Project status 26.5.2014

Our project has now come to an end. The project report has been completed and the final solution is ready. During last weeks, we have spent significant amount of working hours to summarize our data and make our project reports. Last week we also took part in final pitch event and it went (at least in our opinion) very well.

The whole project has gone well and we have all gained valuable experience. Demola Spring 2014 has been  very fun time, and we want to thank everyone involved, especially our project partner, our facilitators and our teachers.

Project working hours total: 575

Demola Mid-Pitch

Our vision in the Mid-Pitch was simple - keep it simple. And we succeeded thanks to design and pitching by Evgeni! Here is the link to the video of the Mid-Pitch.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/li30xi7r6mf2gmt/20140408_165148.mp4

- Esa

Week 16

This week (16) we finalized our Service Blueprint , which describes process of acquiring insurance with assumption that there would be a company that provides consulting and insurance services for Russian-speaking customers on their own language. Service Blueprint is useful tool for describing different layers of service: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Service_blueprint

We also had Business Potential Evaluation -meeting with Protomo's facilitator. We got good feedback on our projects business potential, which was evaluated using these five criteria's: market need, market size, readiness to sales, credibility and passion.

Working hours:  ~ 320

Week 15 update

 The project has been going strong and a lots of things has happened. In the week 15 we had the Mid-Pitch, which we will upload the video of later on and we also did some designing for the final pitch in May. The survey has collected almost 100 answers and we have been able to recognize already a few patterns from the results. Here are some sketches from our final pitch planning event. All the designs are drew by Evgeni.

Working hours from the week 15: 50h
Total working hours: 308,5

- Esa

Some mystery shopping and visit at the Tampere's Russian Club

First things first, since the last weeks publication, the survey has gathered a surprisingly good amount of responses. The project has progressed quite well, too. So here is what our team did during the week 12!

 Let’s start with Monday. First, we had a quick meeting at the New Factory and then off we went to do some mystery shopping! We did the mystery shopping in pairs. Evgeni and Katja approached the insurance companies as “the potential customers”. The other pair, Esa and me, posed questions on behalf of our ”Russian-speaking friend”. All in all, the results from the mystery shopping emphasized the fact that the Russians residing in Finland have certain needs which the Finnish insurance companies are currently unable to answer.

On Wednesday the whole team visited the doors open day at Tampere Russian Club’s (Tampereen venäläinen klubi ry). The Club’s facilities and activities were presented to us and we also discussed about our project over some delicious pancakes and coffee! After the visit we had a meeting that focused on the planning and brainstorming of our project’s actual solutions, services and products. During the next week we will have meetings that focus more on this actual solution making.

Total working hours: 28.5h

 Saara

Progress on week 11

The project has progressed quite well. Since last blog post, we have had Demola Jams and No-silde pitching. In Demola Jams we had different exercise-type activities, that helped us to understand how to improve our working-process.

Last few weeks we have been focusing mainly on our survey and this week we have finally published it. We will promote it using different channels and we hope to have enough respondents in the next couple of weeks.

While waiting for survey results, we will approach various organizations, which may have information about Russians in Finland, and their needs. We want to get any information that would be interesting, and useful for our research.

During next week we will visit Pirkanmaa Interpretation Centre, which is responsible for providing counseling for immigrants living in Tampere area.  We will also visit Tampere's Russian Club (Tampereen venäläinen klubi ry), where we can meet russian people and interview them. In addition, we'll do some "mystery shopping". The idea is to go to insurance companies and ask all kind of questions as a "real potential customer". We hope to see how insurance companies are prepared to situations, where customer doesn't speak finnish.

Planning our questionnaire..

today morning...

Our first steps

A brief report about the first three weeks of our project!

Week 6: total 10 working hours
4 February we had the initial meeting with the Demola community. An inspiring event where all the 120 students working  in spring projects have met at first time their teammates and project facilitators. It was nice to meet some friends there,  involved in other projects :) Surprisingly, so many people were not at first time in Demola, so they already had this experience before and applied again. The atmosphere was informal and relaxing.

Week 7: total 17 working hours
We had two interesting meetings, which clarified the goals and objectives of the project. Our project partner Olli-Pekka Ruuskanen, Professor of Insurance Science at the University of Tampere, has provided a comprehensive presentation  of needs and problems which our project is supposed to solve. Then, our project facilitator Jere Wessman has provided a training about customer understanding. This week we also figured out the ways of communication within the team, and shared the information with all involved to the project.

Week 8: total 25 working hours
In the beginning of week, Professor Olli-Pekka has given a lecture about the basics of insurance science: definitely useful knowledge not only for the project needs, but also for personal competence and everyday situations. Later, Jere has given a workshop about value creation in the project: kind of fun but challenging training, where we had to present our project needs and perceived outcomes to other project teams.This week we also worked at our Playbook, the detailed plan of project work as it is seen now.

Hello, World!

Hello, World!

By this entry we start blogging about our fascinating project: Insurance for Russians in Finland!
We are the team of four awesome students: Katja, Saara, Evgeni and Esa, living in Tampere, Finland.  Our project is facilitated by Demola Tampere in a partnership with the University of Tampere, and is going on from February to May 2014.

More information will be coming soon, stay tuned :)

-Katja