Two days, global impact: inside Mendix’s capture the flag Amman 2025
Breaking It From Amman
The Mendix Capture the Flag Amman 2025 successfully brought the low-code world together for two epic days of challenge, collaboration, and creativity! This global hackathon-style event streamed live across more than 16 locations, all focused on one awesome goal: securing builds, learning by doing, and pushing the limits of Mendix.
The event was open to everyone, from solo heroes to full teams. We were super proud to host the only satellite location in the entire MENA region, right here at our Jordan office.
This role was far more than logistical; it was a firm commitment to regional leadership, enabling developers across the Middle East to directly engage with global low-code innovation. Together, we built, tested, and shared ideas, confirming the potent mix of curiosity, energy, and talent in the Jordanian Mendix community.
Why It Was a Smash
Community and Collaboration
From the moment the doors opened, the vibe was set quickly, people came in, collected their swag and had a quick bite and mingled around. Some showed up solo, others in teams, but all walked in ready to learn, build, and push limits. The space quickly became a dynamic hub of introductions and anticipation. It was inspiring to see first-timers who were just dipping their toes into low-code sitting right next to seasoned pros who’ve been crushing complex problems for years. This mix ensured knowledge was instantly shared and applied.
One participant shared it best:
“I’m still fairly new to low-code, so I came in thinking I’d be totally lost. But everyone was so open, and the guidance along the way made it easier to actually learn and try things out.”
Technical skills and key Insights
The competition was high-stakes fun, built across challenges that forced participants to think outside the box. Everyone was glued to the leaderboard as our local talent raced against the clock. Every flag captured just ramped up the excitement!
The event’s global nature was on full display throughout the two days, with sessions streaming live from around the world.
We were proud to host a standout session from our own floor, led by our engineers Waad Alatiyat and Mohamad Abu Qaddourah:
Techniques Explored: Uncovering vulnerabilities using advanced QA tactics including negative testing, session validation, and role switching.
Real-World Attacks: Seeing proof-of-concept attacks in action, specifically request tampering and SSL pinning bypass.
Key Takeaway: Developers walked away with practical defenses they can immediately apply to build with security in mind.
And while flags were being captured, conversations flowed between bites of snacks and rounds of ping pong. Every break was a perfect chance to network, talk winning strategies, and just hang out.
Wrapping up
The success of Mendix Capture the Flag in Amman was defined by the local community’s drive to solve hard problems and push their technical limits. This energy proves Jordan’s tech scene is totally dialed into the future, with a sharp focus on building securely and a serious, confirmed interest in cybersecurity. By bringing the global Mendix World conversation right here, we officially put Jordan on the global tech map for innovation and top-tier regional talent! We are already looking forward to the next one. Until then, keep breaking.
Last-mile delivery digital transformation: Aramex reimagines logistics with low-code
What does it take to turn the final stretch into a competitive edge? For Aramex, the answer was last-mile delivery digital transformation.
125 million shipments a year. That’s the scale Aramex was moving at, and with that kind of volume, every delivery becomes a promise you’re expected to keep. Customers want speed, visibility, and control. Drivers need flexibility, integrity and support.
Founded in Amman, Jordan, and backed by over 18,000 employees and $1.6 billion in revenue, the company was expanding into new markets at full throttle. But their internal systems weren’t built for this kind of pressure. Operations were getting more complex. Courier demand was rising. And a new wave of digital-first customers wanted to track their deliveries in real time, make changes on the fly, and feel in control every step of the way. Aramex had the ambition to push their last-mile delivery digital transformation strategy forward.
Two things became clear: they needed more hands on the road and smarter ways to drop off packages. Aramex had to move fast, roll out across multiple regions, and find a way to give both their workforce and their customers the digital tools they needed. The last mile had to evolve into something smarter, leaner, and ready to grow. The pressure was on with tight timelines and high expectations.
Scaling up: The right partner and strategy
With clear direction and expectations, they started looking for the right crew to help them stay ahead. They trusted us to simplify their lives with 2 multi-persona crowdsourcing platforms that could keep up with their speed and scale.
As accredited Mendix partners, we brought in the Mendix low-code platform to power the digital transformation. Using Mendix’s flexibility, we accelerated development with MiCustomer (DXP), our modular digital experience platform. Instead of starting from scratch, MiCustomer allowed us to reuse features, speeding up development and ensuring consistency across both platforms.
From the start, we collaborated with Aramex to design every journey around real roles and day-to-day interactions. We built an intuitive admin portal and a Know Your Driver experience to provide an end-to-end view of personal, vehicle and payment setup for fleeters, integrating with SAP through the Mendix OData adapter and SOAP services, making the platforms responsive, scalable, and fully connected.
The UI was designed to reflect Aramex’s brand and simplify the experience for users at every level. Custom widgets and consistent components kept everything easy to navigate.
Our last-mile delivery digital transformation strategy focuses on leveraging lean, tech-driven models such as ‘Aramex Fleet’ to tackle capacity constraints and enhance last mile delivery.
– Khalid Jamjoum, Head of Global Capacity Planning and Last Mile Innovation at Aramex
Now let’s take a closer look at what Fleetand Spotreally meant for Aramex, and how they reshaped daily operations.
Fleet: Building on-demand driver networks for smarter logistics
Fleet marked the beginning of Aramex’s last-mile delivery digital transformation, built in under eight weeks. The platform was designed to recruit, assign, track, and pay independent drivers. Through the app, drivers could register, choose when and where they wanted to work, and get matched with nearby deliveries. At the same time, customers gained real-time visibility into their shipments, with full self-service access through their accounts.
This flexibility created real operational value. Aramex could scale deliveries up or down based on demand, reduce idle fleet time, and expand coverage without increasing fixed costs. It also opened the door for locals to earn income on their own terms — helping Aramex meet demand while empowering communities.
Over time, Fleet became an impactful and central part of day-to-day logistics, making delivery faster, more efficient, and more responsive to both business needs and customer expectations.
Spot: Expanding last-mile delivery with local pickup and drop-off hubs
Capitalizing on the 14 weeks saved during the Fleet project, Spot quickly followed suit: a platform designed to be the key to Fleet’s lock. Spot created a network of local pickup and drop-off points, allowing drivers and customers to store packages temporarily, whether overnight or longer, providing them with more flexibility.
The efficiency of our low-code services for logistics played a significant role in making this possible. By leveraging the same APIs and functionalities developed for Fleet, the team built Spot quickly and efficiently. This reusability allowed them to skip much of the groundwork, saving time and ensuring the platform launched without compromising on quality.
Both platforms spoke to one another. When a package arrives at a Spot location, fleeters are instantly notified, enabling them to pick up the package along their route, reducing unnecessary trips to the warehouse. This seamless connection between the platforms not only improved delivery efficiency but also reduced operational costs, such as fuel and wear-and-tear on vehicles.
Spot also improved the customer experience, offering more convenience by providing additional delivery points closer to customers’ locations. It brought value to local businesses as well, who were able to become part of the delivery ecosystem by hosting Spot locations.
Today, with over 150 Spot locations in Saudi Arabia and 600 more shops eager to participate, Spot continues to grow. Looking to the future, Aramex and avertra are collaborating on a five-year roadmap that will scale across 40 countries, supporting 75,000 drivers and automating the processing of 50 million orders annually. Thanks to our low-code services for logistics: both Fleet and Spot are now part of a larger vision to drive efficiency and redefine the future of last-mile delivery.
Simplifying tomorrow, today: low-code digital transformation for every industry
Digital transformation is key to efficiency and scalability. Our low-code solutions helped Aramex combat capacity limitations and drive the growth of eCommerce through innovations in last-mile delivery. We also empower highly regulated industries like healthcare, finance, and utilities to streamline operations, cut costs, and elevate customer experiences.
Curious how low-code can bring change to your business?
Low-Code in Financial Services: Digital Transformation with Mendix
In financial services, life moves fast, but systems lag behind. Lengthy approvals, legacy tech, and changing compliance create constant hurdles. IT teams are stressed, backlogs grow, and costs climb, impacting CSAT scores and brand loyalty. The need for low-code digital transformation in finance becomes clear. Executives are expected to drive efficiency, cut costs, and modernize, without causing disruption.
The good news? Change is possible. Low-code platforms like Mendix are springboards for digital transformation in finance, offering a smarter, faster path to success. In fact, 70% of financial institutions plan to invest in low-code in 2025. But here’s the real question:
What is low-code? And why is Mendix the best platform to guarantee efficiency and impact?
What Is Low-Code? And Why Care?
At its core, low-code is a smarter way to build software with less, well, code. It’s not about shortcuts as much as it is efficiency. It allows teams to build applications faster with visual modeling, drag-and-drop tools, and pre-built components, while still keeping room for custom code. With built-in scalability, cloud flexibility, and seamless API integrations, low-code empowers self-sufficient teams that stay ahead of the game.
Low-code is the missing piece, bridging the gap between business needs and IT capabilities.
The Business Case for Low-code in Financial Services
As an executive, you probably don’t buy tech for the sake of it.You invest in outcomes. So let’s talk numbers and impact:
Faster time-to-market: 72% of users deliver apps in under three months using low-code. Less time waiting on IT, more time launching revenue-generating solutions, and more agile responses to market demands.
Cost efficiency: Companies using low-code report a 54% lower TCO. Why? Less reliance on expensive developers, fewer maintenance costs, and no costly technical debt.
Operational efficiency: Automated workflows eliminate manual tasks, freeing up your resources and reducing errors.
Regulatory compliance & security: Financial institutions spend 30-40% of IT budgets managing compliance, with regulatory fines for compliance failures reaching billions.
Better customer experience: Customer-facing apps go live faster, deflect call center loads, cut down wait times, and increase self-service adoption.
Implementing Low-Code the Right Way: Key Considerations for Financial Services
Choosing a Low-Code Platform That Works for You.
Not all low-code platforms are created equal. Financial services demand enterprise-grade security, seamless integration, and regulatory compliance, anything less is a liability. This is where Mendix comes out on top with:
-> Business & IT alignment: one shared language, one platform
It empowers you with a single, end-to-end environment for the entire software lifecycle, fostering real-time co-creation between business and IT. With visual modeling and in-app feedback, it streamlines idea capture and alignment, ensuring both teams speak the same language. This eliminates shadow IT and misalignment, leading to faster execution with built-in governance.
Security breaches can be catastrophic in the financial world. Mendix goes above and beyond to build security into every step of the development process.
Role-based access controls ensure the right people have the right permissions.
Audit trails keep a full history of actions for compliance.
Data encryption & identity management protect sensitive financial data.
-> Cloud-agnostic deployment: It’s your call.
Choose the environment that aligns with your requirements, whether it’s:
On-prem for strict data residency laws
A private cloud for scalability
Air-gapped deployment for high-security environments
Mendix adapts to your compliance needs… not the other way around.
-> Scalable API & integration capabilities: Seamless connections to your core systems.
If a platform can’t integrate, it’s useless. Mendix makes connecting with core banking, risk management, and compliance systems seamless:
Prebuilt connectors for major financial platforms.
API-first architecture so data flows securely.
No messy workarounds, just clean, scalable integration.
This means no silos, no disruptions, and no unnecessary vendor lock-in, just a platform that works with your existing infrastructure, not against it.
-> A reliable foundation: Solid and sustainable.
Building for the future requires a platform you can trust. Mendix guarantees you:
An industrial-grade, Siemens owned platform proven in the toughest environments.
Years of domain expertise, long-term stability, and extensive partner support.
This combination gives you unmatched assurance for your future-proof, mission-critical solutions.
Bottom Line?
This is low-code that actually works for financial services. If you’re serious about speed, security, and scalability, Mendix is the best platform out there that delivers on all three fronts.
The Right Platform Is Half the Battle. The Right Partner Matters.
Here’s the reality: Most digital transformations in finance don’t fail because of the platform. They fail because the organization chooses the wrong implementation partner.
Avoid partners who:
🚩 Do not deeply understand financial regulations, risk, or compliance.
🚩 Treat low-code as an IT tool instead of a business-wide enabler
🚩Try to do too much at once, instead of starting small and scaling smart.
🚩Pushes a “one-size-fits-all” approach. At that point- WALK AWAY.
What the right partner looks like:
✅Deep financial services expertise: You want someone who truly understands banking regulations, security requirements, and your pain points.
✅Proven track record: Your partner should have a history of real-world, scalable Mendix implementations in financial services.
✅ Seamless integration and support: Your core systems aren’t changing overnight. A real partner ensures Mendix integrates with your existing infrastructure without causing disruptions and offers ongoing support instead of disappearing after the initial build.
✅ Change management & training: The best technology is useless if your teams don’t adopt it. A strong partner will make sure your teams are ready and excited. They train employees and align stakeholders to ensure long-term success.
Wondering if there’s a partner that checks all the boxes? As experienced, accredited Mendix partners, with deep knowledge in the financial sector built over the years, we’ve got you covered.
Where to start? Small wins, big impact
The best way to get started? Don’t try to change everything at once, the trick is to start with the “low-hanging fruits” and begin harvesting those quick wins.
Identify Bottlenecks: Onboarding delays, compliance backlogs, fraud checks, customer service inefficiencies. What’s costing you time and money?
Deploy a focused pilot: Identify a high-impact use case, build an MVP in 6-8 weeks, and prove value before scaling.
Iterate & build on success: Use real-world feedback, refine the solution, then roll out across customer service, risk management, operations, and beyond.
Measure & refine: Track development speed, cost savings, error reductions, customer experience improvements, and keep iterating.
Building Your Future Today: The Low-Code Trifecta
At the end of the day, making low-code work in financial services boils down to three critical factors: The right platform, partner, and roadmap. Get these three things right, and you’re not just implementing low-code, but future-proofing your business.
As digital experience practitioners and Mendix partners, we help financial institutions modernize systems and achieve tangible wins through tailored low-code solutions. We innovate, train, build, and maintain low-code, aligned with your teams, customers, and long-term goals.
So, if you’re serious about real transformation, let’s talk about how we can make Mendix work for you through our low-code services .
Southwest Gas Achieves Back Office Excellence through Exception Automation
For over 20 years, Southwest Gas had relied on a legacy system to manage critical operations that had served its purpose but was no longer capable of meeting the demands of growing customer needs and an evolving industry. Recognizing the need for progress, the utility made the bold decision to transition to a modern CIS, a significant step forward that came with potential risks.
Such a major transition was likely to create pressure points, especially in the back-office. A surge in billing exceptions could overwhelm employees, disrupt workflows, and lead to inefficiencies, billing errors, and a loss of customer trust. Frustrated customers flooding the front-office with calls would stretch resources and add to the strain, creating a high-stakes situation Southwest Gas needed to avoid.
In search of a partner that would not only mitigate these risks but also truly enhance Southwest Gas’ operations, Avertra’s MiCustomer digital experience platform (DXP) became the centerpiece of this transformation. With a strong focus on back-office automation and excellence, it combined intelligent tools and an intuitive design that empowered efficiency and streamlined exception management, enabling employees to prioritize more meaningful work.
Within 6 months, an in-depth exploration of Southwest Gas’s processes and unique challenges was conducted and the implementation fully completed, setting the stage for impactful changes across multiple areas of the utility.
Streamlined Exception Management
One of the most immediate transformations was in exception management, where automating repetitive processes reduced manual workloads and gave employees the opportunity to focus on higher-value work.
Over the past 3 years, Southwest Gas has truly simplified life for employees and dramatically improved operations, achieving:
+4.4 million automatically resolved exceptions
87.7% of all exceptions fully addressed without manual intervention
~3.5K exceptions resolved daily
~26.4K employee hours saved per month
In addition to experiencing a significant shift in how the back-office functioned, these results sparked positive impacts across the organization as:
Billing accuracy improved, reducing errors and minimizing delays in financial processes.
Customer satisfaction increased as exceptions were resolved faster and disruptions were minimized.
Call volumes to the front office decreased, easing the burden on customer-facing teams.
Proactive Problem-Solving
Beyond exception management, Southwest Gas worked to bring greater clarity to their operations. Identifying bottlenecks across complex processes was a constant challenge, leaving employees to navigate inefficiencies without clear direction.
By leveraging advanced analytics and heatmaps, teams gained the ability to see exactly where issues were occurring and understand the reasons behind them. What was once a time-consuming and uncertain process became a targeted approach, enabling employees to address root causes quickly and resolve challenges before they could escalate.
Simplified Onboarding & Learning
Understanding that a great customer experience starts with an even better employee experience, Southwest Gas focused on simplifying how their teams learned and adapted to new processes.
Through intelligent guided procedures, employees were able to build confidence in their roles, especially in cases requiring manual intervention or their unique expertise. By reducing the challenges of adapting to new workflows, employees were empowered to contribute more effectively, creating a more engaged and motivated workforce.
Optimized Workflow Transparency
Having a centralized view of team workflows played an essential role in improving both employee performance and decision-making. Through intuitive dashboards, teams could easily see previous case histories, understand who worked on specific tasks, and quickly dig into details when deeper insights were needed. Ultimately, this transparency allowed supervisors to step in with timely support to improve processes and develop a stronger, more collaborative environment.
Looking Ahead
Investing in the back office has enabled Southwest Gas to drive impactful changes that touch every part of the utility, reflecting the power of looking inward to create lasting impact for employee and customer experiences, all while strengthening operational resilience and delivering long-term value.
Building on this success, Southwest Gas and Avertra are committed to strategically expanding automation capabilities, targeting a 95% success rate in automatic resolutions. With this vision in mind, the goal will continue to center around driving operational excellence, and delivering excellent customer experiences.
Five competitive advantages of an omnichannel experience
An omnichannel is a business communication strategy that focuses on giving customers the power to choose how they want to contact you. Whether through a chatbot, email, phone call, or text message, an omnichannel is designed in a way to provide a seamless experience no matter which method of communication customers choose. Research has shown younger-generation customers prefer messaging-based communication over phone calls and emails due to the lack of disruptions. Customers want to receive assistance while performing their daily activities without having to put their lives on hold, but a personalized experience is not the only advantage of an omnichannel. Here are four other benefits.
1. Less agent effort needed
Many call centers are the culprit of high turnover rates. Employees are overworked. Dealing with frustrated customers is not easy. Nothing is more demotivating than doing repetitive tasks all year long. Agents are not always recognized for their efforts. A call center job is not your typical 9-5. These are just a few of the downsides of a call center. With an omnichannel, requests are distributed across multiple channels, giving employees more time to focus on more rewarding tasks without overextending themselves.
2. Improves and enhances customer experience
The modern customer does not want to be restricted to a single channel when reaching out. They want to get in touch with you whenever and wherever they want, without it disrupting their lives. An omnichannel does just that. It provides customers with a stream of seamless communication with the same high quality level of service across every channel.
3. Cost effective and efficient
Expect a significant reduction in costs when you opt for sending messages to your customer’s channel of choice compared to when you overwhelm them through every outlet possible.
4. Centralizes data
Due to the shift in technologies such as artificial intelligence and automation, data is now seen as an essential asset to how organizations can improve their efficiency. What was once a step that required information-gathering before serving a customer is now readily available for agents. Employees from different departments within a company can access real-time customer data from a single place. This means call center agents no longer have to gather all the customer’s information before serving them, saving more employee time and effort and dissolving any customer frustrations. Unifying your database can also help identify patterns in customer behavior and deliver valuable insight to improve a customer’s overall experience.
5. Deflects calls
Calls are deflected when your points of contact are distributed across multiple channels. For example, customers can opt for other means of assistance like chat or email, where they are not required to pick up their phone. Customers can even start or stop a service, send complaints, enroll in recommendation programs, and personalize their Customers can self-serve and be more efficient to solve any issues they face on their own.
Looking to adopt an omnichannel business strategy? Let us handle it from start to finish. Book a demo with us today and reap the benefits of an omnichannel.
Top Four Digital Agent Myths Busted
Today, more and more companies are keeping up with the latest digital trends in an effort to build a future-ready workforce. Some are looking up to digital agents. However, the majority of companies resort to human labor-based business process outsourcing (BPO) for back and front-office operations. This is in the hopes of a high return on investment. But there is a major downside that companies seem to overlook with this decision.
Human-based BPO has a lifeline of up to five to ten years. This makes it a non-sustainable solution for companies seeking future-proof solutions. Aside from that, BPO fails to measure valuable insight on user-experience, creating a ripple effect of endless consequences. Overall, companies begin to suffer financially from high customer churn and investment failure. On the bright side, digital agents are the future workforce, and they are already here. However, just like anything else, they are no exception to being a target of criticism and misconceptions. Let’s tackle them one by one.
1. Robotic sounding voice based conversational agents are not fluent in enough languages
While this may be true, covering enough languages fluently and localization go hand in hand. Artificial intelligence, the technology responsible for conversational agents, adapts through progressive learning algorithms when given new data. AI can recognize and extract structure and regularities in data and convert them into algorithms to learn a certain skill. The quality of voice and human-like interaction increases in maturity the more conversational AI is used through its evolving capabilities. This means companies can improve the capability of these services the more they use them.
2. Intent and context need to be updated every now and then
Natural Language Processing is a self-sufficient technique that is capable of independently performing a syntax and semantic analysis to better understand the user’s inquiry through a digital agent.
Tedious exceptions can be automated so that employees doing menial tasks are trained into higher caliber professionals. Exception management is one example of a job that requires problem-solving as the main skill to solve high priority cases. A human agent is expected to monitor digital agents to ensure the digital workforce is running smoothly. In the case of an exception, these agents are trained to intervene and solve the issue accordingly. When human agents are coupled with an empowered digital workforce, more than half of process time is reduced altogether. Employees become more efficient and customers become more satisfied – a win-win situation for everyone involved.
4. You can never automate 100% of the interactions
With proper segmentation engines, targeted personas, rules, tolerance, and approval limits, anything and everything can be automated. Through data mining and tribal knowledge, you can automate up to 80% of human-to-human interaction and business processes. Although some argue that the “human factor” would be missed from customer interactions, customers just want to be served and served efficiently. Additionally, digital agents can only execute requests that are within their approved limits, leaving critical tasks to the human workforce. Through collaborative intelligence, digital and human agents can serve customers efficiently.
In a world where technology is ever-changing, companies that outsource business processes must evolve and seek ways to ensure a future-ready workforce. Avertra is a digital experience company with an ongoing mission to simplify customer and employee experiences. With a decade worth of experience in various industries, we help automate businesses, even those that outsource business processes with a different solution provider.
With its proven track record of many successful and fruitful partnerships, Avertra has proven that not only can their digital agents handle complex business process executions such as start and stop service, and resolve high bill complaints, complex billing outsorts, and correcting asset placement and more, but all of these complex processes are executed without involving a single human and wasting their valuable time. In result, agents are repurposed for more meaningful tasks in need of human skill.
Book a demo today with Avertra for a chance to be part of the digital revolution and expect a high return on investment
