On 17 July 2026, teams from across Openprovider set their usual work aside for one full day and one shared goal. The Openprovider hackathon brought people together from sales, support, account management, and our technical teams to work online from morning to late afternoon, in small, cross-functional groups of six to seven.
The brief was deceptively simple. Give everyone who works with customers a single, shared view of every account. Different teams see customers from different angles, and those angles do not always line up.
What follows is the story of how 6 teams and 30 colleagues spent a day trying to close that gap, and what it says about where Openprovider is heading.
Why we ran an internal hackathon at penprovider
A hackathon is a focused, time-bound event where teams come together to experiment and build something around a shared goal. For us, the point was never the finished product alone. It was the process: how we communicate, make decisions quickly, and support each other when the clock is running.
The objective was to step outside our day-to-day work and collaborate across teams, functions, and perspectives. We wanted to sharpen how we move from idea to execution, strengthen ownership and project management, and try new ways of working as a group. And we set out to solve a genuine business problem rather than a made-up exercise, so the learning would carry straight back into how we run the company.
The problem we asked teams to solve
Today, different teams see customer information from different angles, and those angles do not always meet. Support does not always know that an account is commercially important. Account management does not always catch when a dependable-looking customer is starting to become a risk. That fragmentation is exactly what we asked teams to fix.
Each team designed and built the first working version of a Customer Performance Dashboard: a single, shared view of every customer for sales, support, and account managers. The design brief called for two separate measures that are never blended, a risk and trust score and a commercial expansion score, so a customer could look secure and full of potential at the same time. It is the kind of operational clarity that sits behind everything we do for our Members, who trust us to help them run infrastructure for their own customers.
Inside the day, from idea to working prototype
The day ran online, split into stages with a coach on hand at each one. Teams did not need every answer at the start. The morning opened with a kick-off, then groups shaped their overall approach. By midday that approach became a working plan, and the afternoon was pure build time. It closed with live presentations to a jury.
You did not need to be technical to take part. Every team mixed commercial, support, and technical perspectives on purpose, because the problem itself lives across all three. That cross-functional setup is the same instinct that runs through our platform: bringing domains, DNS, SSL, and email into one place instead of leaving them scattered across teams and tools.
What each team had to deliver
The finish line was concrete. Every team built a working dashboard prototype that ran on sample data, not a slide deck. Alongside it came a scoring model with both pillars kept separate, a short product requirements document, a project plan setting out who did what, and a clear explanation of how each score was calculated and weighted.
The live demo tied it all together. Teams walked the jury through ten sample accounts and, for each one, named the tier, the score, and the action they would recommend. That last part mattered most. A dashboard only earns its place when someone can look at it and know what to do next.
How the work was judged
Judges rewarded usefulness over complexity. A clear, working dashboard that helps a support or account manager decide beats a sophisticated model nobody can explain.
- Business value carried the most weight at 30 percent,
- followed by scoring methodology at 25 percent,
- technical quality at 20 percent,
- and design and creativity making up the rest.
Collaboration served as the tie-breaker: who stayed on time, who contributed, and whether roles were clearly defined.
The winning ideas were not treated as a one-day novelty. The strongest work is reviewed for our product roadmap, which means a prototype built in a single afternoon could genuinely shape a future internal tool.
Highlights and prizes
By the end of the day, six teams presented live to the jury, and the room saw a demo of the products and presentations.
Team 6: Anuj J, Avishka, Thejas, Hardik, Shailesh, Mallieswari, and Radhika took first place, followed by Team 2: Prashanth, Piyumi, Roman, Christian, Sheldon, and Hani and Team 4: Mayur, Muaz, Kasun, Kapil, Jawad, Sonam, and Deepa.
Special recognition went to:
- Team 1: Hiren, Anuj K, Uditha, Asif, Ajfer, Natalia, and Sidantha for best UX and most creative approach, and every participant earned a certificate for taking part.
- The prizes matched the effort: 1st price: 1000 EUR, 2nd prize: 500 EUR, 3rd prize: 250 EUR + virtual certificates for everyone.
- Beyond the awards, the real return was a set of working prototypes and, just as valuable, a clearer sense of how we collaborate when the usual boundaries drop away.
What it says about where Openprovider is heading
The dashboard challenge was not chosen at random. Knowing which customers are thriving, which need attention, and which are heading toward trouble is the same discipline we bring to managing domains, renewals, and security at scale. Seeing the whole picture in one place is what turns a scattered set of services into dependable domain infrastructure.
That is the direction we have been moving in for more than 20 years: away from treating domains as a cheap, one-off transaction, and toward being the trusted infrastructure layer our partners build their businesses on. Transparent, predictable economics and centralized control are what let our Members protect their margins and keep their own customers for the long term.
A hackathon is one day. The habit it builds, looking at customers as long-term relationships to understand and support rather than accounts to process, is what carries forward. If that is the kind of partner you want managing your domain infrastructure, you can see what an Openprovider Membership includes or start with a free account.
