Innovation often springs from internal pain points; tackling problems that spark clever and practical solutions. That spirit was front and centre when Ashton Flowerday (Software Developer at EPI-USE Labs), Jhani Coetzee (SAP BTP Lead), Vivian Venter and Luke Greyling (both Software Developers) entered the AFSUG Hackathon using SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP) and the new generative AI capabilities built into SAP’s AI Core and Launchpad. The goal of the hackathon was to experiment with SAP’s latest AI functionality, particularly the ability to query multiple Large Language Models (LLMs) in-house through SAP BTP.
Innovation often springs from internal pain points; tackling problems that spark clever and practical solutions. That spirit was front and centre when Ashton Flowerday (Software Developer at EPI-USE Labs), Jhani Coetzee (SAP BTP Lead), Vivian Venter and Luke Greyling (both Software Developers) entered the AFSUG Hackathon using SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP) and the new generative AI capabilities built into SAP’s AI Core and Launchpad.
“The whole org structure… in two minutes”
The goal of the hackathon was to experiment with SAP’s latest AI functionality, particularly the ability to query multiple Large Language Models (LLMs) in-house through SAP BTP. Ashton and the hackathon team built a tool to auto-generate organisation structures in SuccessFactors; a time-consuming task usually requiring manual effort.
“It used to take me two days to make an org unit, so we decided to use generative AI to try and speed up the process.”
The solution, Ximulacra, was a chat-like, prompt-driven tool that could generate departments, people, jobs, and reporting lines in just a couple of minutes.
“You can say, ‘I want a company called XYZ that is in car manufacturing and it has three departments: HR, Finance and Sales.’ It generates the people, jobs, connects them to managers – everything. This used to take us two days. Now, it takes us two minutes.”
The name Ximulacra is a playful nod to the Simulacrum spell from Dungeons & Dragons, which creates an illusory, somewhat living duplicate of a person. This is fitting, since the tool quickly spins up realistic organisational structures out of thin air. The name also starts with an ‘X’ as the custom development team at EPI-USE Labs (‘Team X’) has a tradition that every hackathon entry needs to start with the letter “X”.
A pivot under pressure
The eight-week hackathon timeline came with its share of curveballs.
“We were given eight weeks, but I only had five because we pivoted after three weeks. The hackathon also ran over the Easter holidays so I’d taken time off, which didn’t help. As for the pivot, the original idea, using AI to generate currency data, proved too limited and too technically complex for how limited it was. It just wasn’t worth it. ”
What followed was a pressure-cooker sprint…
“We had our presentation on Monday. I genuinely thought I knew SuccessFactors, but I had to make 15 different objects per person instead of the five I originally thought. It was a big learning curve!”
It’s not always pretty - but it’s powerful
A hackathon isn’t about creating a polished final product, it’s about exploring new and interesting ways to tackle problems.
“Hackathons… they might not be fun, but they’re a really great place to learn. You don’t have a client you’re trying to impress. If it fails, it’s fine. It’s a good place to experiment.”
That experimentation also revealed the essence of teamwork at EPI-USE Labs.
“Sunday night, 7pm, my code just wasn’t working. I messaged Vivian, my mentor, asking, ‘How much trouble am I in if this doesn’t work?’ And she just said, ‘Don’t worry about it. We’ll figure it out tomorrow.’ That really gave me the energy to keep going.”
Steamed milk and scrabble
Amidst the chaos, Ashton opted for a surprising caffeine strategy:
“I was actually on a coffee detox, so I just drank litres of steamed milk and pretended it was coffee! Between debugging sessions, I also took breaks to play Scrabble with my team – small moments that helped maintain sanity and perspective.”
Takeaways
A few hard-earned lessons:
- Plan just a little more. “Start with some research before diving into coding.”
- Don’t go it alone. “Next time, I’d rather tackle it with someone else – just to have another brain there.”
- Embrace trial and error. “Hackathons are about learning, trying new things, and failing fast.”
Even if what you create doesn’t work, the pressure makes you work in a different way. And that’s exactly what makes hackathons so valuable: for learning, for growth, and for building solutions that just might reshape the way we work.
Amy Botha
With a background in digital marketing and communications, Amy is adept in market analysis and trend identification, and is enthusiastic about implementing lead generation strategies and marketing campaigns. New to the SAP industry, she is currently the Regional Marketer for the MEA region.
