’s Advanced Analytics Hackathon

Consultancy.eu, a platform for the consulting industry, reports on Emixa's Advanced Analytics Hackathon. How does Emixa manage to create magic, year after year? And what happens after the intense 48 hours of the hackathon? Read the story:

Unlocking innovation: Lessons from Emixa’s Advanced Analytics Hackathon

One way companies can test and kickstart digital innovation is by providing the right environment for experimentation. Hackathons can be an inspiring and effective way to get the ball rolling. This has been the experience of Emixa, which has been organising hackathons for its clients for years.

Hackathons are intensive, time-bound events where teams collaborate to come up with innovative software or digital solutions. They provide a unique environment where creative new concepts can come to life by bringing people with diverse skills together to work on tangible solutions.

48 hours for solutions

IT- and management consultancy Emixa uses its expertise in advanced analytics to organise an annual hackathon. In 48 hours, teams of data scientists, developers, technology engineers and consultants create six solutions for specific client challenges. The event blends hard work with innovation and fun.

“The event delivers a working Minimum Viable Product (MVP) to our clients,” says Joris Schalks, Data & Analytics consultant at Emixa. “This MVP demonstrates real potential for further development and solves complex business challenges. Concepts often use machine learning models trained on the client company’s actual data.”

Kickstarting innovation

After organising its annual hackathon for several years, Emixa has experienced that hackathons proved a very effective way for clients to kickstart their innovation. Schalks: “Our hackathons have often served as the birthplace of business-savvy innovations with practical applications that save both time and money.” In some cases, the teams went on to expand an MVP into a fully functional solution.

Powerful innovation tool

In all cases, the hackathon helps clients to see the potential of a new idea, concept, or technology. As one client put it: “It opened our eyes on what exactly is possible in such a short period of time.”

Some clients have been so inspired that they asked Emixa to organise a dedicated hackathon exclusively for their company, with close involvement from their data and IT teams. Schalks: “It shows just what powerful innovation tool hackathons are.”

A winning Generative AI solution

During this year’s Advanced Analytics Hackathon, which took place in May, the teams came up with six solutions for six different clients. The winning tool was a Generative AI assistant for construction & development company J.P. van Eesteren.

Tjerk van der Maten, who led the winning team, said: “The assistant actually uses multiple Gen AI-bots to find detailed information for project managers across thousands of project documents. Potentially saving hours and hours of time.”

Building on its legacy, Emixa will host the next edition of its Advanced Analytics Hackathon in 2026.

Get in touch

If you want to be part of next year's edition, get in touch with the Data & Analyics team to discuss your use case. Or check out our tailor-made Data Science & AI services here.