In 2018, Wyndham Hotels and Resorts acquired the La Quinta brand, adding 900 hotels to its portfolio. The challenge was to rapidly onboard these hotels and train their employees on Wyndham's company-wide procedures, policies, and computer systems. The onboarding process needed to be completed as quickly as possible since these hotels were already operational. Wyndham's franchise model heavily relies on a computerized property management system used by all its hotels to ensure a consistently high-quality customer experience. Therefore, training each hotel's employees to use this system and adhere to company policies and procedures was crucial. However, identifying the right processes to automate for efficient onboarding was a challenge. The conventional, manual approach to finding these processes was time-consuming, expensive, and vulnerable to employee bias.

Quaker Houghton, a global leader in industrial process fluids, faced a challenge in their customer service process. Their sales and service personnel would send customer samples to their labs for analysis to resolve customer problems. However, they lacked an efficient method to determine which of their nearly 20 labs worldwide should receive the samples. The process was further complicated by the need for tracking, approving, and reporting on the work activities. The existing process was driven by email, which was notoriously uneven in efficiency. It also required additional time from lab managers to locate and organize data to fully understand the overall demand. Quaker Houghton needed a better, faster way to streamline this process to enhance the customer experience.

Grange Insurance, a Columbus, Ohio-based company, was facing a significant challenge in its agent onboarding process. The process involved sending paper forms back and forth through the mail, which required manual follow-ups and prolonged the onboarding process to a month, from start to finish. This was particularly problematic as Grange Insurance’s independent partner insurance agents provide auto, business, home and life policies to individuals and businesses of all sizes across 13 states along the U.S. eastern seaboard. When onboarding new partner agencies across the country, Grange had to collect the required licensing documents via paper, requiring both sides to snail mail and fax papers to and from the home office. This not only slowed down the process but also increased the chances of incomplete documents, further delaying the onboarding process.

Captorra, a leading case and client intake software solution provider for the legal industry, faced a significant challenge in their client intake process. The process required signatures on various documents from both parties, which were traditionally printed and mailed. This method was not only time-consuming but also put Captorra at a competitive disadvantage, as the delay often resulted in losing business to competing firms. Additionally, Captorra needed a solution that could seamlessly integrate with their existing CRM, Dynamics 365. Their initial choice, DocuSign, proved to be a limitation due to its off-the-shelf integration with Dynamics. The need for a simple, robust, and quick eSignature solution that could integrate seamlessly with their CRM led Captorra back to the drawing board.

Sarasin & Partners, a London-based asset management firm, was grappling with inefficient paper-based processes that were hampering its operational efficiency. The firm, which is responsible for investing £13.9 billion on behalf of its clients, needed its processes to be easily auditable. However, the reliance on paper forms and manual processes was creating bottlenecks. For instance, documents requiring approval signatures could be generated by 220 members of staff and passed across up to 8 different desks, over 3 floors in the building. This led to approval processes taking many days to complete, with employees often having to phone or email their colleagues to ascertain the status of an approval. The firm also faced challenges in ensuring compliance with stringent legislation enforced by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) in the UK and other regulators. While the firm’s processes already complied with relevant regulations, they were not as efficient as they could have been. Furthermore, when audits occurred, employees faced the time-consuming task of collating all the necessary hard-copy documents to provide evidence of the firm’s regulatory compliance.

Roche Diagnostics, one of the fastest-growing pharmaceutical companies in Singapore, was facing challenges due to its rapid growth. The company needed to digitize its processes for better visibility and efficiency. The growth brought on a set of challenges to scale appropriately and the company needed flexible solutions that would evolve with the fast-paced company and clear the way for important research and advances in the field of diagnostics. Roche was looking for business process rationalization, end-user efficiency, mobile integration, better process compliance and visibility. The company was dealing with mounds of paperwork and was in need of a solution to streamline its operations.

Naylor Love Construction, a New Zealand-based company, was facing a significant challenge in maintaining its excellent safety record as the company expanded in size and complexity. With more employees and projects spread across various cities, the potential for accidents increased. The company had a system in place to track jobsite hazards and address them before they resulted in injury. However, the process was cumbersome and time-consuming. Workers had to obtain the right form from a job office, take them to the hazard site, record the problem, and then return to the office to file the form. This process was not only inefficient but also increased risks to coworkers, Naylor Love, and its clients, especially considering the stringent safety regulations. The company needed an automated health and safety management solution that could work at remote jobsites, enable hazards to be reported thoroughly, accurately, and quickly, and automate workflows to get hazards addressed promptly. The solution also needed to integrate with the company’s Microsoft Office 365 deployment.

Yamaha, a leading supplier of musical instruments and audio equipment, faced a significant challenge in managing its legal contracts and agreements. The company's growth led to the creation of different divisions, each with its own set of legal exhibits and agreements dictating how products could be marketed and sold. These divisions sold to retailers with multiple store locations, making the manual creation of documents a complex and time-consuming task. The process was further complicated when a national account carried products from multiple Yamaha divisions, requiring a Master Dealer Agreement and legal agreements for each division. The volume of emails and documents often confused retailers, leading to overlooked or incomplete documents. Despite being a Salesforce and DocuSign user, Yamaha had to step outside these environments to complete documents, leading to a desire for a document automation solution.

Fremantle Ports, a strategic manager of one of Australia’s largest general cargo ports, was facing challenges in managing large capital projects. The complexity and expense of these projects were growing due to lengthy lead times. The projects had to comply with ever-changing laws and regulatory requirements, fit within budgets, and continue to meet changing customer requirements. The port had numerous stakeholders, drawing input to major projects from its four divisions, each participating as appropriate to ensure project success. The use of manual templates and decentralised project development processes resulted in additional complexity and challenges for tracking progress.

A Boston-based financial services firm was struggling with manual and paper-based internal processes that were inefficient and insecure. These processes included administrative workflow tasks such as time off and work-from-home requests, internal documentation, and calendar scheduling. The firm was already using SharePoint to store information, but still relied on paper forms for many requests, which were manually managed via email, Excel, and physical delivery. This meant that requests had to be physically written on a paper form and delivered to the relevant colleague, before being manually entered in SharePoint. The firm sought to optimize these processes by leveraging workflow automation.

In 2013, the Target Corporation experienced one of the largest credit card breaches in history, with hackers stealing nearly 70 million credit and debit card numbers. This breach had a significant impact on small and mid-sized card issuers, who were faced with the daunting task of manually changing card holder limits, noting accounts, and then cancelling and reissuing cards. A Massachusetts-based community bank with $500 million in assets found that approximately 10% of their card holder base (900 cards) was potentially affected by the breach. The traditional recovery process from such a breach involves manually sending a letter and e-mail to affected customers, manually lowering transaction limits, manually updating account information, and then manually cancelling and reissuing cards. This process is time-consuming, labor-intensive, and prone to human error.

Standard Bank & Trust Co., a $2.2 Billion bank with 37 branches throughout Illinois and Northwest Indiana, was facing several operational challenges. The bank needed an efficient way to identify the various personal and business account portfolios for each customer, view the total account relationships, and understand the profitability of a given customer. However, the process of associating the accounts with one another and performing the thousands of necessary changes was proving to be a manual, time-consuming, and resource-intensive task. Additionally, the bank was also dealing with the challenge of reassigning accounts to different employees in the event of a job change, which could involve up to 5,000 accounts per incident. Another significant challenge was the annual dormant debit card purge process, which required the bank to manually search for cards that had been unused for nine months or more and change their status to “closed”. This process involved up to 10,000 cards per year and could take over 150 employee-hours to complete.

Institution for Savings (IFS), a $2 Billion financial institution with seven full-service locations throughout Massachusetts, was grappling with multiple, time-consuming manual processes in various areas of the bank. The bank was seeking a new way to reduce the time and cost associated with these processes. In 2009, IFS migrated their existing core to a new core system. Although the conversion was successful, inconsistencies and formatting errors in some of their customer data still remained and required more time to correct. Additionally, a pending implementation of a Bank Secrecy Act compliance solution created a conflict between that solution and the existing risk fields already present in their core. This necessitated more manual work to remove the risk fields in up to 20,000 customer information files (CIFs). In 2014, the state of Massachusetts changed the withholding rate on some investment accounts, including IRAs. ISF representatives would need days to manually change the withholding rate on each of over 200 IRA accounts. The resulting delays and occasional keying error would mean less time spent with customers and more time with data.

Care1st Health Plan Arizona, a Phoenix-based healthcare provider, faced a significant challenge when they expanded their services from Maricopa County to Pima County. This expansion increased their enrollment from approximately 50,000 to over 70,000 individuals almost overnight. The organization had to quickly update or add line-of-business records, provider panels, and other records to ensure continuity of coverage and reimburse providers. Additionally, as a newly-named Third Party Administrator (TPA) for Arizona’s insurance cooperative offered through the new National Health Insurance Marketplace, the organization was preparing to handle potentially thousands of new enrollees and provider records over the coming months. The organization traditionally used up to 15 different macros per day to perform large data entry and maintenance tasks, but these were unreliable and required constant monitoring. The small provider data management team was often pulled away from their daily work to manually enter smaller jobs of fewer than 200 records.

Agilyx, a global IT services company, faced the challenge of integrating compliance systems into their day-to-day operations. With offices in multiple countries, the complexity of their operations was high. They needed a way to document and communicate processes across their worldwide operations. Additionally, as an IT company, information security was critical, making ISO27001 accreditation a significant goal. The ongoing management of their information security management system was a complex task. Furthermore, Agilyx aimed to embed corporate social responsibility into their processes, specifically improving their environmental practice and management system to achieve Enviro-Mark Diamond Level status.

Fulton County School System, one of the oldest and largest school districts in Georgia, was facing a significant challenge in streamlining its operations. With over 14,000 full-and part-time employees and approximately 96,700 students across 105 schools, the school system was struggling with inefficient processes, particularly in the application process for its STEAM program. The application process was paper-based, which was not only time-consuming but also prone to errors and miscommunications. Parents had to fill out a two-page paper form and return it to the program coordinator, who then had to manually review all applications and individually contact parents regarding their child's acceptance status. This process was particularly burdensome for the program coordinator, who also held a full-time position as the school's assistant principal. Each year, more than 200 applications were submitted, and the review, approval, and parent correspondence were all managed manually.

MT Højgaard, a leading construction company in Denmark, faced a significant challenge when a subsidiary needed to retire several aging web applications and workflows used by over 400 field staff. The company had been using Lotus Notes, but the software hadn't seen development in three to four years, making the shift to online a significant challenge for the users. The company's subsidiary, Lindpro, had several outdated ASP.NET web applications running on Windows 2003 servers that needed to connect to the enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. Lindpro was also concerned about preserving the workflows staff used in the field. The existing forms were hosted in a central location that was slated for decommission, making it critical to improve the system while preserving their data for all projects.

The University of Maryland Upper Chesapeake Health (UCH) was facing a significant challenge in maintaining productivity due to cumbersome manual processes. These processes were not only slowing down operations but also making it difficult for the organization to comply with patient privacy and security regulations. The manual onboarding process for new employees and the process for closing accounts and access when an employee left the organization were particularly time-consuming. These processes, while compliant with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 and other patient privacy and system security regulations, were taking an inordinate amount of IT staff time and attention. The organization was in need of a solution that could streamline these processes and accommodate growth without compromising on patient care.

KBA, Inc., a Seattle-based construction management firm, was facing a significant challenge when its public-sector clients tightened their construction project budgets following the recession in the late 2000s. The firm needed to enhance its efficiency and client satisfaction to stay competitive. The company identified its document management processes as a key area for improvement. The existing paper-based processes were prone to delays and errors, and manually keyed spreadsheets were also error-prone, with a risk of version control problems as they were circulated within the organization. Even when business processes worked as intended, they drove up administrative costs. When they didn’t work as intended, they could also increase project costs and decrease client satisfaction. The company tried InfoPath forms and SharePoint Forms, but found them either too complex or not sufficiently customizable and mobile-friendly.

Extraco Banks, a community bank with over $1.5 billion in assets and 120,000 customers across 15 branch locations, was facing a challenge with its remote deposit capture (RDC) approval process. The process was manually reviewed and approved by the bank’s call center staff twice a day, which was time-consuming and inefficient. The bank wanted to automate this process to free up its staff and expedite the process for its customers. One of the bank’s most manual processes was approving RDC requests. Extraco’s call center team of just 15 was responsible for reviewing RDC requests in addition to fielding customer calls and questions. The manual process meant customers had to wait hours, sometimes days, to know if they were approved for remote deposit capture. The slow drawn-out approvals resulted in calls into the bank’s call center, with remote deposit capture requests ranking as one of the most common complaints.

La Trobe University's Infrastructure and Operations Division was faced with the daunting task of achieving three ISO certifications simultaneously. These certifications, while adding significant value to the organization, are notoriously difficult to achieve due to the extensive requirements around establishing and documenting processes. The team was working towards three standard certifications at once, which added a layer of complexity as they needed to consider quality, safety, and environmental sustainability while developing their processes. The process involved working with numerous subject matter experts to update and document processes. The challenge was further compounded by the fact that many of the people involved were unfamiliar with process mapping or ISO requirements.

The MBIE NZ Companies Office, with a staff of 45, handles 400 calls and 4,000 transactions daily while maintaining 22 different registers. The office had adopted the ISO 9001 standard even before it was mandatory, emphasizing the importance of data accuracy and reliability. However, maintaining the ISO 9001 standard and ensuring quality manually was a significant challenge. Documenting processes from start to finish, including all complexities, was a daunting task. Despite having a team dedicated to keeping information up to date, tracking every process change was nearly impossible in such a large organization. The manual documentation of every process was time-consuming and costly.

Zoom Video Communications was faced with a significant challenge when the COVID-19 pandemic hit. The company, already experiencing a rise in demand for its video communication services, saw an unprecedented boom in business as organizations worldwide moved their activities online. This surge in demand, termed 'the Zoom Boom', led to a 30X increase in daily meeting participants and a 354% increase in customers with more than 10 employees compared to the previous year. The company's channel market, serving enterprise customers via distributors and partners, saw new orders increase fivefold. However, processing and tracking these new orders to the point of provisioning had been a challenge for Zoom even before this surge. The bottleneck was a set of manual processes based around email and spreadsheets, which required Zoom personnel to handle each order six or more times, including follow-ups to the sales team and the provisioning team.

The Canadian public agency, dedicated to promoting worker health and safety, faced a significant challenge during the COVID-19 pandemic. With 3,500 employees spread across 15 offices, the agency had to quickly transition to remote working and then manage the safe return of employees to the office. The agency needed an efficient mechanism to handle requests to return to the office and to track which employees were onsite, where they were, and why their work required them to be onsite. Furthermore, the agency aimed to create a data-driven hybrid work model for the long term, which required a better understanding of its employees' work patterns. Commercial, off-the-shelf (OTS) software would have required lengthy scrutiny from the agency’s security, legal, and procurement teams, and in-house custom development would have been a potentially lengthy and expensive process.

ITAC, a top-ranked design-build company, was facing a significant challenge in managing its processes. The company had a wealth of institutional knowledge and a multitude of processes, but lacked a centralized and digital solution for process management. This was particularly problematic when it came to onboarding new hires and ensuring that the company's proprietary Assured Project Management (APM®) process was consistently followed. The APM® process, which is a key differentiator for ITAC, drives risk out of capital projects by systematically eliminating unknowns that can derail the project execution plan. However, the company's processes were scattered across various mediums - some were documented in binders, others in emails, and some were simply retained in the minds of long-term employees. This lack of a standardized and centralized repository made it difficult to train new hires quickly and ensure consistent application of the APM® methodology.

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Swiss Hospital, a large healthcare provider in Switzerland, faced an unprecedented demand for daycare services for its employees' children. With public and private sector daycare centers closing, the hospital had to expand its onsite daycare centers from one to five to accommodate the increased demand. However, the existing system for managing daycare services, which involved a mix of phone calls, emails, and spreadsheets, was no longer practical due to the increased complexity and volume. The hospital needed a more efficient, digital solution to handle the registration and management of its daycare services.

Kuwait International Bank was facing challenges with its manual workflow creation process in SharePoint. The bank was seeking a more efficient and faster way to support complex business processes across all its departments including accounts payable, help desk, legal, human resources, security, retail banking, finance, customer service, operations, real estate, corporate banking, and IT. The existing process was not only time-consuming but also lacked the flexibility to handle intricate business operations. The bank was also struggling with slow response times to customer applications for credit cards and loans, and customer service requests. On the employee side, the bank was looking for ways to automate internal processes to reduce effort and increase accuracy.

First Solar, a leading producer of high-performance thin film photovoltaic (PV) modules, was facing challenges in automating and modernizing work across its business. The company was operating in a startup mode, with a significant portion of work being conducted via email or Excel spreadsheets. As the company grew, it realized the need to automate processes to eliminate manual work and enhance operational efficiency. The company initially considered using SharePoint’s built-in workflow tools, but this did not provide a single platform to manage all the different workflows. Another challenge was the complexity of the company's change management process, which was managed by a 21-tab Excel spreadsheet. This manual and time-consuming process needed an upgrade. Additionally, the company needed to centralize and streamline document management, but purchasing enterprise document management systems for every department could have been extremely costly.

New Belgium Brewing Co., a prominent craft beer company in the US, faced a significant challenge when California passed the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) in 2018. The law included provisions that required out-of-state companies, like New Belgium Brewing, to comply with privacy regulations for California consumers. The specifics of the compliance requirements were not available until July 2019, leaving the company with only five months to develop a compliance system by the law’s deadline in December 2019. Failure to meet this deadline could have resulted in substantial fines. The company needed to devise an accurate, standardized method to respond to privacy requests from California residents swiftly and efficiently.

A major U.S. law firm faced a significant challenge in managing its vast inventory of client files. The firm had identified over 100,000 boxes of client files that could potentially be returned or destroyed, but lacked a practical process to do so. The firm's off-site records storage had grown exponentially, leading to escalating costs and liabilities. The firm also recognized the considerable risk to both the client and the firm when client records are retained beyond the legal and statutory requirements. The firm had adopted a new client records retention policy in 2018, allowing for the destruction of client records 10 years after a case is completed, pending client notification. However, implementing this policy was a daunting task due to the sheer volume of files and the need for efficient and accurate client notification.