Hillphoenix, a leading manufacturer of commercial refrigerated display cases and industrial refrigeration systems, was struggling with its line inspection process. The process was manual, paper-based, and relied heavily on the memory and experience of the inspectors. This resulted in a cumbersome process that was difficult to track, increased the risk of errors, wasted inspection time with paper forms, limited tracking records, necessitated hefty excel files, and delayed reporting. The lack of standardized terminology for defects and the reliance on handwritten notes further complicated the process. The company's First Pass Yield (FPY) goal was dependent on recognizing defects as quickly as possible, but the existing process posed a risk of inaccurate inspection data and inconsistency in the inspection process.

Christchurch International Airport Limited (CIAL), New Zealand’s second largest airport, was faced with the challenge of maintaining daily operations while implementing a new ERP system. ERP implementations can often be disruptive to business and can cause a change management battle that lasts for months afterwards. CIAL had three major systems for property/retail, asset maintenance and finance, along with many ancillary ad-hoc solutions. Poor integration was causing operational inefficiencies across the business. The project had high expectations set, including tighter integration of processes and information across the whole business, improved visibility of business activity and reporting capability, and simplified business administration and operations.

AsiaCell Communications PJSC, the largest telecommunications company in Iraq, was struggling with managing its complex product lifecycle. The process was managed using Excel spreadsheets, Microsoft Project, emails, phone calls, and in-person discussions. This method led to duplicated and/or lost work, and a lengthy time to market of five months. The process was considered one of the top 10 most important telecom processes, critical for any company that generates products. The product lifecycle management (PLM) process was broken down into five gated, or staged, sequences of actions, each requiring approvals to trigger the next set of actions for development. Some gates included as few as six steps of approval, and others included as many as 24. The complexity and inefficiency of the process were causing significant delays and inefficiencies.

Adventist Health System, a healthcare organization with over 78,000 employees across 44 facilities in 10 states, was facing a significant challenge in managing their ordering processes. The system, which was primarily based on verbal and email orders, was proving to be inefficient and time-consuming. The IT department was spending excessive time handling a mix of paper form requests, verbal requests, and a flurry of follow-up emails for new equipment and business card requests. The process was not only cumbersome but also prone to errors and delays. The inaccuracies in the system often led to late deliveries of computer equipment and inaccuracies in business cards. The challenge was to find a solution that could automate this process, reduce errors, and free up the IT staff to focus on other critical tasks.

Hawke’s Bay Regional Council (HBRC) in New Zealand was facing a significant challenge in ensuring the safety of their waterways. The council needed to gather water testing results efficiently and accurately for decision-making purposes. The process involved field scientists collecting up to 50 samples in a single day from various locations. Along with the samples, the scientists had to manage stacks of paper forms that often ended up damp, muddy, or lost due to environmental conditions. The data from these forms then had to be manually entered into the system, a process that was prone to errors and inefficiencies. The council had previously attempted to digitize the forms using various data collection and management systems, but these attempts were unsuccessful, leading to inefficiencies and inaccuracies.

The Insurance Fraud Bureau of Massachusetts (IFB) was grappling with a paper-intensive process for handling insurance fraud cases. The bureau investigates approximately 4,000 potential fraud cases annually, managing numerous documents related to these investigations. Eighty percent of these documents were paper-based, and 20 percent were electronic. The process involved bundling up paper documents and printing out electronic documents related to a case, resulting in boxes of documents. These boxes would not reach the assigned investigator until someone visited the regional office where the investigator worked, causing delays of up to a week. The manual, paper-based review process also posed a risk of lost documents and wasted time spent tracking down documents. The limited visibility of relevant documents for others on the investigation team also delayed processing. Furthermore, the bureau's decision to keep documents for three years instead of one year created additional storage challenges.

Arizona Electric Power Cooperative was facing significant challenges in managing the engineering drawings that support its generation assets and Southwest Transmission Cooperative’s system. The process of making changes to these drawings was extensive and manual, often taking months to be incorporated into the system. This delay resulted in version control issues, as engineers could not be certain if a drawing on the cooperative’s SharePoint was the most up-to-date version. The cooperative maintains tens of thousands of drawings, and changes to a drawing meant a slow and manual change order process. The cooperative’s engineering records library contains about 50,000 records, including versioned, finalized documents, reference material, and unincorporated documents. The existing system was not effectively managing the versioning of these unincorporated documents.

Bender Group, a global leader in monitoring systems for electrical safety, was grappling with inefficient internal processes that were largely paper-based. These processes were not only time-consuming but also prone to errors and delays, which affected the overall productivity of the company. The company's Quality Management team, responsible for maintaining the high-quality standards of Bender's products, was particularly affected by these inefficiencies. The paper-based process for submitting faults was error-prone and typically took three to four days. Additionally, Bender was facing the challenge of knowledge retention, with many of its long-serving employees nearing retirement. The company wanted to capture and retain the valuable knowledge and understanding of its systems and products that these employees possessed.

BC Ferries, a major transportation company in Canada, was struggling with a time-consuming and inefficient method of manually revising and distributing paper-based process and procedure information to its 35 ships and 47 terminals. This posed a significant risk as employees might not receive important safety updates in a timely manner. The company was also facing challenges in maintaining up-to-date printed policies and procedures across its vast network. The manual process of updating policies and procedures involved physical sign-offs, leading to version control issues and confusion about who needed to approve which changes. This laborious process was so time-intensive that updates were only provided once or twice a year.

Equilibrium Financial Planning, a UK-based wealth management company, was facing challenges in maintaining consistent customer service due to the diverse approaches used by its multiple advisors. As the company's client base grew to over 1,200 managed accounts, the need for structured processes became evident to maintain the highest standard of customer service. With a team of seven advisors and a support staff of 90, each with unique ways of working, the firm lacked a documented approach to processes that ensured a consistent customer experience. The company faced a challenge in maintaining consistency in their approach to managing accounts, particularly when onboarding new clients. Simple mistakes could cost leads and negatively affect the reputation of the organization. In some cases, mistakes could even lead to regulatory violations and fines.

Dairy Nutraceuticals (DNL), a New Zealand-based manufacturer and distributor of fortified powders, was facing increased compliance requirements related to food safety. These requirements focused on induction, training, and retraining of staff. The food manufacturing industry is heavily regulated, with regular stringent audits and increasing customer expectations for quality and safety. DNL needed to manage all their compliance documentation effectively. Moreover, the industry's growing focus on training and operator competence meant that DNL had to provide evidence that their staff members were not only trained but also competent in operating critical parts of the process. They also had to manage health and safety risks, financial risks, and production risks. The challenge was further compounded by the need to deliver training in different formats and capture records of training or competency.

The Australian service division of a global car manufacturer was struggling with maintaining consistent customer service standards across its dealership network. The traditional method of storing business processes in lengthy manuals was proving ineffective, as these were rarely used and often forgotten. This resulted in varying customer service procedures across the dealerships. The manufacturer was also unable to ensure that customers consistently received service excellence, and dealers found it difficult to access or share knowledge about best practices. The lack of a robust process management tool was hindering the manufacturer's commitment to quality and ongoing process improvement.

Goodwill of Central and Coastal Virginia (GCCVA), a non-profit organization providing job-training, employment placement services, and other community-based programs, was facing challenges with its IT infrastructure. The organization was heavily reliant on SharePoint 2010, using many InfoPath forms and SharePoint Designer workflows. However, these tools presented significant limitations, especially when interacting with other line-of-business systems. GCCVA had built custom applications on top of SharePoint, using native SharePoint rules, controls, and webparts. These applications required using a CodePlex list adapter to pull data out of SharePoint into a custom SQL database. This process was complicated and often caused many problems. Furthermore, InfoPath was slow and difficult to use, especially for non-developers. The organization was planning to migrate from SharePoint 2010 to SharePoint 2019, which presented an opportunity to improve their IT infrastructure.

Greenline, a commercial shade sail manufacturer and installer, was aiming to achieve the gold standard of triple ISO accreditation. This was crucial for the Australian company as a significant portion of their work comes from government contracts, including schools and hospitals. The triple ISO certifications (environmental, quality assurance, and occupational health and safety) would serve as a symbol of trust, demonstrating their serious approach to risk. However, to gain certification, Greenline needed to prove that their manufacturing and safety processes were up to the mark. While their processes met the standard, their existing process management system was inadequate and unable to pass the stringent external audit.

Kiama Municipal Council, located on the South Coast of Australia, provides a wide range of services, from traditional government services to holiday parks and aged care facilities. However, the council faced a significant challenge as very few of their service-related processes were mapped, leading to numerous inefficiencies. The council needed to gain clarity about their operations and identify areas for improvement. The primary tasks were to understand what they do, how they do it, and then apply a lean methodology to identify opportunities for improvement. The challenge was to find a Business Process Management (BPM) tool that could be used and understood by all levels of the organization.

iNova Pharmaceuticals, a major pharmaceutical firm active across Asia, Australia, New Zealand, and Africa, was seeking to expand its brands and geographic reach. However, the company faced challenges in handling business processes that required workflows across multiple departments and country locations. The existing processes were decentralized and ad hoc, based on email threads and a variety of SharePoint folders. This led to significant time wastage on manually intensive processes, such as chasing down people for approvals and documentation. The technology team was tasked with supporting a growing business with the same resources, which was proving to be a daunting task. The company needed a more effective and efficient way to manage these processes to support its growth strategy.

Lands’ End, a renowned international retailer, was facing a significant challenge in managing custom orders for logoed apparel. The process was manual, time-consuming, and prone to errors, leading to delays in delivering orders to customers and increased costs. The company had to handle individual custom orders as quickly and reliably as it handled standard orders to keep corporate customers satisfied. The custom order process involved communicating instructions for special orders within the company and to international suppliers and customers via email and phone. This resulted in a six-to-eight-week process to deliver customers’ orders. If the order wasn't right, the process had to start over, leading to 100% rework, 100% more cost, and a 100% delay.

Liverpool City Council, one of the fastest-growing areas in Australia, was preparing for significant new developments associated with the new Western Sydney International Airport. The council needed to improve its internal processes to better support this growth. The council provides a portfolio of services to residents and businesses in the area, with over 800 staff managing everything from waste and recycling facilities to parks, libraries, and childcare centres. As the area has grown, so too has the support delivered by the council, leading to a rise in the number of internal processes followed by staff across all departments and locations. Many of these processes had not been fully documented and important details only existed in the heads of staff, leading to a risk of knowledge loss if certain people left.

The European material-handling manufacturer was facing a significant challenge in generating custom price quotes for its customers. The process was complex, involving thousands of possible configurations, and was highly time-consuming, taking up to 10 days or more. The manufacturer receives about 10,000 such requests each year from customers who want to specify more than 140 variables for at least seven truck types, resulting in many thousands of possible custom combinations. The process also required the involvement of engineers for calculation and review, often necessitating clarification and confirmation of requirements, which further delayed the process. Additionally, finding the right quotation from among those already composed was another challenge, as proposal documents could be located in any of a variety of servers and email systems.

Microsoft’s eCommerce team was facing a significant challenge in efficiently managing content and promotions across the company’s website and digital store. The content publication process was complex, involving multiple levels of approvals and collaboration between various teams to keep hundreds of pages updated across more than 240 regions. The process was managed via Excel spreadsheets, with content, images, and other publishing information tracked in different spreadsheets. In some cases, there were over 200 spreadsheets to track updates for a single page on the website. Content approvals were handled manually, often leading to bottlenecks and delays in publishing timelines. Furthermore, Microsoft’s legacy solution made it difficult to easily track publishing tasks and provide visibility into publication statuses. The company also faced challenges in managing merchandise promotions, which was a manual and time-consuming process.

Red River Bank, the sixth largest Louisiana-based community bank, was faced with the challenge of rapidly processing and distributing Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans to support businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic. The U.S. Treasury had implemented the PPP and utilized banks to process and distribute the funds. Red River Bank needed a solution to onboard, process, and submit applications for Small Business Administration (SBA) approval. The bank was under immense pressure as the PPP funding was limited and would be exhausted before they could even get started. The business banking software providers they consulted with said their solutions would be ready at least one week after the government finalized PPP requirements, which was too long for Red River Bank.

The State Library of New South Wales, Australia's largest library, embarked on a long-term project to digitise its vast collection of over five million heritage items. The goal was to preserve these historic items while making them accessible to the public. However, the library faced a significant challenge in managing the digitisation process. Initially, they used a workflow solution called TeamTrack to log and track items through the process. However, this solution reached its end-of-life in 2017, necessitating a quick replacement. The library needed a comprehensive, location and device independent workflow platform that could integrate the entire digitisation process, meet the functional requirements of every team, align with the library's IT security policies, and include auditing and reporting capabilities.

Trinity Grammar School, an independent boys school in Sydney, Australia, faced a significant challenge during the COVID-19 pandemic. With the suspension of in-person classroom teaching, the school had to quickly pivot to a remote learning program. This transition necessitated an efficient and effective way to check the attendance of over 2000 students at the start of each school day. The school's existing digital tools used for marking attendance in classrooms were evaluated, but configuring them for online use was not practical. The school needed a solution that could be implemented swiftly and accurately to ensure students were participating in online activities each day.

TLC for Kids, a leading Australian charity, was grappling with the challenge of streamlining the creation and management of patient letters and service confirmations associated with its services. The organization, which operates in 405 hospitals in Australia and five in New Zealand, provides a range of services to sick children and their families. These services include supplying innovative ‘distraction boxes’ to hospitals, operating the Rapid TLC Service which delivers timely support to hospitalized children and their families, and the TLC Ambulance service for children in palliative care. The organization's support staff had been relying on a series of Google Docs templates into which information from received request forms was cut and pasted as required. This manual process was time-consuming and inefficient, diverting staff attention from other critical activities.

Thrifty New Zealand, a car rental company owned by the National Roads and Motor Association (NRMA), was facing operational challenges due to outdated, paper-based processes. The company, with around 150 staff across 30 locations, recognized the need to upgrade their car rental management system. The existing system was not only time-consuming but also lacked easy access to processes for the staff. The management team understood the need for a process champion to drive process improvement efforts and appointed Jackie Reid for the role. The challenge was to ensure a smooth transition to the new car-rental system with minimum effort from the already-busy teams. The teams needed to understand what was changing and how that would impact them.

WISE Employment, a not-for-profit employment services provider in Australia, was grappling with outdated, non-standardized process management and minimal continuous improvement. The organization was experiencing significant growth due to changes in government rules around Disability Employment Services (DES), which allowed job seekers to choose their provider. However, this growth highlighted the need for a more efficient and consistent approach to process management. WISE's processes were documented in a mix of Microsoft Word, Excel, and Visio, leading to inconsistencies, errors, inefficiencies, and duplication of work. Many of these processes were out of date, mapped in non-standard formats, and stored in various locations, with no specific individual responsible for them. This lack of centralized process management led to inconsistent customer experiences and hindered continuous improvement.

The University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine was grappling with an outdated, manual, paper-based faculty evaluation system. This system was not only cumbersome but also lacked an efficient way to track forms, conduct audits, or extract data insights from the evaluations. The process required a full-time employee to manage 2,000 annual evaluations captured on 10-page paper forms. The system had no mechanism to track incomplete and missing forms, no overall audit process, and no data insights into trends arising from the evaluations. This inefficient system was costing faculty members hundreds of thousands of hours annually, which could have been better utilized for teaching, clinical care, and research.

KBR, a technology and government industry player, was grappling with the challenge of managing employee travel safety in an increasingly risky global environment. The company's existing system, which was paper-based, was inadequate for recording and approving travel requests, thus failing to optimize safety and provide insights into employee travel. The system was particularly deficient in managing travel to high-risk countries, where employees could be exposed to threats such as kidnapping, civil unrest, weather disasters, and personal medical emergencies. The paper forms, which recorded employees' itineraries, were only completed by about 70% of travelers. These forms were then filed and rarely used, making it difficult for KBR to deliver customized guidance to employees or analyze aggregate data on global travel. As global risks escalated, KBR needed a more efficient solution.

Busy Bees Asia, a rapidly growing early education provider, was grappling with an inefficient manual IT provisioning process. The organization, which has expanded to over 80 locations since its inception in 2014, was struggling to standardize and improve processes across its various locations. The IT team, led by IT Director Jordan Yap, was responsible for managing the company’s IT needs for over 2,000 employees, including infrastructure, enterprise apps, e-learning, security, and more. One of the most critical processes was the company’s IT provisioning needs, which ensured employees had access to the technology they needed to do their jobs. As the organization continued to grow, so did the demand for technology tools. The organization needed more powerful and comprehensive solutions to help it scale its digital workplace solutions.

A regional US bank in the financial services industry was faced with the challenge of supporting its aggressive growth targets. The bank aimed to double its assets to $10 billion over five years and sought to use process automation technology to boost productivity and customer satisfaction. However, the bank's existing workflow tool lacked automation capabilities, essentially functioning as a checklist. The bank needed a more comprehensive solution that could automate key processes such as wire transfers and Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans. The bank's enterprise automation team began researching options to fuel and support the bank's growth successfully.