Borchers, a Milliken & Co. company, is a global manufacturer and leading supplier of coating additives and specialty catalyst solutions. With technical service teams in the US, Germany, and China, Borchers faced the challenge of meeting constantly changing customer needs while adhering to increasingly stringent environmental regulations and specific market demands. The company prioritized quick response times and effective collaboration both within and outside of the organization. However, the lack of a unified system for application development and testing posed a significant challenge. The company needed a solution that could streamline data capture at each step of the process, from opportunities and projects to formulations, testing, analysis, feedback, and beyond.

Chemstar, a provider of environmentally friendly, high-performance starch-based polymers, was faced with the challenge of accelerating their new product development and expanding into new applications. To achieve this, they needed to shorten their new product development process and expand their R&D and sales teams. The company was also looking to digitize their project workflows and implement a data-driven project scoring process. The goal was to track the entire process, from a new customer request through product development and delivery, and to provide quantified insights into the end-to-end process. This would enable executives to continuously improve the innovation process and make informed decisions about which projects to pursue.

Circle-Prosco, Inc. (CPI), a provider of custom metal finishing formulations to aluminum and automotive manufacturers, was facing challenges in managing its sales, technical service, and lab work. The company had been experiencing aggressive growth, which led to a significant expansion of their sales, R&D, and quality teams. However, their existing stand-alone CRM system was unable to interface with the lab or support CPI's technical process. This lack of integration resulted in a lack of shared visibility of sales opportunities, lab projects, and customer feedback among the sales, technical service, and lab teams. Additionally, the process of generating sales quotes was time-consuming, taking up to 4 hours for each quote.

Magni, a leading provider of protective coatings for various applications, was facing challenges with its back-end formulation development process. The process was managed using a combination of Excel and Deacom ERP, and their project management systems were based on SharePoint. This setup was not efficient and lacked real-time visibility into the latest product and project information for their worldwide team of experts. In 2020, Magni decided to modernize its back-end formulation development process and replace their SharePoint-based project management systems. The challenge was to integrate all R&D formulation development and Tech Service projects into a unified system that would provide real-time visibility and streamline operations.

Origin by Ocean, a company developing core biorefining technology to extract value from marine biomass, had the opportunity to set up a brand-new lab in September 2020. The challenge was to ensure that all their detailed R&D data was captured digitally, reusable, and AI-ready from day one. Dr. Mari Granström, the Chief Science Activist and Co-founder of Origin by Ocean, had previous experience with labs conforming to software, which often led to inefficiencies and misalignments with the company's vision and goals. She was determined to find a solution that would fit the company's vision and goals in terms of lab best practices, rather than the lab having to adapt to the software.

Vibrantz, a company known for its commitment to constant improvement and exceptional customer service, was facing challenges in tracking projects, formulas, materials, testing, and feedback for their new development and technical service requests. The company was using outdated Sharepoint and Biovia lab notebook systems, which were not efficient enough to meet their growing needs. The technical service teams were handling thousands of color match requests and related lab work each year, but the process of capturing all formulation and test data was cumbersome and time-consuming. The company was also struggling with automating calculations, process steps, and approvals to speed up the end-to-end tech service process.

Eco-Runner Team Delft, a student engineering team at TU Delft, has been designing and building the most efficient hydrogen-powered vehicles since 2005. They participate in the Shell Eco-marathon competition annually, where the goal is to complete a 16-kilometer course using the least amount of fuel. The challenge lies in designing a vehicle with a fuel-efficient propulsion system and a body with minimal resistance or weight. The weight of the vehicle is particularly crucial to fuel efficiency, especially in the 2017 Eco-marathon course that featured a hill. The team's design efforts were focused on making every component of the car as light as possible to reduce the energy requirement to climb the hill. However, they faced the challenge of exploring and simulating many weight-saving design options while maintaining structural integrity, all within a constrained project schedule and a student budget.

Optisys, a small radiofrequency (RF) antenna design company based in Utah, faced several challenges in its operations. The company specializes in 3D printing custom RF antenna solutions for military and commercial applications, a field that requires intensive simulations. However, the company's IT infrastructure was not up to the task. Optisys' team members were spread across different regions of the US, making it difficult to collaborate effectively. The company was also limited by the need to set up electromagnetics licenses and mechanical package licenses on local workstations, which meant only one person could use them at a time. Furthermore, the company did not want to invest in setting up a local intranet and server to check out licenses, as this was outside of their core competency. Another challenge was the need to purchase new high-performance computers for simulations every two to three years, a costly and inefficient process.

EQRx, a biotech company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was launched in 2020 with the ambitious mission of making innovative medicines available at significantly lower prices. To achieve this, the company needed to build a modern development platform that could align cross-functional business processes and deliver efficiency at scale. The platform needed to meet the company's requirements for minimal custom development, sustainable total cost of ownership, and productized integrations to reduce maintenance and complexity. The challenge was to implement this platform across various departments including clinical data, clinical operations, quality, regulatory, and safety in a short span of time.

GSK’s field teams heavily relied on Veeva CRM for their daily operations. However, they faced challenges in pre-call planning, affiliations management, and direct-to-practitioner (DTP) sampling process. The pre-call planning process was time-consuming as reps had to sift through a lot of unnecessary information to prepare for a call. The process of creating or breaking an affiliation between a healthcare professional (HCP) and a healthcare organization (HCO) was also cumbersome, involving multiple steps. Moreover, with the transition to a fully DTP sampling process, reps had difficulty tracking their inventory of virtual samples. They could only see the sample limits when they were in front of an HCP, which was not efficient.

Kyowa Kirin, a large biopharma company based in Tokyo, Japan, was faced with the challenge of adapting to the digital shift in the industry, particularly in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. The company needed to deliver relevant content to healthcare professionals (HCPs) through digital channels, which had become the new standard for interaction in the field. The shift to digital engagement models required the company to create more content faster, while maintaining compliance and cost-effectiveness. The company also needed to harness data-driven insights to inform the content creation process and deliver personalized content at each stage of the customer journey.

The National Portrait Gallery, in collaboration with historian Simon Schama, was tasked with creating an immersive and seamless audio guide experience for their exhibition. The exhibition was divided into five themes: Power, Love, Fame, People, and Self. The challenge was to provide an automatic audio guide that would allow guests to explore the exhibit in their own language without having to manually control the audio. The goal was to enhance the visitor's experience by allowing them to focus solely on the exhibits, without the distraction of operating an audio guide.

Skriduklaustur, a historic site with ruins from the Middle Ages dating back to the 16th century, was facing a challenge in making its heritage network more visible. As part of the CINE See The Past | Imagine The Future project, Locatify was commissioned to help enhance the visibility and visitor engagement of the 16th-century monastery at Skriðuklaustur in Fljotsdalur Valley, East Iceland. The main challenge was to create an interactive and engaging way for visitors to explore and learn about the historic site, while also preserving the integrity and authenticity of the ruins.

The City of Austin Public Works Department was faced with the challenge of managing their extensive road network, which includes 7,582 lane miles of pavement and 450 bridges, serving nearly a million city residents. The city's primary goal was to increase resource productivity and maximize pavement life at the lowest cost to taxpayers. The annual cost of maintaining the city’s infrastructure was approximately $12M for capital improvement projects, $13M for street preventative maintenance treatments, and $6M for routine roadway repairs like fixing potholes. The city planners needed a system that would allow them to make more informed, data-driven decisions on when, where, and how to tackle strategic and operational challenges, thereby achieving the highest possible return on their road network investments.

The Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development (LaDOTD) was struggling with the limitations of handheld devices used for capturing field work. The devices had limited functionalities and required manual operations to upload work status. This included physically connecting the devices to docking stations for data synchronization. These processes were not only cumbersome but also led to data loss or inaccuracies. The inefficiency of these devices was slowing down task completion, affecting the overall productivity of the field crews.

The case study revolves around a global aerospace and defense company that was grappling with the challenges of managing a dispersed workforce. The company had to ensure that its employees, working from various locations, had secure access to the necessary applications and tools. The IT managers were tasked with securing endpoint systems while also dealing with shrinking budgets and changing priorities. The company also had to ensure compliance with the Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement (DFARS), which contains cybersecurity requirements that US Department of Defense (DoD) suppliers and contractors must follow. The company was seeking scalable DFARS-compliant solutions that could be deployed across its international operations. The company also had a long-standing problem of granting local administrative rights to non-IT users, which posed a security risk.

Euronet, Poland’s leading provider of electronic payment and transaction processing solutions, faced a significant challenge in ensuring the security and reliability of its vast network of ATMs. The company, which processed over 1.5 billion transactions in 2009 and posted annual revenues of more than $1 billion, owns over 4,000 ATMs and manages over 20 percent of all ATMs in Poland. The challenge was to provide customers with a safe transfer of financial details and the ability to withdraw cash at any time. The company needed a wireless technology that would provide a safe, reliable, and easy-to-install solution for its ATM network. The stakes were high, as a single day of downtime for a single ATM could result in 50 unhappy customers and up to $75 in lost revenue. For Euronet, with its 4,000 ATMs, a full day of outages could result in $300,000 in lost revenue.

Lovehoney, the UK's largest online adult retailer, faced a significant challenge due to its rapid growth. With 1 in 3 adult products sold in the UK coming from its warehouse, the company's sales increased by 22% in both 2017 and 2018, leading to over 100,000 orders a month. This surge in sales put immense pressure on the customer service team, which was already dealing with complex product queries and delivery logistics. The customers expected to find the information they needed quickly and without any delay. Meeting these expectations consistently was a significant challenge for the customer service team, which was also tasked with managing the increased demand.