Bottom line: One of Europe's largest home improvement retailers proved that cross-functional teams, equally blending technical and business expertise, can digitize manual processes into production-ready automated workflows in just two days - when equipped with the right framework and tools.

When Lukas Herwartz walks through OBI's stores across Germany, he sees more than shelves and customers. As a team manager at this €8 billion home improvement retailer operating 650+ stores across Europe, he sees interconnected processes ripe for lean optimization. That's exactly why he organized OBI's third annual hackathon in Cologne - and why 74 employees from tech, business, and retail stores converged for 48 hours of intensive prototyping.

The Enterprise Hackathon Playbook

The secret isn't just bringing people together - it's democratizing process innovation through team composition.

Herwartz has refined OBI's hackathon formula over the past years, creating what amounts to an enterprise innovation playbook. The magic happens in democratizing process innovation through team composition: cross-functional teams that organically blend roughly 50% technical people with 50% process and business experts, with teams self-organizing based on their chosen challenges.
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The perfect setup gives you someone who actually has the problem we want to solve firsthand

Lukas Herwartz, Team Manager at OBI next
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"The perfect setup gives you someone who actually has the problem we want to solve firsthand," explains Herwartz. This year, many employees traveled from stores across Germany - some from as far as 100 kilometers away - to bring real-world pain points to the development process.

But OBI's hackathon goes beyond typical innovation theater. Teams should use real data and production APIs. "One of the criteria we grade projects on is technical feasibility and technical maturity," Herwartz notes. "If a team can prove they're able to function in the real world, that's what we're looking for."

The results speak for themselves. From OBI's first hackathon in 2022, the CEO immediately committed to bringing the winning project to production within 12 months. Last year, four to five projects entered production pipelines, with one going live just two weeks after the event. This year's results exceeded even those high standards. As CIO Tim Engler observed, "The quality of the solutions we saw was on a completely different level than anything we've seen in the years before."
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The quality of the solutions we saw was on a completely different level than anything we've seen in the years before.

‍ Tim Engler, CIO at OBI

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When Cross-Functional Teams Meet Process Automation

While nine teams tackled everything from shelf optimization algorithms to AI shopping assistants, one team's experience particularly illustrated the power of democratized process automation. With just two developers among eight team members, including employees from OBI stores, they demonstrated how no-code tools can enable business domain experts to actively participate in building solutions, not just describing requirements.

The key was democratizing the building process itself. Rather than requiring business domain experts to become programmers, the team used tools that enabled direct participation in creating automated workflows.

As one developer explained: "It's not very easy but it's more fun than the old constellation... because not all people speak the same language and the technical people have more technical focus and the store employees have more the customer experience and not so technical view of the topic."
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The Low-Code Advantage in Lean Innovation

Cross-functional teams with limited technical resources face a classic enterprise challenge: how do you digitize complex processes into functional automation that could realistically go to production?

This is where Next Matter, one of the hackathon's technology sponsors, became valuable for several teams. Rather than requiring extensive IT resources and traditional development, the platform enabled lean process transformation by allowing business users to actively participate in building solutions.

"It was much more easy to create this workflow and faster in the development process," explains one team member who had never used workflow orchestration and automation tools before.

But the real breakthrough was collaborative. The visual workflow builder became a shared language between technical and business team members. "The visual path helps a lot because all people could understand" notes the same developer. "For store employees, it's better when they see something visual and not coded."

The visual path helps a lot because all people could understand. For store employees, it's better when they see something visual and not coded.

This bridged the communication gap that typically slows cross-functional projects. Business users could see exactly how processes would flow, while technical team members could focus on integrations and system connections rather than translating requirements.

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From Prototype to Production Reality

What separates OBI's hackathons from typical innovation events is how their framework and tools create prototypes closer to production reality. "If we build a new process and we build it with Next Matter, then the opportunity for it to be production ready at some point in time is quite high," explains Herwartz. "Their prototyping is likely close to doing the ground work of actually building the product." - unlike other no-code solutions that are either too complex or can't meet enterprise standards.

If we build a new process and we build it with Next Matter, then the opportunity for it to be production ready at some point in time is quite high. Their prototyping is likely close to doing the ground work of actually building the product.

Lukas Herwartz, Team Manager at OBI next
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‍The hackathon teams demonstrated this by building functional automation that included email workflows, mobile interfaces for staff, and system integrations - all coordinated through visual workflow builders that business users could understand and modify.

This aligns with OBI's broader digital transformation strategy. As CIO Tim Engler explains, the company is focused on "digitizing internal processes and core business to make it more efficient and lean" while creating environments that enable broader teams to develop solutions faster.

We're focusing on digitizing internal processes and core business to make OBI more efficient and lean.

‍ Tim Engler, CIO at OBI

The hackathon also served as unexpected training. Team members who had never used workflow automation tools before now understand how low-code platforms can accelerate process transformation. "There's a good chance they have seen Next Matter as an enabler and know now that it is easy to build something from scratch or prototype something out," observes Herwartz.

The Lean Process Transformation Playbook

OBI's hackathon success offers a replicable model for lean process transformation across enterprises:
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For enterprise leaders considering similar initiatives: The question isn't whether your organization has enough technical talent for innovation hackathons. It's whether you're structuring teams and providing tools that let business domain experts actively participate in building solutions to their own problems.

OBI's 2025 hackathon proved that with the right framework and tools, process optimization can be lean, turning process ideas from everyone in the business into working prototypes - and potentially into production systems that serve millions of customers across Europe.

OBI operates 650+ stores across Europe with €8 billion in annual revenue, positioning it among Europe's largest home improvement retailers alongside companies like Leroy Merlin and Kingfisher Group.

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