Quality Mark for HSE: GSB Students Win First Place in the National Hackathon of Roskachestvo
Ekaterina Tyutyugina, Victoria Yakovenko, Dmitry Rudenko and Sofya Sukhanova, second-year students of the ‘Business Administration’ programme at HSE Graduate school of Business, developed programmes to promote the national quality monitoring system and even created a working prototype of its updated software application. The students told the portal's news service about their experience of solving business cases, their friendship and the influence of HSE.
To come up with promotion programmes that would help the Russian Quality Mark to become recognizable and increase customers' confidence in its verification system - this was the challenging task the organizers set for the participants of the hackathon. Therefore, immediately after registering for the contest, the HSE students set to work. First of all, they analysed the consumer experience of young people in relation to Roskachestvo.
"We had a pool of questions to check young people’s attitude towards quality marks" explains Sofia Sukhanova. – Do they take into account quality marks? If so, which ones and why? What is important for them when they choose a product? Do they know about Roskachestvo? If yes, do they understand what it does? How much do they trust it? There were around 30 such questions. By analyzing the answers, we realised in which direction we needed to develop our marketing strategy and which brand attributes we should focus on.
Based on the data from the analysis, the students presented up to 15 initiatives at the selection stage. Then, having identified the key ones, the students began to refine them. "We made prototypes of advertising materials and the updated website, the visuals for the company's social media, and also wrote examples of qualitatively new posts that could increase subscriber engagement," Dmitry Rudenko lists. - In addition, we had something that distinguished us from other teams - a fully working prototype of the updated app. Now it has become a superapp (a superapp is an application that distinguishes itself by having an entire ecosystem with several functions combined, ed.)
Our prototype aims to revolutionise the user experience in retail and make shopping even easier and faster. And it has simple but important features that make people's daily lives easier
A high-quality case helped the students reach the final of the hackathon, along with nine other teams. At this stage, the HSE team was preliminarily only in third place. "For us, this meant that we had to give 200% in the defence of our solution, so we were preparing for the final all night long without sleep," recalls Viktoria Yakovenko. - Of course, we felt tired after a month of hard work, but when we performed even better than we did during numerous rehearsals, we realised that it was all worth it, because we really managed to interest and amaze the jury". At the same time, according to Victoria, the night before the defense, the students decided to completely redesign the presentation to make it more understandable. The efforts were justified: the jury awarded the team from HSE first place.
Students point out that it was the HSE system of education that facilitated effective performance at the national hackathon.
"It taught us a lot: how to work properly in a team, how to organise work efficiently under deadlines, how to be charismatic in public presentations and at the same time provide a solution in a clear and short manner, so that no one is left with questions," says Sofia. - After our presentation, one of the jury members said that the influence of Higher School of Economics could be felt in our approach. In the students' opinion, the 'Economics Statistics' discipline, the Design Thinking project workshop, and marketing lectures were particularly useful in solving the hackathon case.
And, of course, we are very grateful to Olga Oyner, the marketing professor. Without her, we would never have known that the hackathon existed.
The solutions invented by HSE students will now be considered in more detail. The students are confident that some of the initiatives will be implemented by Roskachestvo together with their authors. However, the second-year students are not going to stop there.
"The first time that we had taken part in an event of this format we reached the final of the Supply Chain Cup, where we had to develop a concept for a single digital SCM system for freight rail operations with a launch date of 2025 and create a CRM system. We also won the Cup Moscow in the English section, taking third place, solving cases from companies such as MSD, Ferrero and AB inBev Efes," says Ekaterina Tyutyugina about her previous successes.
The girl admits that the team works well together because the core team - Katya, Dima and Vika - have been friends since the start of their studies at HSE: "We met a couple of days before the first year, and we have been best friends ever since. Most people say you shouldn't start a business with friends, participate in case championships and similar competitions, but we are direct proof that anything is possible. We really enjoy working in our dream-team. In the competition from Roskachestvo we included another participant, Sonya, who joined our team very successfully and was very enthusiastic in solving all the tasks. We all ended up in the same quadra".
Roskachestvo is the national quality monitoring system. It conducts independent research on goods and services on the domestic market and awards the best Russian products with the Quality Mark. The system aims to educate consumers about quality and services and to promote Russian manufacturers, introduce the best quality management systems in organisations and develop institutions for improving the quality of goods and services in Russia.