Microsoft Switzerland Technology Innovation Award 2011 Winners Announced

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Microsoft Switzerland Technology Innovation Award 2011 winners were announced this morning at TechDays 11 Basel. This was the first time awarding was done under the new Microsoft Switzerland Award concept launched in early February 2011.

Competition for the first Microsoft Switzerland Technology Innovation Awards was really tough. Numerous projects submitted for evaluation were impressive in terms of quality, design and complexity of the solutions. Some of the projects were successful result of thousands of man-hours and let the jury mesmerized by the breadth of features and functionality. Jury had a really challenging role selecting the winners, putting finally heavy focus on “Innovation”. The three award winning solutions implement innovation at its highest degree, from a technology, business, design and feature point of view.

3 Winners of the Microsoft Switzerland Technology Innovation Award 2011

Project: TrueSense

Contractor: BizTelligence GmbH

Client: Sunrise Communications AG

How does a retailer know why customers are not buying? Currently he can only speculate: Isn`t the customer finding the products? Are there too little (motivated) sales personnel at the store? Is the layout of the store inappropriate? With TrueSense retailers can measure and manage customers within the existing sales area to both increase revenues and decrease costs. TrueSense revolutionizes sales-management by converting the web-analysis management principles to real world. For the first time both the sales personnel and management know intuitively and in real-time impact of the layout- and personnel arrangements, as well as merchandise- and service levels to the customer behavior. The behavioral data is collected via video-analysis, integrated to Microsoft Azure Cloud, disintegrated according to business categories, and streamed live as a Silverlight application into the browser clients. TrueSense visualizes the sales potential (frequency of customers, customer flows) and attention points (stopping times) in an intuitive manner directly on the floor plan of the store. Each employee can therefore improve customer behavior within his own influence area. TrueSence creates the foundation of decentralized, self-learning organization in retail.

 

Project: LabUI – the Roche Diagnostics User Interface Framework

Contractor: Roche Diagnostics AG

Customer: Roche Diagnostics AG

Roche Diagnostics has been developing LabUI as its user interface platform for all future systems. It implements a common, declarative user interface on a wide range of devices, whether touchscreen or keyboard/mouse operated. Due to its flexible architecture, the platform permits the reuse of workflows and complex components that can be rendered on multiple platforms such as Silverlight, HTML 5, and WPF. A high level of consistency can be achieved by basing all implementations on well-defined interaction design patterns. The framework also supports the creation of interactive prototypes, which are then validated during usability evaluations, thus continuously improving the platform and assuring the highest level of efficiency, usability, and safety.

 

Project: ScrumTable

Contractor: Hochschule für Technik Rapperswil

Customer: bbv Software Services AG

Scrum is a popular project management practice. For Scrum projects it can be a challenge to keep paper notes on the task board synchronized with electronic information in project management tools. ScrumTable addresses this problem. It enables paper-like, multi-person interaction through Microsoft Surface with information in Microsoft Team Foundation Server 2010. ScrumTable was developed at HSR, Hochschule für Technik Rapperswil, by Michael Gfeller, Silvan Gehrig, Patrick Boos and Mischa Trecco lead by Prof. Dr. M. Stolze. Significant input was provided by the BBV Software Services AG team lead by Alan Ettlin. ScrumTable leverages the MS Surface Toolkit for Windows Touch to make the system available not only on MS Surface, but also across a wide range of Windows 7 touchscreens. The system is available as part of an open beta program at: https://ifs.hsr.ch/ScrumTable.

 

 

From left: Stefano Mallè, Microsoft Schweiz, Reto Wettstein, BizTelligence GmbH, Roland Krummenacher, HSR Alumni, Bernhard von Allmen und Jens Lippmann, Roche Diagnostics AG, Silvan Gehrig und Mischa Trecco, HSR, Hochschule für Technik Rapperswil, Christof Zogg, Microsoft Schweiz

 

Thank you for all the participants and warm congratulations for all the winner,

Sanna Kuusisto, Developer Audience Marketing Team Lead, Microsoft Switzerland