Banco Bradesco, a leading financial institution, was facing challenges in meeting evolving customer expectations due to its legacy data warehouse. The existing system was too cumbersome to share customer data with other entities, with customer, transactional, and consent data scattered across disjointed systems. This lack of collaboration hindered proper data analysis and AI, creating obstacles to fully embrace open finance and the move to become a cloud-first bank. The bank's legacy on-premises infrastructure needed to improve to overcome the technical barriers of sharing 20+ terabytes of customer financial data with outside organizations. Rolling out new applications with over 1,000 siloed databases would take months, making deployment inefficient. Engineers struggled to complete projects, as they were inundated with IT operations work to maintain their infrastructure. Analysts needed help accessing and exploring data promptly, dependent on an overburdened engineering team to provide curated data and reports.

Devsisters, a global entertainment and gaming app developer, launched Cookie Run in 2013, which quickly became a success with 2.9 million daily active users in Korea and over 10 million downloads within 12 weeks of its launch. However, as the user base grew, Devsisters' on-premises platform began to experience performance issues and became complex to manage and costly to maintain. The company needed a new data analytics platform that data platform engineers and data scientists could use to analyze big data more quickly and seamlessly. The existing infrastructure was associated with high maintenance costs and frequent issues that required support from software engineers, leading to a diversion of resources from enhancements to troubleshooting. Devsisters attempted to solve this by building its own SQL-based data querying environment based on Spark Thrift Server, but the challenges persisted, including non-functional update and delete queries and slow performance.

Autodesk, a leading software company, wanted to shift from a product-first to a customer-first mindset. The company aimed to establish itself as the industry-leading platform for designing and making things, focusing on the outcomes customers want to achieve rather than the products they need. To achieve this, Autodesk needed to create strong connections between customers and the Autodesk brand, not its individual products. In 2021, Autodesk underwent a rebranding process to reflect its transformation from a house of brands to a 'branded house.' This rebranding required significant stakeholder activation, as every employee, vendor, channel partner, and strategic partner needed to transition to the new Autodesk persona and branding. However, Autodesk's teams and processes were entrenched in product-first ways of working, posing a significant challenge to the rebranding process.

12RND, now known as UBX, is a boutique fitness facility with a national footprint of franchises in Australia. As the company began to scale its model, it faced a significant challenge in maintaining brand consistency across its franchises. The brand style guide was loosely defined and open to interpretation, resulting in inconsistent marketing collateral that did not effectively promote the franchise. The rapid growth planned for the network necessitated a solution that would make the onboarding of franchisees as frictionless as possible and strengthen the value proposition. Prior to implementing a solution, the central team at 12RND had to manually check each franchisee's social media accounts daily, negotiate with the franchisee, redesign and approve new posts, and then re-upload them. This process was time-consuming and inefficient, hindering the company's growth and expansion efforts.

Celerion, a clinical research organization with over 40 years of experience, was facing challenges in managing administrative tasks and employee onboarding. The company, which helps pharmaceutical and biotech clients get their drugs to market, was struggling with manual work for administrative tasks. They initially contacted Smartsheet to develop a project management toolkit. However, the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic brought about the challenge of keeping track of all employees working remotely and in the office. Furthermore, in May 2022, Celerion was approached by a new client who needed to run a study involving 200 participants across two sites, adding to their operational challenges.

Akamai, a global content delivery network (CDN) provider, manages approximately 30% of the internet’s traffic through its 345,000 servers spread across more than 135 countries. In 2018, Akamai launched a web security analytics tool to provide its customers with a unified interface for assessing a wide range of streaming security events and perform real-time analysis. This tool ingests approximately 10GB of data related to security events per second, with data volumes increasing significantly during peak retail periods. The tool initially relied on an on-premises architecture running Apache Spark™ on Hadoop. However, Akamai faced challenges in meeting its strict service level agreements (SLAs) of 5 to 7 minutes from when an attack occurs until it is displayed in the tool. The company sought to improve ingestion and query speed to meet these SLAs and provide real-time data to its customers.

AT&T, a leading telecommunications company, was grappling with the challenges of managing a massive on-premises legacy Hadoop system. The system was complex and costly, hindering operational agility, efficiency, and the optimal use of engineering resources. AT&T needed to transition to the cloud to better support its hundreds of millions of subscribers. The company was dealing with a highly complex hardware setup, including 12,500 data sources and over 1,500 servers. The on-premises Hadoop architecture was not only expensive to manage but also complex to maintain. Operational costs were high, and additional capital costs were incurred for data centers, licensing, and more. Up to 70% of the on-prem platform had to be prioritized to ensure 50K data pipeline jobs met SLAs and data quality objectives. Engineers were spending more time managing updates, fixing performance issues, and provisioning resources rather than focusing on higher-value tasks. The physical infrastructure's resource constraints also slowed down data science activities, impeding innovation.

PayPoint, a company that processes billions of dollars’ worth of payments each year, recognized the critical need to protect large volumes of sensitive data and improve their IT environment due to a changing threat landscape and regulatory environment. They also faced the challenge of a cybersecurity skills shortage, a common issue in their industry. PayPoint was required to adhere to PCI DSS compliance, which mandates organizations to ensure that various file tracking and monitoring systems are in place. They already had a File Integrity Monitoring (FIM) solution, but as they were going through an IT transformation, they needed to increase their FIM services, which would have significantly increased their costs. Increasing FIM services with PayPoint’s previous provider was problematic due to the high costs associated with processing client transactions.

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced businesses to rethink their operations, particularly the return of employees to the office while adhering to government-issued safety requirements. In countries where the virus is still uncontrolled, only 10 to 15 percent of employees are working on-site. The challenge lies in creating a safe environment for employees to return to work. Freespace, a company that specializes in making workspaces intelligent, had been helping businesses optimize office occupancy and reduce operating costs before the pandemic. However, the onset of COVID-19 meant that Freespace had to pivot its services to help businesses keep their employees safe. The company needed to make occupancy data available to everyone in the building, which required the installation of sensors on desks and in meeting rooms to collect occupancy data. However, this solution presented technical challenges, including the need for security, reliability, and scalability.

The healthcare industry is often characterized by a lack of efficient communication between providers and patients. Patients desire more clarity, access, and human connection in their healthcare experience. However, they often encounter more paperwork, more technology to forget passwords on, more time spent on hold, and more frustration. New technology, instead of simplifying the process, often creates more work for the clinician and a greater disconnect with patients. Even as new 'patient-focused' healthcare technology and telemedicine software emerges, patients are rarely consulted, resulting in a telehealth experience that is underutilized and overhyped. The challenge was to create a platform that uses communication channels patients already understand, enabling providers to offer a more meaningful care experience.

Rapidops Inc., a fast-growing digital strategy, transformation, and innovation company, was on a mission to launch the industry’s first native built-in calling and texting capabilities inside their Salesmate CRM in less than 3 months. These features would enable their customers to purchase local phone numbers, call prospects and customers, record calls, send text campaigns, and much more without needing a separate product. The challenge was to find a cloud telephony provider that could offer high performance, reliability, reasonable cost, and expert engineering and implementation services. The selection process was critical as Rapidops was looking for a long-term relationship with their potential pick. The company's CTO was directly involved from day one in evaluating the best telephony service provider.

In the fast-paced, digital economy, many buying and selling interactions have been simplified to a few taps on a phone or clicks on a screen. However, the homebuying process remains complex, involving multiple stages and parties. Realtor.com, with over 20 years in the real estate business, recognized the need for a more streamlined, user-friendly approach to home buying. Initially, the company operated as a traditional lead-generating platform, connecting prospective homebuyers with suitable agents. However, they realized the need to empower both agents and buyers with more efficient communication tools. The challenge was to create a system that would allow agents to manage leads and nurture relationships effectively, while also providing consumers with a choice of communication channels that best suited their needs.

Snagajob, a digital job board, was facing a significant challenge during the COVID-19 pandemic. The platform, which connects businesses with a wide pool of applicants, was struggling to facilitate the hiring process under the constraints of the pandemic. The traditional mass hiring events were no longer feasible due to safety concerns. Moreover, the platform was dealing with an influx of candidates who weren't the right fit for the jobs, leading to wasted time for businesses in sorting, declining, and following up. The challenge was not only on the part of businesses but also on the part of applicants who were tired of application black holes. The team at Snagajob needed to find an innovative way to bridge the gap between qualified candidates and businesses looking to hire them, while ensuring the process was safe and efficient.

St. Luke’s University Health Network, a hospital system with 12 locations across eastern Pennsylvania and western New Jersey, was overwhelmed by the volume of people seeking a COVID-19 vaccination. The communication bottleneck between those who wanted the vaccine and the number of vaccines available was a significant challenge. Initially, the hospital attempted to remedy this bottleneck with a simple online intake process that let patients fill out a questionnaire to determine their vaccine eligibility status. To support the registration process, they increased staffing levels for their existing call center to meet the rapidly increasing volume of calls from patients asking about the vaccine. However, they were still struggling to manage the volume of calls, with a callback list of about 5,000 people daily. This situation was not sustainable and posed a risk that elderly or immunocompromised individuals would not be able to sign up for a vaccine and further risk contracting COVID-19.

Nickel, a French company founded in 2014, aimed to provide bank account and payment card access to everyone at minimal cost through non-traditional banking channels like tobacconists. The company's 'virtual banking' model was based on providing fast, simple service to its clients. However, Nickel faced a challenge in optimizing costs and offering reliable communications to enable faster and easier client onboarding. Despite having SMS and two-factor authentication in place, Nickel wanted to streamline the onboarding process and efficiently communicate with their customers. Since all of Nickel’s customers use mobile phones, the company decided to streamline onboarding through the use of two-factor authentication in the form of one-time PINs. The service had to be extremely reliable as customers were performing sensitive financial transactions on the Nickel platform.

ComparTfon, a Mexican telecoms service provider and a division of Compartamos Banco, faced a significant challenge when the COVID-19 pandemic forced the closure of its offline sales channels. Despite their customers being adept mobile users, they were not accustomed to online shopping. The company needed to transition to a digital-only business model and guide its customers through the online purchase journey. The primary goal was to improve website conversion and reduce cart abandonment. To achieve this, ComparTfon needed to help customers navigate the online customer journey using a communication channel they trust, provide valuable real-time support in a cost-effective and scalable way, and capture customer feedback to identify improvement opportunities.

DPD, a leading provider of standard and express parcel services, faced a significant challenge with low message delivery rates, leading to unsatisfied customers and overwhelmed agents. The company used SMS messages to notify customers about package deliveries, but many of these messages never reached the intended recipients. This was often due to inaccurate delivery information, such as incorrect customer addresses or phone numbers. As a result, DPD spent considerable time and resources contacting customers to obtain updated information. This led to misdeliveries or no delivery at all, as customers who didn’t receive notifications weren’t present to accept their packages. The undelivered packages increased costs for DPD and overwhelmed their contact center with queries from unsatisfied customers. DPD recognized the need to improve its overall communication with customers by providing support over their preferred channels.