Gazprom Neft, one of Russia’s largest government-owned oil companies, and the IT cluster of the Skolkovo Foundation managing the Skolkovo innovation hub are looking to support start-up teams developing data processing solutions. Winners are said to receive up to $75K minigrants from the Foundation and opportunities for industrial application at Gazprom Neft assets, the Skolkovo Foundation website .

The partners launched an innovation project competition called “Development of Data Helpdesk Service at Gazprom Neft” on September 1; the contest will continue through October 15, 2016.

The screening procedure is designed to help find innovative data processing and analysis tools. New solutions could be used to design and put together a special corporate service for company employees to be able to obtain information on the availability, sources and quality of data they need in their work. The Data Helpdesk project Gazprom Neft has initiated seeks ways of developing full integration of data coming from the firm’s different assets, with its accessibility on user queries. The partners also want to introduce a new data quality monitoring system.

Projects to be screened as part of the completion are expected to solve specific applied problems such as reduced and simplified reporting, opportunities for faster business system modifications, better data transparency and accessibility, employees’ increased awareness of any alteration their company initiates, etc.

The partners will evaluate projects’ competitive edge as compared to existing analogs, quality of teams, the ability of a team to meet specific project KPIs, and other parameters.