The telecommunications company, offering a wide range of services including broadband Internet, fixed telephone and mobile device services, and television and on-demand entertainment, was faced with the challenge of updating its core legacy systems for billing and operations. The company needed to migrate data from its legacy billing support system (BSS) and operations support system (OSS) to modern data center applications. This process was complex due to the different data formats used by each application and the need to maintain data integrity throughout the migration. The traditional SQL process was deemed too slow and verifying the accuracy of the data migration was nearly impossible. The company required a scalable solution with analytical capabilities to assess data quality, identify errors, uncover root causes and prioritize fixes according to potential impact on revenue or customer experience.

Eastridge Workforce Solutions, a provider of workforce management services and technologies to over 1,300 clients across North America, faced a critical challenge with its time and attendance system. This system, which processes transactions from thousands of people 24/7, 365 days a year, verifies employee attendance and records their time to generate accurate payrolls. Any downtime in this system would be catastrophic, causing significant disruption to Eastridge and its clients. The company needed a high availability/disaster recovery (HA/DR) solution that would ensure the system and its associated data would always be available, regardless of any potential disasters or scheduled maintenance. However, HA/DR was not a core competency for Eastridge, and the company did not want to distract its IT group from its primary business objectives.

Comcast Corporation, the second largest broadcasting and cable television company in the world by revenue, was facing significant challenges due to the volume and variety of operational and billing data. With over 20 million customers across 40 states, the company needed to establish standardized processes and automate data flows to overcome a wide range of billing, finance, compliance, supply chain, and marketing challenges. In 2009, the company was dealing with massive amounts of data that were causing major revenue assurance challenges. The customer billing review interface required the processing of a billion records every month, within very tight timeframes. The company’s decentralized accounting and finance operations, with 20 different regions and 30 different accounting practices, further compounded these issues.

IDI Independent Distributors Inc., a Canadian-owned business serving the industrial and safety industries, faced a challenge in providing its members with high-quality, enriched product information. The company recognized that its members needed a central repository for data to deliver consistent and trusted product information across various channels. However, smaller individual distributors lacked the resources to deploy a full Product Information Management (PIM) solution independently. IDI decided to invest strategically in a data management solution to help its members compete effectively in the digital marketplace with high-quality content. The goal was to build a vast repository of rich product content and digital assets to aid its members in growing their business across channels.

Clear Technologies, a company that helps businesses maximize the value from information technologies, operates in a highly competitive environment. The company not only competes against other vendors but also against the status quo. To secure a sale, Clear Technologies often has to convince potential customers that the benefits of the new technology justify the cost of switching from the existing technology, including any associated downtime costs. The company's value proposition is to increase organizational effectiveness through innovative products, services, and solutions. However, the hardware and software it sells can't provide value if it is down. Therefore, part of Clear Technologies' revenue is derived from ensuring that their customers' data and applications are always available, even in the event of system failures, disasters, or normal planned maintenance. To support this business model, Clear Technologies needed a business partner that could supply advanced high availability (HA), disaster recovery (DR), and migration solutions.

In the past, ALICO ran repeated queries to determine resource usage on its IBM i systems. Each time, the query parameters would be changed to get the precise information that the IT department needed. This work was time-consuming, cumbersome and repetitive. To overcome this burden, the company wanted software designed specifically to monitor the health of its systems. Furthermore, it was difficult for ALICO’s central IT department to scrutinize the contents of the disks used by the company’s offices around the world. ALICO wanted a way to find, delete and/or archive obsolete data and objects in order to reclaim wasted disk space. The company also needed a way to track all of the software in use in each of the operating units. ALICO offices in different parts of the world don’t all use the same software applications. And some offices use different versions of the applications used in other offices Thus, to avoid updating the wrong software when performing application maintenance for one of the offices, the central IT department needed to keep track of which offices use which software versions.

Heinz Watties Australia, a large multinational company, faced the challenge of ensuring compliance with the US Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX). The company needed a solution to audit its BPCS and other mission-critical files to comply with regulatory guidelines. The requirements for the solution included capturing changes to files for at least one year, easy access to captured information, and the ability to generate weekly, monthly, and ad-hoc reports. Additionally, the solution needed to provide automated reporting, real-time email reporting for exceptions, and be implemented on all 5 LPARS within budgetary constraints. The implementation needed to be straightforward and primarily carried out by the Heinz IT Department.

The company faced challenges with a large base of repeat customers purchasing through third-party retailers, leading to duplicate customer records and inaccurate or incomplete customer addresses. This situation hindered the company's ability to determine lifetime customer value and overlay additional demographic data to identify new opportunities. The company needed to consolidate and validate data from disparate sources to gain an accurate single view of each customer. With a planned targeted direct mail campaign approaching, the company engaged Precisely to learn more about its Spectrum solution, a technology platform designed to validate, standardize, and enhance customer data.

This regional utility provider was looking for a data strategy to improve the visibility, quality, and value of their enterprise’s data assets. In this highly regulated industry, the company recognized the need for better data governance of their data, including lineage to substantiate data authenticity. One example of a high-priority need was comprehensive analytics to support rate changes with the consumer regulatory boards. The business opportunity was driven by the following factors: Data was siloed within various locations and systems across the pre-existing enterprise. No data governance solution in place. Definitions of critical terms were inconsistent across different business areas (e.g., what is a “customer?”). Existing analysis and reporting were manually generated and cobbled from various sources. Data consumers desired better transparency around data governance, quality, and availability.

David Nieper Ltd, a multinational company with offices in the UK, France, Germany, and Holland, faced the challenge of meeting the highest standards of PCI-DSS compliance. The IT team needed a solution that could efficiently report on audit data contained in IBM i journals across all LPARs. Key requirements included real-time email reporting for exceptions, central management implementation, daily email reports summarizing journal entries, ad hoc report generation, and data integration with a Splunk platform. The solution needed to be straightforward to implement without impacting the performance of underlying applications.

Organizations constantly look to extract more value from the operational data generated within their IT infrastructure, and to analyze that information to determine how their systems and applications are performing. A primary source of operational intelligence for IBM z/OS mainframe users lies in the SMF (System Management Facility) records. These are recorded for just about every event and activity on the system. In order to extract such valuable information, organizations typically are saddled with the time-consuming manual processes of offloading the data, extracting the relevant records and fields, and then transforming the remaining subset with expensive tools like SAS. Even then, essential questions remain unanswered, such as: What is happening now? Is what is happening now different than what was happening this same time last week or the same time one month ago? Can I predict or even prevent issues from impacting performance or adherence to service level agreements (SLAs)? This process is then repeated across the multiple LPARs that exist in most organizations, making it even more time-consuming and increasingly difficult to get complete visibility across the enterprise.

Westpac Pacific Banking, as part of the Global Westpac Banking Corporation, faced the challenge of complying with various regulatory guidelines. They needed comprehensive visibility into their IBM i environment to ensure security and minimize risks of fraud, corruption, and data integrity issues. The existing security compliance software was inadequate, lacking in monitoring specific user activities, extensive reporting capabilities, and real-time exception reporting. The bank required a solution that could be implemented across all 28 LPARs cost-effectively, providing audit-quality traces of technical staff activities.

The insurer faced challenges due to its legacy master data management system, which limited its ability to have a single customer view. This lack of a unified view negatively impacted marketing campaigns, leading to sub-par results. Independent insurance agents struggled to identify all the insurance products a customer might already have, resulting in inappropriate recommendations and a perception that the insurer did not understand customer needs. Additionally, missing demographic or geographic data led to marketing efforts targeting the wrong customers, increasing costs and hindering cross-sell and upsell opportunities.

Toyota Material Handling Australia (TMHA) faced stricter auditing requirements due to its growth and classification as a large corporation. The company needed to fulfill both government and internal auditing requirements, which included comprehensive annual governance audits. TMHA's parent company, Toyota Industries Corporation (TICO), required the establishment of an appropriate internal control system to maintain the reliability of financial reporting. A dry-run audit identified several remediation requirements, including the inability to fully trace financial database changes and the need to tighten controls around vendor authority. These issues were significant deficiencies that TMHA couldn't fix internally, necessitating a robust solution to address these challenges.

Under the direction of the chief data officer (CDO), the company launched an aggressive plan to establish and implement data governance tools, policies and processes across the enterprise. The initial effort included the creation of business glossaries in spreadsheets to document metadata, data ownership, definitions and business attributes policies, in addition to the controls that were implemented as part of the data quality initiative. The company also had a critical need to understand data lineage across systems at a business level, which they managed in a spreadsheet tool integrated with Salesforce. These data governance efforts marked important steps to help both business and technical users better manage, understand and use data, but these largely manual solutions lacked the automation, adoption and sustainability needed from a long-term solution. The company still faced numerous challenges, including: Error-prone spreadsheets requiring constant manual attention to keep current, making collaboration and widespread contribution difficult. Technical metadata from key applications required the development of custom code solutions or had to be imported and catalogued manually. Technical data lineage made it nearly impossible for business users to understand or leverage. Usage rights and utilization for licensed data were hard to trace and account for. Policies and processes around data access, permissions and approvals lacked visibility and accountability across the enterprise. The client reached out to Precisely to help them overcome these challenges and achieve the automation, accountability and sustainability the company needed from a governance program.

Total Health Care faced significant challenges due to the disjointed structure of its membership processes, which involved multiple internal systems, external vendors, and CMS. This fragmentation limited the company's visibility into membership data, preventing leadership from gaining a complete and accurate understanding of key membership analytics. The lack of insights and quality control posed financial risks, led to inaccurate quality of care reporting, and missed opportunities to improve the member experience. The company's CIO, Noah Monro, recognized the need for a single platform to provide complete visibility across disparate systems, improve membership analytics, and make better business decisions. Duplicate membership files, resulting from members frequently switching between exchange and Medicaid plans, further complicated the situation by providing an inaccurate view of care gaps and quality measures, ultimately lowering HEDIS scores and health plan reimbursement.

PennEngineering operates facilities across the United States, as well as in Europe and Asia, but its computer systems are centralized at the company’s headquarters in Pennsylvania. At one time, its U.S. factories ran primarily a single shift, allowing considerable time at night and on the weekends to perform necessary system maintenance. However, operations in Europe and Asia dramatically reduced the times during which maintenance can be performed without impacting operations, particularly because the factories in China operate on Saturday and Sunday. In addition, maintenance windows are being further constrained by the U.S. west coast operations since a second shift has been added to keep up with demand. Thus, the cost of downtime was growing, but PennEngineering’s systems still required regular maintenance. The company’s challenge was to find a way to dramatically decrease the amount of system downtime required for maintenance, thereby reducing the cost to the business. The company also needed a more effective way to recover its data in the event of a disaster. Waiting for recovery from a tape restore was no longer an option.

PennEngineering faced the challenge of reducing system downtime for maintenance as it expanded internationally. With operations in Europe and Asia, the available time for maintenance without impacting operations was significantly reduced. The addition of a second shift on the U.S. west coast further constrained maintenance windows. The company needed to decrease system downtime to reduce costs and ensure business continuity. Additionally, PennEngineering required a more effective disaster recovery solution, as waiting for recovery from a tape restore was no longer viable. Hubbell, on the other hand, faced challenges with data quality and time-intensive data entry during its SAP implementation. The company relied on temporary employees for manual data entry, which led to errors and delays. Hubbell needed a solution to improve data quality and empower business users to manage their data effectively.

Eastridge Workforce Solutions provides workforce management services to over 1,300 clients across North America. The company operates a time and attendance system that processes transactions from thousands of people 24/7. Any downtime in this system could have severe consequences for both Eastridge and its clients. The company requires a high availability/disaster recovery (HA/DR) solution to ensure that its system and data are always available, even during disasters or scheduled maintenance. However, HA/DR is not a core competency for Eastridge, which focuses on delivering innovative workforce solutions. Therefore, the company needs to leverage HA/DR expertise without diverting its IT resources from business objectives.

Health insurance can be confusing, and researching and selecting the right plan can be tedious. Still, insurance customers require a lot of specifics in order to make their decisions. Providing that information in a format people can easily absorb is an ongoing challenge for insurers. Blue Shield of California was not immune to the challenge. Serving organizations across the state, the company formerly recruited new members by showing up at in-person health insurance fairs with large booklets describing various plan options. The Blue Shield of California Marketing team thought a more high-tech experience would be a better fit for their customer base. They also wanted to make insurance information easier to understand. That’s when they heard about Precisely EngageOne Video from a sister organization in another state. “We liked that other Blue Cross Blue Shield plans had used the solution,” Scarborough says. “We were also compelled by the fact that the Precisely account team have experience in our industry. Health insurance is very complicated, and this team has been phenomenal in their ability to understand our business and their dedication to helping us succeed.”

Autoliv, a global leader in automotive safety, faces significant challenges in maintaining stringent on-time delivery requirements for its products, which include seatbelts, airbags, and other safety systems. The company operates in a highly competitive environment where downtime can lead to missed delivery deadlines and measurable revenue losses. Contracts with automakers often include penalties for late shipments, making it crucial for Autoliv to minimize both planned and unplanned downtime. The company's reliance on JD Edwards ERP applications for critical functions such as financial management, inventory, customer service, and purchasing further underscores the need for a reliable high availability (HA) solution. With operations spanning 13 manufacturing facilities worldwide and processing up to 70 million daily transactions, Autoliv's IT infrastructure must be robust and resilient to ensure continuous operations and meet customer expectations.

Traditionally, insurers’ communications with injured workers have taken place over the phone or in writing, and clients have been expected to digest very complex claim information by reading lengthy documents. EML found that these channels did not work best for every client.

Canada Post faced significant challenges in loading data into its SAP solution. The process was time-consuming and costly, requiring third-party IT suppliers to develop CATT and ABAP scripts. Manual data entry from Excel spreadsheets into SAP R/3 led to increased data entry errors. The labor-intensive work processes were not an effective use of employees' time. The Organizational Planning unit needed to load job evaluation points for over 8,000 job positions into SAP, which was estimated to take several months if done manually. Time Management also experienced delays, taking 12 to 16 hours each week to unlock employee records by manually entering data from Excel sheets into SAP.

A large regional U.S. bank faced regulatory scrutiny due to insufficient management of Know Your Customer (KYC) requirements and failure to report suspicious activities. The bank's account-centric approach to transaction risk assessment led to an overwhelming number of alerts, most of which were false positives. This approach prevented the bank from accurately gauging the risk of individual customers across multiple accounts, as some customers held accounts under different names due to data-entry errors or intentional obfuscation. As a result, investigators were overwhelmed by the volume of alerts, and real lawbreakers often went undetected.

IMA Financial Group, located in Kansas, is highly aware of the risks posed by natural disasters, particularly tornadoes, which could lead to significant downtime and data loss. The company’s primary data center is situated in a region prone to such disasters, making it imperative to have a robust disaster recovery (DR) solution. The challenge was to find an affordable DR solution that could back up all company data, including any updates made after the last nightly backup, and allow for easy and rapid recovery of the Sagitta application and its data.

Willis Re faced the challenge of improving the speed and accuracy of their client exposure assessments based on location data. They needed a more thorough understanding of risk exposure levels at individual points on a map to improve estimations of potential losses and ensure clients purchased the correct amount of coverage at the right price. This required a geocoding solution capable of processing high-resolution data for consistent comparisons across country lines, complete systemic control to understand catastrophe models, and visibility into clients' or insurers' books of business to demonstrate the benefits of accurate data.

At one time, NDA protected its data by backing it up to tape nightly. However, that was inadequate because recoveries were too slow and once-a-day backups left too much data vulnerable to loss. One of the problems with nightly tape-based backups is the nightly part. Data entered or updated during the current day is not yet on any backup tape. Consequently, up to a day’s worth of data is always at risk—and more if the most recent tape is unavailable or corrupted. Another problem with nightly tape-based backups is the tape part. To perform a recovery, the backup tape has to be retrieved, possibly from an offsite location, it has to be mounted onto a drive and the necessary data have to be extracted and loaded unto the production server. In the event of a disaster, it might also be necessary to first acquire and configure a new server. In all, recovery can take hours or even a few days. For a dynamic business like NDA, that’s far too long. In addition, tape backups and recoveries involve many manual processes to locate, transport and mount tapes and run the necessary jobs. And, humans are fallible and, consequently, manual processes create opportunities for error. NDA recognized that it needed a disaster recovery solution that protects all of its data, allows data to be recovered almost immediately and minimizes the chance of human error.

Krispy Kreme Doughnuts faces a critical challenge in maintaining its reputation for serving hot, fresh doughnuts at any time of the day. The company operates a complex supply chain that requires 100 percent system reliability to ensure the timely delivery of fresh inventory. Any disruption in system availability could negatively impact their operations, especially given their aggressive inventory control process that involves replacing products that are just a few hours old. The company manages its wholesale operations with an EDI solution from EXTOL running on an IBM i server, supporting 400 users. Additionally, Krispy Kreme relies on an electronic billing system to generate thousands of invoices monthly for large retail outlets, where delayed billings could severely impact cash flow. The company sells its products in numerous locations across the US and eight other countries, making system reliability crucial for maintaining supply chain integrity and avoiding disruptions that could harm their wholesale operations.

The Los Angeles area is highly competitive, with multiple providers competing for the same customers. Spreadsheets used by sales teams were becoming ineffective in showing the depth of opportunities, challenges, and the competitive landscape. It was difficult to manipulate and interpret data in a manner relevant to the sales teams, which hindered their ability to identify untapped markets and drive additional revenues.

Raven Transport, a mid-sized trucking company, faced the challenge of upgrading its IBM systems and operating system while maintaining continuous operations. With a small IT department lacking in-house programmers or hardware experts, the company needed external assistance to perform the migration efficiently. The company operates a 24x7 dispatch center, making it crucial to avoid significant downtime during the upgrade. Additionally, Raven Transport required a seamless transition to the new system to prevent any operational disruptions.