Description

BACKGROUND

European energy giant Enel, supported by tech leaders IBM, is seeking companies with disruptive technologies or developing innovations to track anonymized employee data which in turn provides its employees with a better way to manage ad improve their wellbeing.

Enel is a multinational utility company leading the energy transition: Enel is the first network operator with about 74 million end users, it is the world leader in terms of installed capacity by renewable sources (49GW) and has the largest customer base worldwide counting over 70 million customers. Enel has over 65,000 staff members across the world and even though staff wellbeing is already a focus, since the pandemic hit over 1.5 years ago the organisation are keen to source further technology to support their teams. Enel’s goal of this challenge is to provide employees with opportunities to improve their personal wellbeing while at the same time, helping Enel to understand and better provide for their workforce.

 

THE CHALLENGE

Primary areas of focus include activity & fitness, healthy workspaces, and stress management. Secondary areas of focus are nutrition, disease prevention and financial wellness.

Enel welcomes "pitches" from partners with disruptive technology that identifies, improves and/or monitors employee wellbeing through the tracking of behaviours such as movement, activity, and mood etc. whilst also looking for solutions that can use that data, interact with staff, and proactively deliver wellbeing recommendations.

Enel is looking for solutions that encompass as much of the following as possible:

• A digital solution able to directly improve employees’ wellbeing and give them feedback, while tracking data anonymously through a SaaS, Cloud or on-premises tools or applications that can measure attribute related to employees’ wellbeing. This part of the solution must be able to expose anonymized results to the enterprise, as well as include best practice recommendations from the enterprise
• A SaaS, Cloud or on-premise solution to gather, analyse, collate and deliver intuitive feedback on the state of employee health via anonymized data. This part of the solution should:
  • Integrate with and utilise anonymized data across employee member base (at least 30,000) from existing internal tooling as well as the net new applications and programmes given above.
  • Track and report on the sentiment of employees and provide analytical recommendations for improvements and/or early warning of problem areas
  • The solution must be able to apply AL/ML technology to deliver intuitive feedback on the state of employee health, both as best practice to individuals and, in anonymized form, to the enterprise, as well as better understand future trends and inform future decision making.

 

CRITERIA & DELIVERABLES

Challenge Entry Criteria

Industry, Specialism and Experience Requirements:

• Applicants with experience in data tracking, security and anonymisation
• Applicants with proven experience within the healthcare (or other regulated) industry
• Demonstrable domain knowledge on employee wellbeing and/or the application of data science and AI/ML technologies to inform wellbeing understanding and decision making
• Proven team capability to work successfully on co-creation innovation (if applicable)
• Must be a registered company
• Applications are welcome from companies around the World

 

Technology Requirements:

• Technology Readiness Level 5 and upwards
• Demonstrable AL/ML capability in terms of analysis and insight generation
• On-premise, SaaS, Cloud or mobile applications. To enable future flexibility, any on-premise applications should be Cloud capable. These, and indeed all Cloud applications, should support deployment onto multiple clouds, with the preferred mechanism for this being able to run on OpenShift   
• Demonstrable understanding of the assessment of employee wellbeing
• The solution should not involve the storing of video recordings

 

Requirements:

• The solution will ideally be suitable for multiple languages, namely - Italian, Spanish and English

 

Deliverables

Before submitting a solution, all the applicants must sign up to for a new account and register their start up, including the user contact information, Company name, tax number, address and other information required in the signup form.

All the applicants must fill in the solution form with a technical description of the proposed solution, including an explanation of how the solution proposes to address all the requirements listed above.

All the applicants can withhold proprietary details, if necessary, but should provide convincing evidence for Enel and IBM to appreciate the merits of the approach and to allow for a feasibility evaluation.

All the applicants must also complete and attach the answers to the IBM technical questions. All applicants must attach their answers in PDF or word (find attached the editable version of the Annex – IBM questions).

 

THE OPPORTUNITY

• Enel and IBM will select a small number of stand-out teams to progress forward and work on the challenge.
• This Challenge can offer opportunities for all applicants:
• Potential procurement of market-ready capability
• Ability to develop a PoC or trial implementation with the support of Enel’s Innovation team
• Referenceable use case with one of the world’s largest energy suppliers
• The opportunity to showcase your solution to key stakeholders within Enel S.p.A (with the support of IBM and Whitespace)
• Potential partnership with Enel and IBM to access new markets and accelerate product and/or service development
• Opportunities for all applicants to join IBM’s Start-up Program and Partner Ecosystem

 

The winner of the challenge will have the opportunity to accelerate the development of their solution in collaboration with Enel.

 

What can you expect from IBM?

• Access to IBM’s technology and experts
• Assistance with any aspects of IBM cloud, AI/ML, security or data access that you chose to use
• Cloud credits to cover any IBM cloud technologies that you chose to use
• Business opportunities
• If you chose to use IBM technology and partner with IBM, access to a range of Go To Market programs and support

 

What can you expect from Enel?

• Access to Enel’s experts and network
• Dedicated point of contact at Enel
• Support from Enel innovation hub teams
• Business opportunities
• Quick-win and long-term relationships
• Potential international expansion.

Challenge rules

All proposers are invited to carefully read the Challenge and the Regulation of this Challenge, attached below in the Attachments section, before submitting a solution.

By submitting a solution, they automatically accept the attached Regulations other than the Terms of Use of this platform.

Explain your proposal clearly in English, attach documents (max 5 files, 25MB total size) if needed.

 

Eligibility

This challenge is dedicated to technology startups.

The employees of Enel Green Power and of the other Companies of the Enel Group who are involved in the organization and management of the Competition or admitted to the Open Innovability^Ⓡ Portal back office, as well as their spouses or partners and their relatives up to the fourth degree, are not eligible for participation in this Challenge.

Also, employees of the companies of the Enel Group who have worked in the technical sector of people and organization, in the moment of the Challenge, on wellbeing management activities, or their spouses, partners or any of their relatives up to the fourth grade determined according to Italian law are not eligible for the participation in this Challenge.

Without prejudice to the article 5.5 of the Terms of Use, the obligation to grant the IP rights set in this article does not apply if the winning solution is proposed by an employee of an Enel company, unless the employee is the owner of the solution according to the relevant national law.

 

Challenge and IP rights

This is a call for startups, so that the applicants will need to submit a written proposal to be evaluated by Enel with a goal of establishing a collaborative partnership. The IP rights will remain with the applicants.

 

Challenge Dates

• 25th of November 2021 - Launch Date
• 15th January 2022 - Application Deadline
• January 2022 – First Down Selection Stage
• February 2022 - The 2nd and final down selection

 

Find attached the specific regulation.

 

How to Apply

Enel’s Open Innovability® platform.

The challenge will be open to applications from 25th of November 2021 and will close on the 15th of January at 11:59pm (CET).

What happens next?

After the Challenge deadline, the Enel team will complete the first down selection process and decide what set of startups will be moved into the 2nd stage. All Proposer that submit a proposal will be notified on the status of their submissions; however, no detailed evaluation of individual submissions will be provided.

• In the first phase, Enel will evaluate the proposal using the following criteria:
• Overall scientific and technical feasibility of the proposed solution;
• Economic potential of concept (e.g. Total Cost of Ownership);
• Business potential for Enel;
• Novelty and creativity;
• Potential for proprietary position (i.e., is the technology novel or protectable);
• User's capabilities and related experience;
• Realism of the proposed solution;
• Maturity level of the proposal.

 

In case the reward includes "Collaboration with Enel", once suitable solution/s have been identified, Enel will reserve the opportunity to start a collaboration, by way of example, all or part of the following activities:

• Test execution;
• Supply of prototypes (if an equipment);
• Installation and site tests;
• Follow up and monitoring of the proposed idea behavior.

 

At the end of the assessment, you will receive feedback.

If you are successful, you will be informed and moved forward to the 2nd stage of this challenge.

For that 2nd down selection stage, both IBM and Enel will evaluate your proposal according to the criteria above. A set of chosen startups will enter into one to one sessions with both IBM and Enel, with chosen startups being asked to pitch their solutions to both teams.

The final award for this Challenge is contingent upon satisfactory completion of the Enel internal verification process, including acceptance of the Regulation for this Challenge.

 

Partner with IBM to innovate and grow

Having everything you need to react to the challenges you face will make the difference between gaining an advantage over your competitors or being left behind. You will undoubtedly need access to Application Programming Interfaces, from AI to Cloud Native, development tools and code patterns, or just a cloud platform to create your prototype. You can access IBM technology to help to create or enhance your solution, including:

• IBM Watson, to create AI/ML models
• Cloud object, file and structured databases
• Development tools & starter code-patterns
• Cloud Platform for deployment (Kubernetes, code engine, VMs, cloud functions)
• Surfacing your solution within the OpenShift operator hub across multiple clouds, where appropriate

 

As an IBM partner, you can unlock a variety of benefits to explore IBM technologies with world-class technical support, training and education. In addition, we offer new partners up to $12,000 of IBM Cloud credits for hands-on access to 170+ industry-leading cloud services to learn the technology and build solutions.

Claim your free IBM Cloud credits and start building.

More generally, whether you are taking part in this Tech Innovation Challenge, or you have a next-generation solution in mind that you are eager to develop and launch, IBM PartnerWorld provides support and expertise no matter where you are on your journey. Joining IBM’s Partner Ecosystem is the catalyst for your business to achieve new levels of success. The IBM PartnerWorld Program is designed for partners to thrive in the Cloud Era by introducing a new track and benefits for partners who build innovative applications.

 

When you join IBM PartnerWorld you can:

• Leverage our global ecosystem to expand your network globally
• Unlock robust benefits optimised for your business model
• Engage with our first-class support
• Grow your business to earn more money

Join PartnerWorld and boost your business