Innovation Challenges

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Challenge Owner(s)
Aberdeen Standard Investments, Agurd Technologies Pte Ltd, Investment Management Association of Singapore (IMAS), SpEx Asia, Agility, Argud Technologies, Beyon, CA.sg, DWS Investments, E3 Sports
, Eastspring Investments, EduSpaze, Equatre, Experia Events, Fidelity International, Gardenasia, GlobalSign.In, Hustle & Bustle, MCI-Group, National Heritage Board (NHB), National Library Board (NLB), Nikko Asset Management, ResidentButler.sg, Roche, SACEOS, Schroders Investment Management, Singapore Manufacturing Federation (SMF), SingEx, Sompo, abrdn plc, Suntec, UOB Asset Management, Visa, Allianz Global Investors, Seriously Addictive Mathematics
Organiser(s) Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA)
Industry Type(s) Financial Services
Application Start Date 13 November 2019
Application End Date 14 February 2020
Website Click here to learn more

About Challenge

IMDA’s Open Innovation Platform (OIP) is a virtual crowd-sourcing platform that connects and matches real business challenges or digitalisation opportunities of Problem Owners to Problem Solvers. The platform accelerates sectoral digital transformation and expands innovation capacity in Singapore. Industry-wide problem statements are now hosted on the OIP.

 

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Challenge Owner(s)Sompo
Industry Types(s)
Digital/ICT, Financial Services

How might we make commission payments to intermediaries and our employees in real-time, so as to incentivise them to promote our products and services?

WHAT ARE THEY LOOKING FOR

Proof-of-Concept (POC) digital payment solution that can immediately pay the correct commission amount directly into their bank account, furthermore they should:

• Work in the Indonesian market.
• Send notifications to the intermediary when commission payments are made.
• Generate reports (Audit Trails) to support operations.
• Search previous transactions.
• Handle immediate payment that supports a broad spectrum of banks in Indonesia.
• Able to integrate with existing system to retrieve information.
Challenge Owner(s)Roche
Industry Types(s)
Digital/ICT, Healthcare & Biomedical

How might we create a digital platform to empower cancer patients and their families along their treatment and recovery journey with external parties and treatment information, so as to make better and sound decisions and stay connected with key communities?

WHAT ARE THEY LOOKING FOR

Prototype solution for cancer patients in Singapore to validate usability, functionality, utility and desirability. The solution should be able to scale to a regional and multi-lingual platform, designed to be patient centric, intuitive, personalised and engaging user experience.

The solution should include the following data and information in order to act as a virtual portal that connects the patient and their family members to external parties:
• Patient Diary and Patient-to-Patient• Patient-to-Professionals• Oncology financial calculator/counselling

Challenge Owner(s)Seriously Addictive Mathematics
Industry Types(s)
Digital/ICT, Education Services

How might we protect our educational material against illegitimate use, while also providing a user-friendly and fast printing experience?

WHAT ARE THEY LOOKING FOR

Prototype solution that has an enhanced, flexible, and scalable cloud-based system for providing course materials to our educators. The current solution is hosted on Microsoft Azure.

The solution needs to:

• Provide a user-friendly experience for our educators wherein one (or few) operations.• Prevent overuse of the materials (for ‘phantom students’)
• Avoid any form of permanent download of the materials by the 
educators, to avoid them building up their own database of the materials over time.• Work with extremely diverse operating systems, browsers, connections and printers as we have a global footprint and a diverse client base.

Challenge Owner(s)ResidentButler.sg
Industry Types(s)
Digital/ICT, Electronics

How might we provide an integrated mobile platform that can enable, track and manage communications and transactions between app users (home residents) and ResidentServices™ Providers (RSPs) and effectively connecting and engaging them, so that we can turn these data into valuable insights, predictions and decisions?

WHAT ARE THEY LOOKING FOR

Proof-of-Concept (POC) digital mobile platform that can enable, track and manage communications and transactions, that are intuitive and user -friendly with the following capabilities:

• Study residents’ behaviours in each estate. 
• Find the correlation among type of services, price of services, and type of estates where services are offered.
• Predict trends of services offered. 
• Discover new type of services in demand. 
• Extract and study the raw data and transform into useful statistics and product reports for next course of action.


Challenge Owner(s)ResidentButler.sg
Industry Types(s)
Digital/ICT, Food Services, Retail

How might we provide an e-commerce Management Platform that can efficiently connect various franchisors (Corporate RSPs) with their respective franchisees (neighbourhood stores) and their marketing executives (individual RSPs) to enable seamless partnership and operations?

WHAT ARE THEY LOOKING FOR

• Proof-of-Concept (POC) solution of a platform that enables a network of franchisors to engage, interact and transact with their marketing executives and franchisees;User-friendly and comprehensive ecommerce platform with the relevant set of features that can:

• Allow brands to create, sell and market products, manage inventory, accept and process payment.• Provide a consolidated view of demand, supply, transactions (e.g.franchisee sales volume, order tracking and fulfilment) and customers across all channels and fulfilment locations.• Provide registration, onboarding and performance management of franchisees and marketing executives.

Challenge Owner(s)Gardenasia
Industry Types(s)
Digital/ICT, Environmental Services, Food Manufacturing

How might we use technology and digital storytelling on our intellectual property, (eco-ambassadors mascots- Titoy and Morchoo) to capture the attention of 10 million people, grow a community around Environmental Sustainability and Food Security and make them into global eco-ambassadors? 

WHAT ARE THEY LOOKING FOR

• A novel, technology driven prototype solution (e.g. Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, experimental gaming or more) that can captivate a wide audience and highlight our characters in a way that aligns with their values.• The solution should help us attract and develop a community that is in alignment with our values of Environmental Protection, Climate Change, Sustainable Agriculture and Food Security.• The 10 million views should therefore translate to increasing engagement and growth of this community.

Challenge Owner(s)Equatre
Industry Types(s)Digital/ICT

How might we deliver live-streaming and other local sports content via a compelling, interactive proprietary platform?

WHAT ARE THEY LOOKING FOR

Prototype solution that can be the heart of a compelling new local sports live-streaming service.

The solution needs to include:

• An appropriate app design and interface that can provide digital sports content to users, where they can quickly find and interact with the content of most interest to them
• The ability for users to generate and post their own content (clips, comments and other interactions) to the platform for sharing within the community, with appropriate moderation to control harmful content.
• Easy to use by event organisers to share details of upcoming events and provide coverage of them.
• An appropriate back-end solution to enable the service to work, using Equatre’s own servers as the main infrastructure.

Challenge Owner(s)EduSpaze
Industry Types(s)
Digital/ICT, Education Services

How might we save time for educators from administrative tasks so that they can spend more time on facilitating quality learning ?

WHAT ARE THEY LOOKING FOR

Proof-of-Concept (POC) solution that demonstrates an improved experience and time saved from an educator’s weekly schedule. 

These time savings could come from any of the following areas:

• Lesson preparation: time is spent preparing for individual lessons, which usually involves drawing on the existing curriculum, contextualising it for students, doing their own research and creating lesson materials.• Organisational administration: schools and educational institutions come with organisation obligations inside and outside the classroom, including taking and reporting attendance, managing leave and etc.• Marking and assessment: marking classwork and homework, administering and assessing examinations and projects, and preparing grades and performance reports.

Challenge Owner(s)E3 Sports
Industry Types(s)
Digital/ICT, Electronics

How might we deliver an efficient running race timing system that is easy to use and offer low cost implementation for each organised community races?

WHAT ARE THEY LOOKING FOR

Prototype app-based race timing solution that is both accurate, cheap and easy to set up for race organisers, including amateur organisers.

The solution needs to support the following actions:

• Official registration of race participants, with user data stored to make future registration easy without having to re-enter data (with secure data storage in accordance with PDPA)• Race organisers do not need to set up complex infrastructure beyond commonly available devices (printed paper, phones or tablets for example)
• The solution must ensure the integrity in the race results (assurance that the participant was at the start and finish points at the precise recorded time) and, preferably, to ensure that the route was adhered to.


Challenge Owner(s)E3 Sports
Industry Types(s)Digital/ICT

How might we use digital mobile devices to deliver digital content for a compelling, interactive, and engaging exercise experience?

WHAT ARE THEY LOOKING FOR

Prototype solution that can deliver a highly engaging exercise experience using digital avatars for individual exercise sessions, at home or without the presence of physical trainer.

The solution needs to:

• Deliver our exercise training content (led by our digital avatar trainers) in a compelling and immersive way within the home, most likely through an app-driven experience
• Capture real-time data about the user’s exercise performance (for example, through heart rate, video image recognition or other sensing) and use that data to provide feedback to the user, in the form of encouragement or motivation• Promote a social experience with other users on the platform, to simulate the benefits of a group session (social interaction and accountability to peers)


Challenge Owner(s)CA.sg
Industry Types(s)Financial Services

How might we create a smart auditing platform to automate parts of the auditing process and the amalgamation of data to provide timely recommendations and key judgements to deliver high quality audit services?

WHAT ARE THEY LOOKING FOR

Proof-of-Concept (POC) smart auditing platform that can enhance the quality of work of the auditor in the following areas:
  1. Data Amalgamation
  2.  Audit Planning
  3.  Audit Verification
  4.  Audit Adjustments
  5.  Report Generation

There are no restrictions on the geographic location of the problem solvers who may choose to apply to this challenge. However, the POC needs to be demonstrated in Singapore.


Challenge Owner(s)Singapore University of Technology and Design
Industry Types(s)
Digital/ICT, Electronics, Food Manufacturing

How might we commoditize food manufacturing plants to efficiently utilize the assets production capabilities during periods of low utilization?

WHAT ARE THEY LOOKING FOR

Proof-of-Concept (POC) solution that is able to effectively increase productivity in all manufacturing plants with the following functions:
• A highly user-friendly portal that is able to accurately match both the demand and supply parties in real-time through a set of rules/algorithms.
• An end-to-end solution which includes e-billing and online payment.
• A feedback mechanism for users to provide feedbacks and ratings.
• A customisable profile system to allow machine owner’s anonymity
Challenge Owner(s)SpEx Asia

How might we automate the collection and verification of potential customer contact lists, to increase accuracy and save time for higher value work?

WHAT ARE THEY LOOKING FOR

Prototype solution that can automate some or all of the collection and verification process (data extraction and data cleansing). The solution would need to:
• Automatically collect individual customer data (name, company, job title, industry, location, email, phone number) based on parameters supplied by the client, from a range of public online data sources
• Verify the data to ensure at least 90% accuracy
• Provide a user-centric user interface (UI) so our team can easily use the solution to enter a client’s preferred parameters, and deliver usable outputs for SpEx’s customers in the form of an excel spreadsheet.
 
Challenge Owner(s)Beyon
Industry Types(s)
Digital/ICT, Hospitality

How might we design a digital platform that extends and expands our current solutions for easy integration with other travel related digital solution providers for a more holistic traveller planning services? 

WHAT ARE THEY LOOKING FOR

Proof-of-Concept (POC) digital platform that can facilitate connected services within the travel management ecosystem. The solution should be mobile-friendly and user-friendly to handle multiple queries from both travellers and partners (travel related providers).

It should have the following capabilities:

• Enable current solution features into APIs or plug-and
-play components, that can be shared and connected to other applications.• Ensure robust infrastructure and governance model when interacting with other solutions.• Leverage on AI and Machine Learning to automatically update database inventory with the most updated information on rates and activity details.


Challenge Owner(s)Suntec
Industry Types(s)Digital/ICT

How might we create a back-of-house visitor management system that meets regulatory requirements and is capable of accurately and efficiently tracking large volume of transient visitors across multiple locations within a building?

WHAT ARE THEY LOOKING FOR

Prototype solution that can register, manage and authenticate the access of BOH visitors, track their movement for security and safety purposes, and do so in a secured and data-compliant manner.
The solution should have the following features:

• Real-time authentication of approved visitors using data 
compliant methods.• Be robust enough to authenticate and clear access in about twenty seconds for each visitor.• Capture information required to gain access that will comply to the security guidelines of the event venue (Information can include partial NRIC, purpose of visit, areas of access, validity of Permit To Work (PTW))

Challenge Owner(s)SingEx
Industry Types(s)Digital/ICT

How might we better capture customer’s data during events for behavioural insights so that organisers can make better informed decisions that will result in a more personalised attendee experience?

WHAT ARE THEY LOOKING FOR

• Prototype solution that is able to make sense of user data pools that is deposited in different systems (both internal and third-parties applications) with the ability to provide recommendations on how to create more personalised attendee experiences through automated behavioural analysis and insights generation. 
The tool would benefit attendees by allowing event organisers to create opportunities for more meaningful interactions during events, and drive repeated visits by attendees and longer engagement time within the community online and offline.

• The solution should provide scenarios and possibilities that can enable organisers to make sense on how to better orchestrate activities for a more meaningful customer experience. It should be cloud-based and easily accessed through mobile devices.

Challenge Owner(s)MCI-Group
Industry Types(s)Digital/ICT

How might we create more active O2O2O engagements between industry associations and their members through a

digital platform?

WHAT ARE THEY LOOKING FOR

Prototype solution that can enable active engagement among participants to share content and join discussion groups or forums. The solution should include and have the ability to expand into different languages and be mobile friendly.

The platform should be able to:

• Allow for public accessibility to a pre-determined set of features and also incorporate a separate secured sign-in access for paid subscribers.
• Enable profiling of signed-in members so that customised engagement can be triggered through online prompts and push notifications• The platform should be user-friendly and intuitive

Challenge Owner(s)Hustle & Bustle
Industry Types(s)Digital/ICT

How might we create a visualisation tool to process visitors and other related-event data so as to empower event organisers and owners to better evaluate event success and ROIs?

WHAT ARE THEY LOOKING FOR

• Prototype solution that can perform data analysis on data collected from other third party platforms and across multiple events, to provide post event reports that give better visibility of what contributed to the success of an event and what should be improved for the next event.

• The platform should be able to take data from other sources (event apps like Jublia, Pigeonhole, etc.) and provide insights in a visual manner like graphs, infographics, etc. to assist in the review of an event.
• The platform should allow for the input of different parameters, and be able to generate reports in a format that will allow easy dissemination and further editing if required.

Challenge Owner(s)GlobalSign.In
Industry Types(s)Digital/ICT

How might we create a predictive engine for more accurate match rate for professional event attendees to networks and content during and after the event? 

WHAT ARE THEY LOOKING FOR

• Proof-of-Concept (POC) solution that matches interest of professional conference attendees to relevant connections, enabled by a smart matching engine
• The AI engine should be smart enough to capture data from different sources to build an accurate profile of the attendee and related parties to be connected with.
• The engine should be able to leverage on Machine Learning to become more accurate over time as more data is collected over more events.
• The output of the matches should create new value to the professional attendee 
Challenge Owner(s)Experia Events
Industry Types(s)
Digital/ICT, Electronics

How might we anticipate the needs of delegates, exhibitors and trade visitors more accurately, so as to enable a richer event experience?

WHAT ARE THEY LOOKING FOR

• Proof-of-Concept (POC) solution that leverages on digital technology with location tracking capabilities to provide smart and relevant recommendations (both business and leisure activities) to users before and during the event. When onsite, the platform should be able to prompt real-time recommendations based on the physical location of the delegates.

• There are no restrictions on the geographic location of the problem solvers who may choose to apply to this challenge. However, the POC needs to be demonstrated in Singapore.

Challenge Owner(s)Agility
Industry Types(s)Digital/ICT

How might we better plan and execute the movement of exhibits into and out of diverse and dynamic event sites with greater efficiency? 

WHAT ARE THEY LOOKING FOR

Prototype digital platform solution for representing, communicating and displaying floor layouts and the construction timetable, to enable enhanced planning and execution of exhibit delivery and removal. 
Algorithmic support to determine efficient logistics using the floor plan and timetable as inputs:
• Planning the optimum way to move in and move out to minimise resource and equipment use (optimised timetable working together with all other suppliers on the show floor).
• Integrate easily with existing data, e.g. shipping details of exhibits or relevant exhibitor sited at particular booths
Challenge Owner(s)Agurd Technologies Pte Ltd
Industry Types(s)
Digital/ICT, Financial Services

How might we provide a cloud-based AI development tool for seamless access to usable capital market data for data scientists around the world, so they can spend more time on high value work?

WHAT ARE THEY LOOKING FOR

Prototype solution that:

• Uses Anaconda Distribution (or similar) software and build a cloud-based frontend with all the necessary AI tools that seamlessly assesses over 1000 different market indicators, including stock prices, technical indicators and fundamental market data.• Accesses both structured and unstructured data, both as large datasets through to the lowest denominator (e.g. a single stock price).• Provides a highly user-friendly downloading experience for professionals working in the financial sector.• Serves as a cloud-based tool that is interoperable with third-party software.

Challenge Owner(s)Visa
Industry Types(s)
Digital/ICT, Electronics, Financial Services

How might Visa provide a seamless last mile digital payment solution for corporates so as to improve the efficiency of making payments in business transactions?

WHAT ARE THEY LOOKING FOR

Proof-of-Concept (POC) solution that is able to reduce the turnaround time for payment between different businesses with the following functions:
• An intuitive user-friendly portal able to integrate both billing and payment processes.
• A smart system that is able to verify billing documents against other business records before making payments.
• Built in algorithms to remind and notify users of any upcoming payments which are due.
Challenge Owner(s)Eastspring Investments
Industry Types(s)Financial Services

How might we more effectively and confidently scan the regulatory environment to identify change and assess its impact, and efficiently manage change to ensure compliance in our businesses across all the jurisdictions we operate in?

WHAT ARE THEY LOOKING FOR

Prototype solution that helps support regulatory change management process and reduces the time to understand the change and its possible impact across business units and jurisdictions.
The solution would need to:
• Constantly scan the horizon for indicators of, or details of, regulatory changes.
• Consolidate, and translate this into actionable intelligence for our teams to act upon.

• Allow for ease of integrating the regulatory changes with internal processes.


Challenge Owner(s)UOB Group
Industry Types(s)Financial Services

How might we create solution that provides robust investment models, that takes into account the huge amounts of data that are available for analysis, in order to come up with well-timed actionable investment recommendations that results in market outperformance, after all possible slippage costs are considered?

WHAT ARE THEY LOOKING FOR

Prototype solution that is user-friendly for analysts and portfolio managers to better analyse stocks and bonds. The solution should be able to:
• Analyse huge amount of structured and unstructured data to produce actionable investment insights.
• Automate data collection.

• Algorithmic support to determine efficient logistics using the floorplan and timetable as inputs.


Challenge Owner(s)Schroders Investment Management
Industry Types(s)Financial Services

How might we improve our internal processes to derive relevant insights, particularly through utilising our data, in

order to operate more effectively and efficiently?

WHAT ARE THEY LOOKING FOR

Prototype solution(s) that will enable us to make faster
and more informed decisions, to improve our business
across Operations, Distribution and Investment
Management teams.
• For Operations
• For Distribution (Sales and Marketing)
• For Investment Management

Challenge Owner(s)Nikko Asset Management
Industry Types(s)Financial Services

How might portfolio managers make more informed investment decisions by bridging both internal and external data in a structured and unstructured context, with a user -friendly assessment framework?

WHAT ARE THEY LOOKING FOR

Prototype solution that will enable portfolio managers and equity analysts to swiftly access and retrieve relevant key information, including both internal and external data, structured and unstructured.

This may include:
• Data ETL (extract, transform and load) to integrate internal 
and external data points on stock performance to derive market opinion or consensus expectations.
• A dynamic visualisation dashboard with stock’s historical performances, together with other alternative overlays.

Challenge Owner(s)Fidelity International
Industry Types(s)Financial Services

How can we use technology to better quantify sustainable (ESG) impact of a portfolio?

WHAT ARE THEY LOOKING FOR

• Prototype solution/ tool that can identify, quantify, gather, and track the sustainable (ESG) impact of a portfolio of specific stocks.
• A credible and clearly explainable approach and methodology that underpins the framework supporting the tool. 
• Presentable and clean output that adds value to our understanding of the sustainable impact of our funds that can be provided to our investment team and clients.

Challenge Owner(s)DWS Investments
Industry Types(s)Financial Services

How might we more efficiently on-board institutional customers, both in Singapore and abroad, so that we can legally begin to service them confidently? 

WHAT ARE THEY LOOKING FOR

Prototype solution(s) that:
• Collects and ensures quality of the data in context to the specific country regulations.
• Raises compliance and regulatory issues early so that they can be addressed in a timely manner.
• Can connect with existing workflows (e.g. Salesforce).
• Ensures real time authenticity and legitimacy of the information provided.
• If possible, gives the client the benefit of a single onboarding platform.
Challenge Owner(s)Allianz Global Investors
Industry Types(s)Financial Services

How might we better understand our customer’s needs, so we develop financial and non-financial offerings (e.g. products, insights, education materials, etc.) that better meets their current and emerging needs to better engage the investors in the customer buying journey?

WHAT ARE THEY LOOKING FOR

Prototype solution(s) that:
• Collects data from a variety of sources

• Turns collected data into knowledge that helps AllianzGI teams make decisions

There are no restrictions on the geographic location of the problem solvers who may choose to apply to this challenge. However, the prototype needs to be demonstrated in Singapore.

Challenge Owner(s)Aberdeen Standard Investments
Industry Types(s)
Digital/ICT, Financial Services

How might we automate the production of ESG performance reports using our current data sources, providing compelling and salient reports for our clients?

WHAT ARE THEY LOOKING FOR

• Prototype solution for ESG analysts to automatically produce compelling, salient and highly visual reports on ESG performance for their clients.
• Simple, usable interface from which the ESG analyst can specify the company and request the report.
• A means to automatically extract the data from the two sources (some form of integration with Bloomberg terminal and our internal notes).• Database of historical and comparison data. 

Challenge Owner(s)Investment Management Association of Singapore (IMAS)
Industry Types(s)Financial Services

How might we make information and access to non-traditional private funds more readily available for individual investors, providing them equal opportunity to invest in these funds without additional administrative or cost burdens for both the investors and fund managers?

WHAT ARE THEY LOOKING FOR

Prototype solution that:
• Enables individual investors to review non-traditional private funds as an investment option.• Provides a low cost / low burden onboarding and servicing process.• Helps the individual investor understand the risks of investing in a private fund, through using a common language to compare funds and assess risk (using data from public and non-public sources).

Challenge Owner(s)
National Heritage Board (NHB), Asian Civilisations Museum
Industry Types(s)
Digital/ICT, Land Transport

How do we develop an aesthetically pleasing autonomous Personal Mobility Device (PMD) to challenge stereotypical perception of the wheelchair usage by persons with disabilities that guides the visitor around the museum based on a selected tour on content delivery system?

WHAT ARE THEY LOOKING FOR

Prototype solution for a PMD with the following requirements:
• It avoids collision with another person, walls, physical obstructions and showcases that are made of glass.
• It communicates with the content delivery system. The device takes a user on a tour based on a list of objects featured in the system. Content (video or audio file) will automatically played when it has reached the object.
• An option to return to base (front desk) any time during the tour.
• An option to go to the nearest toilet.
• The device returns to base for charging after the tour.

 

 

 

Challenge Owner(s)National Library Board (NLB)
Industry Types(s)Digital/ICT

How might we increase readership with a digital loyalty programme that leverages on the existing NLB’s Book Bugs to build a community of readers?

WHAT ARE THEY LOOKING FOR

Prototype solution that:

• Applies digital technology to develop a loyalty programme that includes innovative reading, learning, collaborative and game elements centred around the existing Book Bugs programme.
• Able to utilise points that accumulate with loan of library items and/or participation in library/book related activities.• Integration with the NLB points system is optional at prototype stage, but is to be integrated with NLB points system for a seamless library experience in pilot and final deployment.• Able to profile user visitation patterns and deliver seamless experience.

Challenge Owner(s)Investment Management Association of Singapore (IMAS)
Industry Types(s)Financial Services

How might we utilise a gaming platform to build investment knowledge and learn the basic principles of investing for retail investors for better and well -informed investment decisions?

WHAT ARE THEY LOOKING FOR

• Prototype solution that teaches the basic principles of investment to the public through simple gameplay based on real historical data.
• The solution is meant to be targeted at the underserved general public with a focus on the middle -class working and early -working professionals who may have interest in investing but do not have enough knowledge or motivation to do so.• The solution should include overall concept for the gameplay and how the investment content is incorporated.• The solution should not take too long to load or use progressive indicators when loading• It would be good if the solution can be expanded to be a social platform where friends and family can play together, communicate and even compete.