Team GFT wins GCM Grosvenor Innovation Days 2022 Awards

July 22nd, 2022 – Chicago, IL - Foster innovation and improvement opportunities to support daily tasks – those were the main goals of GCM Grosvenor Innovation Days 2022, where our Team GFT won First Place in 2 categories: Best Project and People’s Choice Award for Best Project.

GCM Grosvenor organized the Innovation Days 2022 last month exclusively for GCM and their partners’ employees, where 37 people formed teams from 2 to 7 participants and were challenged to develop innovative software, technology, prototypes, or proofs of concept that would improve real issues faced by the company within the 36 hours of the event. A committee was responsible for judging the submissions and presentations for Best Project, and the participants were also given the chance to vote for the People’s Choice Award for Best Project and Best Team Name.

Inspired by GFT’s core values, Fabio Dario and Luis Trochmann teamed up to represent GFT US in the event.

They understood that technology is continuously advancing in a fast-paced environment, allowing not only companies and developers, but also a range of other professionals, to be more efficient in their daily routines. Their project aimed to automate certain manual process required to create new source code repositories, freeing valuable time for several GCM Grosvenor teams.

The automated process for repository management created by the team included the ability to create and rename repositories, better manage teams and users, integrate with AAD, and more.

Team GFT’s presentation had a positive impact not only on the committee but also on the other participants, leading them to win 2 awards: Best Project and People’s Choice Award for Best Project. The solution was fully coded within 24 hours and, less than 3 business days later, is already implemented and being used by GCM Grosvenor.

The technical summary of the project submitted by Fabio and Luis at the Innovation Days 2022:

Our goal was to automate as much of the creation and renaming of GitHub repositories as we could using Microsoft PowerApps as the UI and Microsoft Power Automate (formerly Flow) as the integration and approval layer, making HTTP calls to GitHub API and Azure DevOps API. We set out to manage GitHub Teams by syncing them with our Azure AD, and managing access via Access Packages was also improved.

It wasn’t the first time our Team GFT has won a GCM Grosvenor Award – in 2021 we won 2nd place in the GCM Grosvenor Inaugural Hackathon with the “Process automation to accelerate turnaround time for marketing requests” using Microsoft PowerApps and Microsoft Power Automate. This hackathon project was a system that automated the workflow associated with business users making requests for marketing presentations, including a fully functioning workflow with several layers of approvals and integration with SharePoint and Salesforce. The project significantly improved team efficiency and had the potential to save hours of work per day.

GFT continues to support the professional development of our talent and encourages them to participate in different projects and challenges like the GCM Innovation Days. The outcome confirms that GFT is always looking to improve on currently existing technology for the better. Congratulations to the participants and winners.