We challenge ourselves, learn, and grow together: We are “bolders”!
On September 1, be bolder held its first bolder summit with the assistance of its employees from different parts of Colombia. The event was also attended by Wingo‘s Commercial, Planning, and IT VP as a representative of the be bolder customers. The bolder Summit 2023 became an invaluable space for the generation of ideas and the collective creation of knowledge with which we celebrate be bolder‘s 17th anniversary.
Why hold the bolder Summit 2023?
At be bolder, people are the heart of what we do. That is why we wanted to invite our mates who work in different parts of the country to Medellín to celebrate that we are together, learn from the experiences and knowledge of our people, and grow hand in hand with our colleagues and clients. Therefore, the event’s slogan is We are bold: We challenge ourselves, learn, and grow together.
Be a “bolder”
Andrés Cardona, CEO of be bolder, began the day with a talk dedicated to be bolder‘s corporate values, explaining what it means to be “bolder” and presenting the horizon he envisions for the company. The following quotes are a sample of the main topics covered in this first part of the bolder Summit 2023:
“Our talent is the heart of what we do.”
- “Leading is choosing who you go with on the road.”
- “We do not leave someone abandoned to his fate.”
- “It’s better to try to be good at something than average at everything.”
- “We are going to work well, to work better and better; no more, better.”
- “We must always think about how to get out of our comfort zone.”
- “A client should work with us because we will always be there for him.”
Today and tomorrow of our organization
César Ahmedth, be bolder’s CSO, in the first part of his speech, presented the organization’s work fronts and the state of execution of the Development Plan. Then, he took stock of the management carried out in the last three years; among others, the following are the most representative indicators of this last year:
- Our sales grew 80% from January to June, compared to the same period of the previous year.
- Our investment in talent grew 152% from January to June, compared to the same period last year.
- We have not stopped growing in the last five years.
- Our turnover rate is only 8%, well below the 25% average for IT companies in Colombia.
- We currently have 17 active cells.
- From July 2022 to July 2023, we have carried out 23 projects.
- In May, June, and July 2023, we worked 425.5 points per month on average.
- Our compliance rate in May, June, and July 2023 was an average of 90.1%.
- We reduced the time for receiving and reviewing tickets at our service desk from 15 days to less than 1 hour.
- We reduced ticket management and closing time at our service desk from 4 hours to 1 hour.
- In the last year, we reduced problematic cases in operation from 50 to 8 in our service desk.
- We increased our productivity from 33% to 98% at our service desk.
- From February to August 2023, we grew 73.5% of our followers on LinkedIn.
In the second part of his talk, our CSO presented technological trends in the aviation, hotel, and distribution sectors, for which he relied on indicators from the travel industry. The following are some of the issues and scenarios raised:
- Digital immune system.
- Applied observability.
- Platform engineering.
- Superapps.
- Metaverse.
Our clients speak
One of the most anticipated moments was the intervention of Jorge Jiménez León, Commercial, Planning, and IT VP of Wingo, who joined us to celebrate be bolder‘s 17 years. Jiménez spoke to us about Wingo‘s business model, the airline’s strategic actions, and the technological future of the sector.
At this moment, Wingo is the only low-cost airline in Colombia. It has 25 international routes, 11 routes in Colombia, 23 destinations, and reaches 11 countries in Latin America. In 2022, the airline transported 2.3 million passengers and is expected to transport 3 million passengers by the end of 2023.
Knowing first-hand Wingo‘s strategic and technological horizon has become an invaluable opportunity to remain in tune with it. Thus, we will direct our efforts in the right direction to continue developing solutions that respond to changing market demands and contribute to the airline’s sustainable commercial success.
Jiménez praised all the digital assets developed by be bolder for Wingo since 2016: IBE, MMB, Check-In, APP, and Change of Flight. Regarding the latter, he said it has been very successful and has contributed to reducing the airline’s operating costs. Change of Flight is a be bolder product available for other airlines. If you are interested in this solution, check out the following video:
The five chosen
At be bolder, we are proud to have developed 23 projects last year. Our team registered 19 to present at the event, and of the latter, we chose 5. The choice was not easy because they all had merit to be on stage, but well, after a long deliberation, these were the ones chosen to be shown at the bolder Summit 2023:
1. Creating new services
This presentation by César Ahmedt and Laura Posada revolved around the design of services based on the resolution of specific needs that allowed various causes to be identified. In this way, after the diagnosis process, be bolder offered the following services:
- Initial support support: Review of backlog tickets and new error tickets to avoid escalation.
- Review new features: Evaluation of alternative solutions to avoid requesting new features.
- Personal training: Internal and third-party personnel training in the business or core systems.
- Technological advice to third parties: Support in the review with third parties for processes with the client and connection to systems.
- Creation of automation solutions: Generation of low code automation solutions for existing problems.
At the end of the consultancy, the client obtained savings of approximately $200,000, a reduction in connection time from 3.5 months to 1 month, and an 80% decrease in ticket backlogs.
Among the learnings obtained, the following can be highlighted:
- Understand that our clients have different needs and that, in that sense, we must be open to managing them in the most efficient way possible.
- Knowledge of the business and approach to core service providers (PSS, DCS, Retail, IBE, etc.) gives us a competitive advantage in reaching customers.
- The best solutions come from being able to coexist with the solutions currently implemented. That is, it does not always have to be built from scratch.
2. Service desk
This project, presented by Jorge Avella and Lina Jiménez, is based on the need to develop a mechanism that allows objective control of incidents that arise for the user. To achieve this, it was necessary:
- Define management indicators to measure performance.
- Create monitoring tools to identify problematic events.
- Keep records of events to obtain statistics.
As a result of the above, a knowledge base was created for management and closure of incidents on time. This made it possible to identify production impacts promptly, measure team productivity, and guarantee a healthy backlog.
The solution proposed by be bolder consisted of the definition and execution of the following phases:
- Planning and organization: Strategy and tactics.
- Implementation: Configuring work queues.
- Delivery and support: Operation and training.
- Monitoring and continuous improvement: Evaluation regularly.
Some of the learnings obtained as a result of the project are:
- The ITSM tool should be leveraged to manage and measure the service desk.
- Monitoring tools should be configured to identify production errors in real-time.
- Clear communication protocols and concise notifications should be designed for all customer-facing events.
be bolder’s service desk continues to deliver good results. These are some of the management indicators from the last year:
3. API of emission
Before developing our solution, presented by Wimar Ospina, Luis Saldarriaga, and Genny Gómez, our client’s only channels to sell their products and services were their own.
In this way, the application was born from our client’s need to sell their products and services through third-party platforms, for which we had to meet the following goals:
- Increase sales through new channels.
- Connect our client’s offers through third parties.
- Enable the third-party platform to sell without using the airline site.
- Allow third parties to self-manage their sales.
In this sense, to respond to the stated objectives, the following was considered for the development of the solution:
- Security and authentication.
- Scalability and performance.
- Easy third-party integration.
- Operation monitoring.
- Third-party self-management.
- Integration with the existing ecosystem.
At the end of the application implementation process, the following results were achieved:
4. Change of flight
Presented by Erick Bejarano and Luis Saldarriaga, this application was developed as a product that allows the user to change the date and route of their flight easily and quickly.
The solution had to solve the client’s needs, shown in the following image:
The proposed solution consisted of:
- Develop a front far from the back (“gross front”).
- Centralize business logic in the backend.
- Conceive a backend as an orchestrating component.
- Create libraries from scratch without other business logic.
- Store transactional information in the database.
- Standardize the logs.
- Use design patterns (Adapter, Abstract factory).
The following were the results obtained:
- Better success rate in changes of flight.
- Precise calculations and a fairer rate for the traveler.
- Solution of pre-existing errors in the previous product.
- A better user experience.
- A product that is easier for any team to approach.
- Possibility of monitoring possible errors.
- Availability of resources to carry out traceability.
- Improved performance.
5. Slots
Presented by Diana Sepúlveda and Lina Jiménez, Slots was the fifth and final project of the bolder Summit 2023.
A slot is a permit granted to use the necessary airport infrastructure to land or take off from a level 3 airport during a planned operation on a specific date and time. The challenge was to automate the process so that our client could respond promptly to the offer of slots that the authorities granted.
The proposed solution considered the following aspects:
Definition and planning
- Review of the expected process.
- Analysis of the international standard associated with slots.
- Adjustments to the process based on the international standard.
- Validation of the final business process.
- Definition of the critical path.
- Joint construction of stories.
Technology options
- Analysis of the solution and proposed reference architecture.
- Creation of a new library for anonymous user management.
- JPA.
- Excel library.
Construction
- Risk assessment.
- Reconstruction of lower versions.
- Redefinition of the data model.
- Redefinition of the persistence model – stored procedures.
- Redefinition of Excel library.
A comprehensive growth
But this space for feedback and growth would not be complete without a moment to look within ourselves and discover opportunities for improvement that we could solve by linking new forms and methodologies. That's what Blanca Mery Sánchez's talk consisted of, who, as part of the event, gave her talk "Hack your brain."
And so the day ended, an unrepeatable moment to celebrate that we were together again, but this time without the intermediation of screens and microphones, eventual internet failures, and the occasional power outage. It was a space to hug each other again and feel the collective energy of all of us who are part of be bolder.
Laura
27 Oct 2023Excellent summary of a great event! Thanks for eveything