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Royal Swinkels AI hackaton at Ctac

Royal Swinkels Family Brewers recently joined Ctac for an AI hackathon. Not as a stand-alone experiment, but as a concrete step within a broader AI adoption strategy across the organization. A role-based, pragmatic approach with as much focus on people as on technology.

Creating momentum from within

What makes this approach powerful is that adoption is not driven from the outside. “We use a community-driven approach,” explains Annemieke Matyas, Business Consultant at Ctac. “What makes it unique is that organizations create their own ripple effect. As an IT partner, we can guide and encourage, but we can never fully drive adoption ourselves. Real adoption must come from the heart of the organization.”

To support that vision, a cross-section of the business was brought together. Not necessarily the most technical employees, but the enthusiasts who can translate AI opportunities into practical applications for their own teams and day-to-day work.

Learning by doing with real business data

During the hackathon, employees from different disciplines worked on real business challenges. No theoretical exercises. No dummy data. “It’s valuable to work with actual business data, the kind of data you work with every day,” says Renée van Erp, BI & Reporting Analyst at Royal Swinkels. That hands-on approach proved to be a key success factor.

“It’s incredibly valuable to spend an entire day focused on AI,” adds Mitchel Wolters, Global E-Commerce Category Specialist at Royal Swinkels. Not another meeting about AI, but an opportunity to actively use it.

Pieter Meeuws, Data Scientist at Royal Swinkels, captured the day perfectly: “The enthusiasm of the participants, the different perspectives, the mix of disciplines coming together, the ideas we explored, and the food for thought it generated. Overall, it was a highly successful day. It definitely leaves us wanting more.”

"The enthusiasm of the participants, the different perspectives, the mix of disciplines coming together, the ideas we explored, and the food for thought it generated. Overall, it was a highly successful day. It definitely leaves us wanting more."

Pieter Meeuws, Data Scientist at Swinkels

AI that helps a little more every day

The hackathon was not the finish line. It was a milestone. A moment where employees experienced firsthand what is possible and where internal ambassadors emerged to continue spreading knowledge and enthusiasm throughout the organization. This is how AI becomes something that is not simply added to the business, but something that becomes part of the way people work. Royal Swinkels has been brewing with pride for generations. Together with Ctac, the company is now adding a new ingredient to its future success.

Everyday AI: adoption that works for your organization

The Royal Swinkels AI Hackathon is part of Ctac’s Everyday AI adoption program, designed to make AI practical, accessible, and valuable for organizations. We help employees develop the skills they need to work safely and effectively with solutions such as Microsoft Copilot. At the same time, we build internal communities that accelerate and sustain adoption across the organization.

This is not a one-off training session, but a structured adoption journey. It includes leadership workshops, role-based workgroups, a practical persona and prompt library, and recurring check-ins to maintain momentum. For teams ready to take the next step, we organize Agent Hackathons to further accelerate innovation. The results speak for themselves: measurable time savings, broad organizational engagement, and a solid foundation for scaling AI adoption successfully.