PRODUCT NAME

Date last updated: February 10, 2019

Vision
What is the problem you’re trying to solve?
Example: For HBS students participating in the HBS Tech Club WesTrek and who wish to visit certain companies
of their choice. The WesTrek app is a new tool that assigns students to companies and other activities based on
preferences, schedules, and number of seats available per company. Unlike the Career Hub’s interview bidding
functionality, we offer a simple solution specifically designed for treks and that captures all the student’s activities
in one place.

Motivation
Customer Segments
Participating students: HBS RC and EC students participating in WesTrek. They are interested in:
● Learning about the high-tech industry, start-ups, VC, cleantech, and/or design.
● Companies located in San Francisco and Silicon Valley,
● Expanding their professional network and for those job hunting meeting alumni that could help them
unlock an interview.
● There are approx. 150 participating students per trek.

Note: each student has different needs/preferences making it hard to further segment this group (of approx. 150
individuals).

Trek organizers (i.e. student leaders):

● HBS RC and EC students organizing WesTrek.
● They hold a position in the Tech Club lead team and enjoy organizing events.
● Same interests as participating students.
● There are approx 20-25 organizers per trek.

Other Stakeholders

The following stakeholders are involved in the trek planning and scheduling process but are not the core user
target for the WesTrek platform.

Companies: Based in the Silicon Valley and San Francisco area and seeking to recruit HBS MBA students full
time and/or for summer internships.

HBS Alumni: Based in the Silicon Valley and San Francisco. They typically work in one of the companies visited
by students and make themselves available to trek participants for coffee chats, lunch, and/or dinners.
Note: CPD, currently facilitating the bidding process, will no longer be involved once the new WesTrek platform
is rolled out.

Unmet Needs
Aggregate Information: Trek information is dispersed across Google documents, emails, and the CPD online
bidding platform. As a result participating students create their own “tracking” document, usually an excel file,
where they keep track of their schedule and other relevant information such as company addresses, parking
options, car-pooling arrangements, and alumni coffee/chat contacts. Organizing students use Google documents
to record company alumni, car-pooling, and schedule information. They spend a lot of time pulling together
information to create the schedule and repackage it for CPD.

Information considered important:

● Company description, contact name, address, preferred time slot in schedule, number of seats available,
speakers, past attendance demand.
● Alumni contact details and day/time available for coffee chats/lunch/dinner.
● Est. transport time between two companies / regions.

We believe both participating and organizing students would like to have all of the trek planning and scheduling
information in one place because today they spend a lot of time aggregating it manually.

Simple “Fair” Process: The current student-to-company allocation process is perceived as relatively simple by
participants but not by organizers. The CPD bidding platform is designed for interviews and consequently the set-
up and change management process is more cumbersome than necessary. It also creates a large volume of work
for the CPD team.

The alumni-to-student allocation process is a first-come first-served process. Students sign-up in a Google
document once their company schedule has been set. The sign-up process is perceived as stressful and unfair. In
addition, since everyone can modify the Google document, some students have had their name deleted/moved
around by other participants.

We believe participating students would like an easy to use tool that will maximize their chances of getting
assigned to their preferred companies and alumni without the stress of a first-come first-served process.

We believe organizing students would like a tool that will allocate students to companies and alumni in a fair
way and that takes into account schedule conflicts and doesn’t require too much time to manage.

Transport: Participants rely on Google maps to estimate travel time between two company visits. They set up
their schedule accordingly. However, Google map estimates are not always accurate as transport times can vary
tremendously depending on the time of day. Also, estimates doesn’t take into account time needed to find parking.
This is particularly true for those who have never been to the bay area before.

We believe participating students would like their schedule to take into account transport time and for their
schedule, company addresses, and parking information to be synced to their HBS calendar.

A Google document exists to organize the car-pooling. There are a good number of students with cars who could
have taken people but didn’t sign-up because: (i) they found the process too complicated - it required some pre-
work and planning from their part, which not all were ready to do, and (ii) they didn't want to take the risk of
being late because of someone else. Yet students without cars would have liked more car-pooling / transport
options.

We believe participant students with cars would be willing to car-pool if the overall sign-up process was
smoother than it is today.
Alumni Meetings Integration: Students willing to meet alumni need to manage the process separately. This adds
a lot of stress to the schedule as timings become very tight. Most participants therefore try to have meetings just
after the company meeting. Meeting confirmations are sent by email to the alumni with the students on copy.
Note: this personal connection installs the student with a sense of responsibility towards the alumni and the
probability they’ll default without giving a heads up is, as a result, extremely low.

We believe participating students would like for alumni meetings to be better integrated into their overall trek
schedule with emails as a form of communication with the alumni they’ll be meeting.

Dynamic Scheduling: Creating the overall trek schedule takes time. Organizers try to balance company size, type
of industry, and total number of seats available > total number of participants for each time slot. Once this is set,
the schedule is confirmed with students and companies by email.

We believe organizers would like a schedule planning tool that automatically creates the overall trek schedule
taking into account the a set of predefined conditions. For WesTrek these are: industry type, company
preferences, company size, and seats available.

Flexibility: There can be unplanned scenarios for which the bidding tool isn’t built (e.g. last minute cancellation
because there aren’t enough students attending, change in start / end time, change in number of seats available).
In such instances, organizers need to be able to manually manage bidding outcomes. This results in a domino
effect of changes leading to broader issues (e.g. one change to company X requires a change to company Y and 2
student schedule changes, all stakeholders need to be informed, etc.). Additionally, participants would like the
opportunity to be made aware of last minute openings in schedules to potentially be able to fill in open slots that.

We believe that both organizers and participating students want to be able to manually make changes once the
schedules have been set to accommodate for unplanned changes.

When a schedule change is made, we believe organizing students would like the system to dynamically make all
other changes impacted by a previous change and that all relevant stakeholders be automatically notified of
these.

Trek organizer priority: Student leaders get priority selecting the companies they want to visit. To address these
needs within the existing CPD system, additional points are assigned to these students so that they can win a place
in their preferred companies.

We believe student organizers want to have priority when selecting their preferred companies.

Sources: 16 qualitative interviews: 8 participating students, 4 organizers, 2 CPD.

Existing Solutions
CPD interview bidding platform: WesTrek is currently using the CPD interview bidding system, which is more
sophisticated than what is needed for assigning students to companies during a trek. Students are allocated a slot
based on the number of points they bid for a company. Organizers get more points than participating students
allowing them to get their preferred companies. The existing solution is cumbersome and time consuming for
organizers since it’s not adapted to treks.

Shared Google docs : Google docs are primarily used for (i) gathering company and alumni information - used
to create the schedule, and (ii) signing-up students to alumni coffee chats, dinners, or lunches.

Excel sheet for personal schedule: Participants reconcile all their trek information in one document (typically
an excel sheet). This document contains: (i) a shortlist of companies to visit (approx. 20-40 companies, sometimes
separated between “must see” vs. “nice to see”), their “ideal” schedule - which they use to establish their bidding
strategy, and the updated and final schedule once bidding results are back and alumni meetings confirmed. The
final schedule typically contains: meeting times and transport & contact information. Some participants print their
files to carry around during the trek.

Google maps: Participants who do not know the bay area use Google maps to assess the travel time between two
companies, yet at peak hour approx 2x the estimated time is usually needed. Students use this information to build
their schedule. During the trek students use Google maps to get from point A to B. They find/enter their destination
address using one of the following methods: (i) search in Google maps - less common, (ii) they have copied/pasted
the company addresses from the online Google document into their personal excel schedule, which they have
printed it out, (iii) once their schedule is finalized they enter the company address in their HBS calendar invite, or
(iv) they use Google map pins colored by day.

Differentiation
The WesTrek platform would be: (i) simpler to use than the current CPD bidding system, and (ii) adapted to trek
activities, e.g. include logistics information, integrate alumni meetings, etc.. There exists no such platform today.

Why Now?
Berdasarkan survey yang dilakukan oleh INRIX, Lembaga survei asal Amerika Serikat yang berfokus pada riset
lalu lintas jalan. Kemacetan di Malang Raya berada di posisi 9 se Asia dan nomer 3 di Indonesia. Malang Raya
menempati peringkat 3 teratas dibawah Jakarta & Bandung. Survei yang dilakukan oleh INRIX bersandar pada
rata-rata waktu yang dihabiskan oleh pengendara yang terjebak kemacetan dalam setahun. Peringkat pertama
adalah Kota Jakarta dengan tingkat kemacetan 55 jam/year , kedua ada Bandung dengan 42,7 jam/tahun dan
disusul kota Malang dengan jumlah 39,3 jam/tahun. Selain itu terdapat permasalahan berkurangnya pengguna
layanan transportasi angkutan umum karena banyaknya transportasi online yang berkembang. Hal ini berdampak
secara langsung kepada kesejahteraan supir angkot.

Menurut kelompok kami diperlukan adanya suatu inovasi baru untuk mengurangi ke macetan di Malang. Salah
satu solusinya yaitu mengarahkan masyarakat untuk menggunakan transportasi umum. Tetapi ada sebagian
masyarakat yang menganggap bahwa transportasi umum khusunya angkutan kota tidak nyaman digunakan.
Beberapa alas an seperti fasilitas yang disediakan kurang baik, kurang efiesien dalam segi waktu dan pembayaran.
Kelompok kami berinisasi dengan membuat sistem informasi berbasis aplikasi mobile yang dapat menarik minat
masyarakat agar beralih menggunakan transportasi umum khusunya angkutan kota, yang mempunyai kelebihan
dapat mengurangi kemacetan, dapat mengurangi pengeluaran bensin kendaraan pribadi, transportasi umum online
dapat beradaptasi terhadap perkembangan zaman di era digital. Diharapkan dengan adanya solusi tersebut dapat
mengurangi kemacetan, meningkatkan minat masyarakat terhadap penggunaan transportasi umum sehingga dapat
meningkatkan kesejahteraan supir angkot di Malang Raya.

Group Members
Describe the strengths and weaknesses of each in relation to this project (include the photos).

References
● https://radarmalang.id/malang-raya-termacet-keempat-di-asia/
● Alexander Osterwalder, Yves Pigneur, Business Model Generation Handbook for Visionaries, Game
Changers, and Challengers. 2010.
THANK YOU!