Columbia Bank, a rapidly growing Pacific Northwest Community Bank, was facing challenges in managing and tracking changes to Active Directory to ensure compliance. As the bank grew organically and through acquisition, so did its infrastructure. With an increased number of administrators and users, privileged access quickly became complicated and difficult to govern. Any changes made to one area had a ripple effect, making it increasingly difficult for IT leadership to ensure compliance as IT scaled to adapt to the organization’s growth. The Microsoft tools they used for auditing did not provide enough visibility into changes or the source, making it difficult for the IT department to pinpoint and resolve issues. Furthermore, a lack of clear reporting showing the “who, what, where, when and why” of changes posed a risk to compliance.

The company, a publically traded, Asia-based automotive manufacturer with global manufacturing locations, was looking to manage EHS at a single, U.S.-based manufacturing site. They needed a holistic platform to address EHS compliance and management concerns that could easily be implemented with their ~1,000 employees. The company was particularly interested in built-in reporting features, something their previous system lacked. They were looking to digitize their compliance and management system, including moving away from paper-based employee concern reporting, transitioning from clipboard inspections to mobile inspections, and replacing their excel method for tracking safety and environmental compliance.

The company launched an initiative to systematically implement EHS and Sustainability program elements to standardize key processes at all of their global sites. The challenge was to execute the initiative via a digital solution that enabled sites to adopt applicable program elements in a prioritized sequence with the concurrence of business program leaders, while providing continuous visibility to corporate management. The company needed to implement a phased priority scheme to manage EHS&S elements and set up a system that provided company-wide visibility to global sites. They also wanted to leverage data mining capabilities to easily identify risks across sites and drive corrective actions.

The company, a publicly traded, Asia-based automotive manufacturer with global manufacturing locations, was struggling with managing EHS at a single, U.S.-based manufacturing site. They were using outdated, inefficient methods such as paper-based employee concern reporting, clipboard inspections, and Excel for tracking safety and environmental compliance. The company needed a holistic platform to address EHS compliance and management concerns that could easily be implemented with their ~1,000 employees. They also required built-in reporting features, something their previous system lacked.

The enterprise was in need of a centralized system to enable behavior-based safety observations across various levels. They wanted to record employee observations at respective site, department, or equipment-specific levels and maintain real-time visibility to safety observations across multiple locations. They also wanted to leverage mobile technology to record observations. The enterprise was looking to enhance its overall safety culture and drive safety improvements across site programs. They wanted to analyze Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for trend analyses and multi-dimensional charting.

The global food and beverage supplier was in need of a digital solution to replace their traditional pen and paper spreadsheets used at each site. They required a system that was easy to understand and implement, with various reporting and charting methods for effective visualization and presentation of findings. The company also needed an intuitive interface for enterprise-wide deployment, mobile capabilities for deployment within multiple facilities, and integrated data analytics & reporting for continuous improvement.

The company, a global player in the glass and ceramic materials industry, was experiencing rapid growth and expansion. This growth brought about the need for standardization of processes to improve operational efficiencies, increase data integrity and reporting consistency, and ensure scalability to match the company's global growth. The company also needed a platform that would facilitate effective collaboration and communication across business segments. However, as the company grew, functions became more disconnected and departments became more siloed without the help of technology. The company was in search of a digital platform that could address these challenges.

As the organization grew, it faced the challenge of needing a more adaptable system architecture for organizational alignment. The existing system design was complicated and maintenance costs were high due to unused features or lack of capabilities to meet the organization's needs. The company was experiencing issues with siloed departmental functions, particularly for medical and EHS professionals with on-site medical clinics. This lack of collaboration made it difficult for departments to coordinate efforts, creating blind spots and making compliance challenging. The organization needed to standardize and automate key processes for occupational health, on-site medical clinic recordkeeping, and safety management. Without centralized metric tracking, processes were being duplicated and the company could not implement a formal program to reduce workers’ compensation costs.

Virgin Atlantic Airways Limited (VAA) was looking to replace its separate and disparate incident reporting processes with a single streamlined application that could be accessed by anyone across the entire company. The company required a system that would present a single view of each incident report, allow incidents to be linked to real-time information on flights and employees via web services, and be able to populate certain fields based on that information. The system would also need to be flexible enough to capture varying incident data, where each department could manage its own types of incidents, but also where the incident outcomes, closing comments, causal factors, and all actions taken in relation to the incidents, could be maintained within a single record.

In 2010, Agnico Eagle began searching for a formal EHS Management System that would work with them to apply best practices in accident management. Their Excel spreadsheets had become inefficient and Agnico wanted to centralize their approach to training, incidents, inspections and other critical business activities. This would simplify the process of individual sites reporting back to corporate on their environmental, health and safety data, and would allow the company to access real-time information and build real-time reports that top management could use to act upon their commitment to accident reduction. Agnico Eagle also needed a system that would accommodate multiple languages across their site locations.

Moss, a leader in the construction business in America, was looking for a fully integrated safety, risk and claims management platform. The company needed to integrate its dispersed and siloed data into a single database. They could use it to extract knowledge that could be used to understand what was happening in the business and to identify opportunities for improvement. Legacy manual systems simply would not allow Moss to be predictive and achieve the kind of growth rate they were seeking. Moss’ Safety Management System had a good foundation, but lacked comprehensive and analytical views – including the ability to assess incidents and claims together. It also did not have predictive analysis capabilities. Moss wanted to move to an SMS/RMIS (Safety Management System/Risk Management Information System) that provides a more integrated view of a working environment.

In 2010, Agnico Eagle recognized a need to improve environmental health and safety (EHS). It was using paper-based spreadsheets to track incidents, inspections and other critical activities and had no real-time capabilities to act on data. EHS staff at Agnico also needed to quickly get data in the hands of executives to speed up EHS project approvals. And, with locations throughout the world, a tool that could accommodate multiple languages – particularly Finnish – was a must.

Kloeckner Metals Corporation, a full-line manufacturing, production and service center business specializing in metals industries, was seeking a solution to streamline its processes and make it easier for branch operations to meet the company’s environmental health and safety (EHS) objectives. In 2017, the company was using multiple EHS systems to track incidents, perform corrective actions, hold safety meetings, perform job hazard analyses, and run other EHS programs. Each system was disparate and there was no interoperability. Kloeckner wanted to consolidate these workflows, close the loop on both corrective actions and audit recommendations, and enhance its overall EHS processes.

Coats, a global leader in thread manufacturing and structural components, needed a way to manage health and safety across its global business. The company's Journey to Zero strategy aimed to create a comprehensive global safety culture, but the demands of collecting and managing data across the organization were consuming significant resources. Before implementing Intelex, Coats relied on manual data entry and spreadsheets for tracking actions, which was time-consuming and prone to errors. The company needed a technology platform that could support its safety culture at every location worldwide and streamline the reporting and approval process involved with incidents and actions.

Linde, a global company with over 2,000 sites in more than 100 countries and over 70,000 employees, faced the challenge of creating a unified safety culture. The company's size and diversity made it difficult to ensure that all employees embraced safety and recognized the importance of reporting incidents. Following the merger with Praxair in 2019, Linde had to deal with several legacy systems, making it difficult to get benchmark KPIs when different systems were used in different business units. The company needed a system that could be used by frontline employees and that would encourage them to report incidents, no matter how small. Linde also wanted to support the business units with advanced data analysis to improve safety across the organization and to direct resources for continuous improvement.

National Signs, an internationally recognized sign manufacturer, was facing challenges due to its global expansion. The company's manual processes were not effective for the growing workforce and increased production. The existing systems and processes were not able to remove barriers that would allow employees to communicate anywhere, anytime, working together across the organization. One of the main challenges was tracking orders across the organization. With constant changes on orders, the production team’s manual process of writing jobs on pieces of paper as well as printing out drawings and physically handing out to each person their specific job for the day, not only wasted time, but created confusion and increased printing costs.

Bluworld of Water was struggling as they expanded rapidly to a company of 85 and moving into a new manufacturing facility. With around 100 projects active at the same time and at various stages, the challenge of managing the progress as well as retrieving pertinent information all in one centralized location started to become a major undertaking. The legacy process of storing documents in various folders on their network server and tracking project progress via Excel spreadsheets were no longer effective while project development milestones were slipping. Another challenge was the communication barrier between sales and production teams. The sales account managers were spending a lot of time conveying customer requirements to the production team along with trying to retrieve relevant project statuses from the production team to effectively manage the accounts. In addition, many of Bluworld’s projects were part of larger construction projects. The challenges with these types of subcontract projects were the small window of time, as little as a few days to install their water features. Their process required their products to be shipped within a few days before installation and manufacturing of their products needed to be completed a few days before shipping. Since all the tracking and notifications were performed manually and with consistent changes arising, it became challenging to keep everyone up to date on the project statuses and ensuring the key shipping dates were met to avoid project delays.

Valero Energy Corporation, North America’s largest independent refiner and marketer, operates 16 refineries and more than 5,000 retail venues. The Port Arthur refinery, located in southeastern Texas, employs over 800 employees and achieves a total production of 95,000 barrels per day. To create a safe workplace that meets OSHA’s Voluntary Protection Program (VPP) standards, as well as positively execute Valero’s best practice standards, Port Arthur needed a way to keep their policies and procedures accessible, orderly and accurate. Given the tough economic times, the refinery was also looking to implement a solution in the most cost-effective way possible. The Port Arthur refinery is only one of Valero’s 16 refineries. The campus consists of four complexes and more than 800 employees. In 2007, Valero corporate headquarters sent policy writers to Port Arthur to spend months rewriting and updating the refinery’s operating manuals. These procedures were maintained in a series of spreadsheets and paper copies stored at each complex and varied based on managerial preference. When the writers finished, Reggie Ramirez, Port Arthur’s Process Safety Management Coordinator, wanted to see that the procedure documents never again fell into disarray. Unfortunately, Port Arthur had no system to consistently manage the newest manuals.

Wairakaia Partnership, a mixed farming operation in New Zealand, was struggling with data management. The company was using spreadsheets to track their operations, but this method was time-consuming and inefficient. The cropping manager and co-owner, Bruce Graham, was frustrated with having to enter all his data back in the office at night, instead of being able to do so in the field. Additionally, he was unable to access his farm data when he needed it most: in the field. The company needed a solution that would allow them to create and access records wherever they were, and provide detailed historical data to inform their decision-making process.

Lilliput Ag, a farming enterprise that grows a variety of crops and produces seed for sister-business Baker Seed Co., was looking to adopt a newer recording platform linked to the cloud to track production data. The co-owners, Andrew & Sue Russell, felt that they had to be able to connect production data to their finance software in order to remain competitive. They were using an older software solution for 20 years and felt the need to advance to a cloud-driven mobile platform. The goal was to capture as much data as possible in order to dial back inputs where possible and decrease costs. The more data they had to reference, the more precise they could be with the inputs they applied.

Whitesides Dairy had been looking for a record-keeping program to suit their operation for a few years but were unable to identify a tool that measured up to their standards. They needed a tool that could help them keep track of how much nutrition they apply to their fields, as they use most of the manure from their dairy in their cropping operation, as well as some commercial fertilizer. They also needed to track the EPA registration numbers with the rates and applications dates for the insecticides and pesticides they use on their crops. They had been using spreadsheets for these tasks, but it was becoming increasingly labor-intensive.

Hough Farms was using a legacy farm management software but when that company was sold to a large input supplier, they wanted to ensure their farm data was stored with an independent party. They were also looking for a solution with better reporting capabilities to make data-driven decisions to help manage the business. The farm management system they had initially adopted was bought by a Big Ag company, which changed the stakes for them. They felt their data should be safe and secure with an independent party and realized their data would be used for different purposes that don’t necessarily align with their needs and preferences. At the same time, they also started to realize that this system didn’t really offer them the kind of reporting that they needed in order to make informed and data-driven decisions.

Alturas Ranches, a diverse farming business in North-eastern California, was facing challenges with their data management. They used to use field averages for their seasonal reports, but the limited scope of the dataset available to them meant they were not able to use the data to influence their decision-making processes. The inaccuracy of the data, especially with alfalfa hay and using one stack yard for multiple fields, made them realize the need for a better dataset and the ability to extract solid intelligence from this dataset.

Daly Potato Co., a diversified potato growing operation in Tasmania, Australia, faced two main challenges. Firstly, they leased land to grow potatoes but were unsure of the exact returns from this leased land. Secondly, as producers of food products sold directly to consumers, they were required by auditors to maintain accurate records of inputs used in the growing process. The company needed a solution that could accurately track all inputs, labour costs, and machinery costs to provide an accurate cost of production per field and accurate reports of all chemicals and fertilisers applied.

North American Lighting (NAL) was using a legacy reporting system to monitor its continuous manufacturing operations. However, when the legacy system was retired, the company saw it as an opportunity to standardize on a more versatile reporting system. The challenge was to consolidate disparate reporting tools to reduce costs and increase the number of report developers. The company needed a system that could deliver real-time data about shop floor operations as the pace of production accelerated. The IT department was tasked with migrating more than 150 legacy reports into the new environment and creating more than 100 new reports.

Parker Hannifin Corporation, a leading diversified manufacturer of motion and control technologies, was facing a challenge in deriving focused, customized reports from data stored on the corporate mainframe. The company had committed itself to a corporate-wide Win Strategy – a comprehensive continuous-improvement program based on a three-tiered foundation: premier customer service, strong financial performance, and profitable growth. However, measuring the results in a quantitative way wasn’t easy as IT professionals had to supply continually updated information about the many tasks and transactions contained in the Win Strategy metrics. The company needed to create an integrated, enterprise-wide reporting environment that allows users to easily obtain customized reports based on focused subsets of data from the corporate mainframe, and other data sources in the future.

Workers Compensation Fund (WCF) is a Utah-based non-profit mutual insurance company financed entirely by premium payments from customers and investment income. The organization offers underwriting, safety, claims, and legal services to more than 20,000 businesses across the state. WCF also offers coverage to companies in other states, through third-party insurance companies located outside of Utah. WCF realized the importance of an enterprise reporting and analytics strategy, but struggled to provide users across the company with simple and intuitive access to its diverse information sources, including Adabas, Software AG, and other systems. After previous tools from Crystal Reports and Brio failed to deliver the needed integrations, WCF turned to the WebFOCUS business intelligence (BI) and analytics platform from Information Builders.

World Wide Technology (WWT) was facing a challenge with its existing business intelligence (BI) toolset, which comprised Oracle’s Discover, Portal, and Reports solutions used in conjunction with an Oracle enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. The company was also dealing with a proliferation of hand-coded reports, as business users often requested “one-offs.” This put a strain on the IT department by requiring it to support more than 1,000 individual reports and dashboards. The company needed a major overhaul of its reporting infrastructure in order to remain competitive. They envisioned a BI environment that would enable business users to build, schedule, and automatically distribute their own reports and dashboards, allowing the IT team to focus on maintaining and organizing the data.

Fuji Xerox Information Systems Co., Ltd. (FXIS) was facing a challenge in managing project profitability due to the simultaneous running of several development projects. The process of report generation was time-consuming as it was handled one request at a time to meet the needs of individual users. Necessary data had to be downloaded from SAP, aggregated by project, summarized into a report for each representative, and then distributed among the various departments. The company eventually created a dedicated database containing SAP information for analytical use, with a Microsoft Access-based system for retrieving that data. However, many challenges still remained.

Payne Brothers Ranches, a farming operation in Northern California, was facing a challenge of managing an increasing amount of agricultural data. The data was coming from various sources such as independent PCA’s, soil reports, and tissue analysis. The Payne Brothers wanted a solution that could consolidate all their data in one place for better utilization. The transition to using independent PCA’s also meant that they had to start submitting their own chemical use reports to the counties and state, which they didn't want to turn into a lot of paperwork. The increasing flow of data was becoming overwhelming and the repercussions of not having the correct data available or interpreting data wrong could be significant.