HERBL Solutions, California’s largest cannabis distributor and supply chain solutions company, experienced rapid growth as demand for cannabis products exploded. The company grew from $20 million in revenues to $200 million in just three years. This rapid growth presented a challenge for HERBL to serve the growing demand profitably while also meeting strict regulatory requirements and supporting its retail partners. The cannabis industry is strictly regulated, which places huge pressures on all supply chain processes. HERBL needed a solution that could easily meet regulatory requirements and support the level of visibility and transparency needed to track and trace all their products in real-time.

Large organizations have always struggled to get visibility into their data. Frequently, data comes in many sources and formats while also being siloed across the organization. DLTs add ledger data and metadata to the mix. Similarly, consortiums need to interoperate with each other. Yet organizations often use disparate tools for logs, metrics and tracing. All these are deployed on different clouds or on-prem. Then they build their own tools to take data from the ledgers and put it into a SQL database. Consortiums may include competitors who don’t trust one another, so they don’t want to share data. But, if no one shares data, it can be challenging to determine if an organization has a problem or if it lies in the network.

Bosch Research was exploring the Economy of Things, where IoT devices will need to buy and sell to one another. The first challenge was creating a secure platform to support automated micropayments between 'things'. This suggested distributed ledger technologies (DLTs) such as blockchain. However, blockchains don't scale well. Reaching consensus on a transaction takes time. And tiny IoT devices have limited power, memory, processing, and connectivity. They certainly can't run heavy code. The question was how any blockchain could possibly work around all these constraints and how Bosch could help pioneer the standards needed for IoT devices to buy and sell among themselves.

VF Corporation, a highly diversified, branded lifestyle apparel, footwear, and related products company, wanted to improve corporate profitability, support retail expansion, and maximize the performance of the company’s more than 100,000 SKUs at more than 10,000 retail locations. In 2009, the company's RFSM organization assumed responsibility for the company’s customer relationship management (CRM) efforts with its retailers. While the company already had an internal CRM database, it also needed to correlate and analyze this data along with huge volumes of data from a number of other disparate internal and external sources. The company’s existing solution was not scalable or reliable enough for a company the size of VF Corporation. The existing solution did not allow VF Corporation to include spatial information, which was becoming increasingly important to the company and its retail expansion efforts.

Steuler Group, a manufacturing company with over 25 subsidiaries worldwide, faced a significant challenge in consolidating data from different sources and systems. This lack of a unified data source slowed down decision-making processes and hindered the company's ability to pivot processes, products, and operations effectively. The company's IT department was burdened with programming a system that could only be accessed by a few, and there was no single point of truth for data across the organization.

BetterCloud, a SaaS application management and security platform, was struggling with organizing API documentation and endpoints. The team had to search through various documents and spreadsheets to find information about APIs. Managing existing or new API endpoints was becoming unwieldy. The lack of a centralized system for API infrastructure, documentation, workflows, and test suites was slowing down the engineering team and making communication less efficient. The challenge was to find a solution that could centralize, orchestrate, and operationalize day-to-day administration and control for SaaS applications.

Before adopting InetSoft’s Style Scope, information delivery at Brenk Brothers mainly consisted of reports that were produced for monthly meetings with executive management. These relatively simple reports were produced by hand-running SQL queries, then exporting the data into Excel for manual modifications and chart building, then converting them into PowerPoint presentations for better display. The problem with this tedious process was that if something was not quite right with the report, or if a new informational need arose, they had to go all the way back to the drawing board, writing new SQL queries and restarting the process. This would sometimes have to be repeated several times for a single report. This stimulated a search for a BI tool that would make analysis and information delivery easier, for both the end user and the IT department. While Brenk Brothers did not want a tool that required large amounts of IT time for modifications, they also did not want to have to rely on a BI vendor to make modifications for them.

WeberHaus, a German manufacturer of prefabricated homes, creates custom houses for its customers. This process generates hundreds of documents for each construction project, which were previously archived in paper form and saved digitally on a network drive. With approximately 750 new construction projects every year, this resulted in at least around 2000 binders that needed to be passed from one department to another. The administrative effort and time that went into storing an increasing number of e-mail in the Windows drive and the complicated search for documents within the Windows file system were significant challenges. The goal was to develop a consistent storage system for any employee tied into the process, which would give them tamper-free storage of all project-related documents with the least amount of time and effort.

ROTEX Heating Systems, a manufacturer of heating systems, was facing challenges with its invoice authorization process. The company was receiving approximately 150 incoming A/P invoices per day, which required four eyes to verify each invoice. This process was pushing the previous way of distributing invoices and gathering signatures via internal mail system to its limits. When employees were out sick or on vacation, the invoices would stack up their mailboxes, resulting in weeks, not days, for certain workflow steps. At the same time, central administration often lost track of where everything was. As a result, the company was rarely able to take advantage of early discount payments. Additionally, a lot of time was wasted searching for proposals, order confirmations or contracts, and documents needed for everyone`s daily work.

SCHERDELGroup, a leading supplier to the automobile industry, faced numerous organizational challenges due to its impressive growth. The company had been using a mechanical circulating filing system to store and administer business documents at their German headquarters. However, when paper files reached capacity in the late 90’s, the management team began to look seriously at document management. The increasing piles of paper and the increasingly global nature of their business necessitated a solution that could convert information on paper into centrally stored information that could be used by employees worldwide. They wanted a Document Management Solution (DMS) that was a secure investment that could keep pace with their company’s dynamic development. Modularity and flexibility were also top priorities – it was especially important to integrate with their existing diverse application environment which includes custom ERP, CRM and accounting software.

Bosch, a global manufacturing company, was in need of a strong, collaborative automation technology partner to accelerate its digital transformation. The company was looking for a solution that could help them evaluate their operations, design and implement automated processes, and uncover ways to scale their efforts. The challenge was to find a technology partner that could meet Bosch's rigorous cloud security needs, critical for a company of its size and global footprint. Additionally, the company was also using RPA tools, so the new technology partner needed to have tight integrations to unlock even more value from across Bosch’s technology stack.

Advance Cabinet Designs Inc. (ACD) is a family-owned business that manufactures custom commercial cabinets for clients in the Northwest United States. The company had a paper-based accounts payable process that involved different employees adding documents to an information packet that moved from desk to desk. This process was inefficient and time-consuming. Additionally, ACD’s job files, which contained everything relating to a project, were in paper form and could be up to 10 inches thick. These files were often unorganized and not readily accessible to all employees. The company needed a system that would allow them to easily share information between employees and verify that the information being shared was the current version.

Georg Fischer DEKA GmbH, a pipe system specialist, was facing a challenge due to the extensive production data they had to archive. The laws surrounding product liability required that all manufacturing documentation is securely retained for more than 50 years. The company was looking for an alternative to archiving with paper due to the increasing storage space requirements. Additionally, the company saw this as an opportunity to re-think and reorganize the way their company communicates. In the past, each work group as well as each individual staffer had their own filing system. Records were manually organized, copied and filed in binders. Then after each year, the documents would be placed in a central storage space, which only an authorized employee could access. The search for any older records was rather difficult and took a lot of time. Any exchange of documents between departments was often problematic and even more time-consuming. Customer inquiries could not be handled quickly, since documents had to be moved within the building via “tube mail.“

Before deploying networked business intelligence (BI) from Infor® Birst, the information needed to manage finance, sales, and manufacturing processes was locked in multiple systems and only accessible to technical experts. Decentralized analytics teams pulled data directly from source systems, generating islands of information that could not be shared. Further, executive-level reporting was manual, and it was very time-consuming to not only access information but also to reconcile inconsistent metrics. These manual processes greatly increased the time it took Miller Industries to make decisions and were a huge drain on the productivity of the management teams.

Century Fence, a family-run custom fencing provider and pavement marking contractor, was looking to reduce its dependence on paper-based files, speed up workflows, and ensure records were easily accessible. The company wanted to implement a digital mobile solution to provide field superintendents with remote access to project documentation. The solution needed to integrate with their existing ERP and accounting programs and manage documents such as quotes, contracts, insurance, site plans, email correspondence, and more. The company's project folders remain open and active for about three months during the quoting, staging, installation, and billing phases of a project. It was crucial for Century Fence superintendents to be onsite and have quick access to project files during this time.

Corsicana Bedding, Inc., a national mattress manufacturer, was facing challenges in managing its documents and cash flow. For each delivery, the company produces an invoice which acts as a proof of delivery document. With over 350 deliveries a day, the company wanted to invest in a system to collect information from all locations and make it immediately available to the corporate office. The situation the company faced was that information took too long to get back to the corporate accounting department so that customer account information could be updated and reconciled. In addition, responses to customer questions were delayed until the information was received. Business critical documentation was being shipped by multiple people from various locations. This presented a huge challenge for customer service personnel located at the corporate office, often making it extremely difficult to research and resolve disputes quickly. This in turn led to upset customers who simply wanted answers.

TECHNO COLOR's huge volume of documents had become increasingly problematic: every day, about 1,000 pages of paper were tucked into binders and stored throughout various departments. Records from recent years were clustered in huge wall systems, while older documents were stored in dedicated warehouse space on pallets. This was all done in order to meet the legal requirements in their industry for document retention. Aside from all the wasted space, this paper-based archive had another problem – the search time that employees used to find individual records. Even employees working on the same project often had to look through different departments for delivery slips, contracts, test results or measurement protocols. At that point, copies were often made, so that duplicates were again stored at someone's own desk. This did not, however, guarantee that the information they found was the most current - like whether new details were discussed with a client, if new parts were already announced or if a recall was expected.

FALKE, a clothing company, had been storing its documents digitally since 1997 with the help of a service provider. However, this process was not efficient as documents were unavailable for a week and customer enquiries had to be stalled. Access to data was not user-friendly and was not possible from workstations. Copies were therefore often stored locally in departmental and workstation archives. FALKE was also looking for a system that could be expanded over time, allowing foreign sales companies to be connected in stages, enabling direct access to documents from the individual departments’ applications, and the introduction of a workflow to optimize document processing times. The company generates a thousand outgoing invoices each day, in paper form alone enough to fill an entire file. They are printed from COLD data. In addition to this there are 50 customer documents a day, 2,000 ledgers a month, 70,000 accounts lists a year, as well as 50,000 incoming invoices, 20,000 internal documents, and 15,000 payment documents for credit transfers or checks each year. This comes to an annual total of half a million documents, with retention periods of up to 10 years.

The metal manufacturing company was previously storing all their important documents in paper folders, which were sometimes archived multiple times in different departments. The space needed to handle this growing flood of paper and the time needed to carefully file around 100 orders a month became increasingly problematic. The company needed a solution that would not have interface problems with other software solutions in the company.

Nipro Europe Group Companies (Nipro) is part of a global conglomerate led by Nipro Corporation Japan, that runs a wide-range of medical-related businesses, including medical device and pharmaceutical packaging divisions. Nipro’s regional headquarters in Belgium is responsible for a global footprint that spans Europe, Africa, the Americas and Russia. Departments like marketing and HR had a challenge when it came to sharing workflows across 26 different sites employing 3,500 people. Whether in paper form or as email attachments, there was much information shared – which inevitably ran the risk of documents getting lost or emails falling through the cracks. Even when Nipro went from paper to digital, each different site often had different approaches - an email could contain a spreadsheet, word document or PDF. A move to Microsoft 365 and SharePoint Online advanced the pursuit of standardized workflows, but there was still the need for a process automation tool, ideally a ‘no code’ solution that everybody could use, rather than an IT driven service.

Dresser Natural Gas Solutions, a leading provider of measurement, piping, and instrumentation solutions, was faced with the challenge of migrating legacy document processes that were key to the company’s engineering operations. The company had a brief window of time to set up its own IT systems after being divested from a larger group. The legacy IT platform required replacement and the company had only 4-6 months to deliver a new solution. The old processes were heavily coded and hard to change, which posed a significant challenge. The company needed a process automation tool that could be implemented quickly due to the time constraints.

Sullivan Engineering, a New York-based civil engineering firm, was struggling to scale and meet market demand due to error-prone paper processes and process knowledge trapped in people’s heads. The company’s 60 full-time employees run and execute multiple construction contracts simultaneously, which was becoming increasingly difficult with their existing systems. The company spent three months searching for the best platform to digitize their processes and eventually chose FlowForma due to its no-code solution.

CVB, a joint venture of Costain, VINCI Construction Grands Projets and Bachy Soletanche, won the £605m tender to build the east section of the Thames Tideway Tunnel in London. The project was complex and multi-site, and the challenges were compounded by the impact of COVID-19. The over-dependency on paperwork was problematic on construction sites as physical forms could get lost or information could be recorded wrongly. With the added risk of carrying COVID-19, there was even more reason to look for a digital alternative. Compliance with building regulations was also more challenging with paper trails. A clearer view of processes would also make it easier to improve them.

The client, a leading global food producer, was using an old unsupported workflow system (Lotus Domino) for a variety of business processes that integrated with the company’s ERP system. The platform was nearing end of life and was no longer supported. When its parent company decided to migrate to the cloud with Microsoft 365, a new solution was needed to support workflow around a number of critical business processes, including Supplier Returns, Sample Requests and Product Change Requests. There were typically between 50 and 75 employees actively using one or other of the workflows on a regular basis across a wide range of departments, including finance, sales, production and purchasing. It was important that whatever replaced Lotus Domino was intuitive to use and capable of replicating tried-and-tested processes that were embedded in the business. A bonus would be a future-proof platform for further digital transformation.

The A14 Cambridge to Huntingdon Improvement Scheme, the largest road construction project in the UK, faced logistical challenges around business processes. The project, a £1.5bn joint venture between Costain, Skanska and Balfour Beatty, had to deal with approval processes that depended on printing out and physically sharing documents for sign-off. With a huge volume of paper in the system, documents inevitably got lost and mistakes were made. The A14 IT Manager was determined to find an automated workflow solution that could remove the dependency on paper-based processes and provide a single source of truth for the project. The solution needed to be built on the SharePoint platform, require no coding skills, and represent excellent value for money.

Coinford, a construction company operating in the southeast of England, was facing a disconnect between work carried out on site and back-office functions. This gap between physical and digital processes was causing bottlenecks. The company wanted them to be standardized and transparent, with up-to-date information that could be seen in dashboards rather than tracked down painstakingly through emails and phone calls. Archiving and storing site related documents was difficult; retrieving them for audit purposes time-consuming, particularly when paperwork went missing. The company had identified the solution, as Suzy Pinsent, Project Manager, explained. This decision went in tandem with a move to Microsoft 365, and the adoption of SharePoint and Teams for document management.

Rimkus, a global leader in engineering and technical consulting, needed to digitalize their processes to improve project oversight, save time, and increase operational efficiency. They had to move away from excessive paperwork that slowed project completion and had potential for mistakes/human error. The company spent three months searching for the best platform to digitalize their Special Inspection Field Reports, which involve a flow used to provide a detailed record of site visits.

AquaPhoenix Scientific, a leading test kit and reagent manufacturer, generates most of its business through custom orders. Each test kit has different labeling specifications and quality control documentation. The company moved to electronic document management to improve customer service and easily access documents pertaining to any order. They ship hundreds of orders a day and store between 3 and 50 pages of documentation for each order. The challenge was to streamline the process of order receipt, production, quality control, and invoicing while maintaining strict quality control processes.

EMOD Motors, a leading manufacturer of electric motors, was facing challenges with its document management. The company had to process over a thousand new documents daily, leading to stacks of paper. Documents had to be printed out from the ERP system and then transported between various departments. When specifications changed, it often took a long time to locate the document in question. If a document was filed incorrectly, it was difficult to track down. The company wanted to introduce a Document Management System (DMS) to reduce filing and search times, achieve more transparency in their processes, and ensure quick access to information for all departments.

Alfred Rexroth, a Berlin-based company in the metal industry, had to archive several hundred thousand documents every year. The company faced challenges in retrieving these documents due to the time-consuming search process. They decided to switch their ERP system to SAP Business One and find a new DMS system as updating their previous system would have been too expensive and required costly consultants. The company also faced issues with tracking invoices as they were sent around the company in circular files. The company also had to compile extensive documentation for each product manufactured, which had to be provided to the customer.