Double celebrations await the PLEXUS Group from UUMIT when they emerged the overall winner and Mr. Ahmad Ruzaini Janudin bagged the Best Facilitator award at UUM Innovative and Creative Circle (ICC) Open Convention 2018 at the Seminar A Hall, Convention Center, UUM, yesterday.
Plexus took home a cash prize of MYR2, 000 for the Management category. PLEXUS Group Leader, Ms. Yusra Asyikin Md Yunus expressed her gratitude and sincere appreciation to her team for their fortitude, dedication and friendship. PLEXUS will represent UUM at the Public University level ICC Convention scheduled in August at the University of Malaya.
PLEXUS group is made up of 8 cross-functioning members from four units and their project highlighted the Student Difficulties in Assessing the Academic and Financial Information through the Smartphone.
"The idea transpired when came across the problems experienced by UUM students. There were too many menu buttons on the portal. The menu buttons were quite tricky and this wasted their time. For this reason, we decided to develop a mobile app that is easier and more user-friendly," said Ms. Yusra.
Previously, students spent a long time to access information and some had to skip classes because they had to go to the Treasurer Department to look at the financial information and also to the Academic Affairs Department to check the academic information.
"Interestingly, this mobile app offers scores of advantages as it is faster to access, more organised, user-friendly, compatible with all types of smartphones, more visually appealing, and it saves your mobile data.
"The success of this project is distinctive when the time spent on verifying academic information which normally takes 90 seconds can be reduced to 8 seconds (a reduction of 91% or 82 seconds).
"From the financial aspect, the system was developed internally. If it was subcontracted to the supplier, the cost will be around MYR7, 000. The cost to deploy to Google Play Store and App Store is MYR600. In total, we saved MYR6, 400," added Ms. Yusra.
The ICC Convention was held in UUM since 2012 and this time around, the Institute of Quality Management (IPQ) received entries from 17 ICC teams (12 teams represented the various departments in UUM and the remaining teams were entries from other organizations).
Two categories were contested in the ICC Open Convention i.e. the Management and Technical categories. The runner-up of the Management category is the Paradigma team from the School of Computing and the third place went to Blinc, a team from the Sultanah Bahiyah Library.
For the technical category, the Champion was the Permata PG from Pasir Gudang Fire and Rescue Department, Johor; the runner-up was the Reka team from the Corporate Development & Quality Management Center (PUSPEK), Universiti Malaysia Perlis (UNIMAP) and third place went to the BME Dinamik team from Muda Agricultural Development Authority (MADA).
The Director of IPQ UUM, Prof. Dr. Nor Aziah Abd Manaf said, ICC was established as a mechanism to promote a culture of innovation and creativity.
Prof. Dr. Nor Aziah stated that, creativity and innovation are critical elements that will ensure the survival of an organization as without these elements is might be impossible for the organization to achieve the mission and vision.
"I hope that this Convention will serve as a catalyst for the establishment of innovative and creative work culture among the staff members in various organizations," she added.