The American University of Beirut (AUB), a leading academic institution in Lebanon, faced significant challenges in managing 'big data' and extracting valuable insights. The university was using Oracle's business intelligence solution, which they found difficult to deploy and was only being used for reports rather than for dashboards and business discovery analysis. The university was also seeking to create a roadmap for the use of QlikView throughout the campus. The university and its medical center, AUBMC, were working with a variety of applications and database systems, including IBM DB2, Microsoft SQL Server, FoxPro, Oracle Financials, and specialist systems for hospital clinical needs. They also used three enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems—Oracle ERP, Banner ERP, and IBM—as well as Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (OBIEE) for AUBMC.

Loudoun County Public Schools (LCPS) faced a significant challenge during the COVID-19 pandemic. With the closure of schools, the district had to ensure that all students had access to online learning resources. However, a small percentage of families and staff did not have internet access at home. LCPS had procured 1,500 hotspots from various vendors, but the challenge was to distribute these devices equitably. The district needed to identify not just the students, but also the households that required internet access. A triage approach was established to prioritize the distribution based on the disadvantaged status of households, households with multiple students, and households with students in higher grade levels.

Pizza Pizza, a Canadian food chain, was struggling with managing and making sense of the vast amount of data generated from its operations. The company operates over 750 locations and fulfills over 20 million orders annually, generating a database with billions of fields. The company used to rely on static reports and spreadsheets to analyze its operations, which lacked flexibility and interactivity. The reports were generated daily and if a different perspective was needed, it would take days or weeks for IT to generate a new report. The company was unable to access real-time data and lacked the ability to drill down into the details of its operations.

Sketch Books, Inc., a bookstore and stationery merchandise company with 30 branches across the Philippines, was forced to shift its focus to e-commerce due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The company needed to ensure a high level of customer service despite the shift to remote working. The challenge was to maintain the same level of service and customer satisfaction while transitioning to a new business model.

Great Ormond Street Hospital Children's Charity was facing a decrease in the performance of warm cash appeals and needed to understand the reasons why and to explore more insight driven approaches to combat this. Previously, fundraising campaign reporting was done after each campaign by pulling data into Excel to create tables and charts, then moving these into Powerpoint for delivery and presentation. This often occurred after the next campaign was already live. The process was costly in terms of the time and resource required to prepare reports and did not allow the team to be as flexible and reactive as they would like.

PSCU, a credit union-owned cooperative, was in the midst of a multiyear initiative to evolve and broaden its call center services when it realized the need for better data organization and visibility. The company was dealing with disparate data sources and flat reporting that lacked analysis, color-coding, and cross-functionality. The reports served specific needs but did not show all the inputs or outputs due to lack of integration. PSCU recognized the need to better organize its data to more effectively align with its business model and to provide the full suite of products and member experience required by its credit union relationships. The view needed to be cross-functional for the company to optimize and innovate where necessary.

Hendry, an asset protection firm, was facing a challenge of limited value in their services due to a narrow vision of their work. The industry was lagging behind in the adoption of technology and clients were demanding more than what was being delivered. The company realized that they needed to change and adapt to the fast-paced, technologically driven world. They wanted to provide more value to their clients than just services required within statutory law. They saw the potential of data and technology to transform their services and become a full-service advisory business.

Transport fleets are crucial for modern commerce, and their efficiency is paramount. However, as fleets grow in size, their management becomes increasingly complex. To keep track, organizations have equipped their fleet vehicles with sensors. However, the sheer volume of telemetry data they receive is difficult to consolidate and convert into meaningful reports that point to effective business decisions. Montrans, Russia’s leading transport monitoring company, faced this challenge. It started as a fuel consumption tracker but its systems have since grown in sophistication and it wanted to move away from static reports to provide interactive fleet control and data-driven management.

Dataspark, a company specializing in data visualization, dashboards, and reporting specifically for Exact Online, Exact Globe, and Exact Synergy, wanted to empower Exact Software users to get even more insights from their data. To achieve this, they needed to build bespoke products and become the go-to services organization for their customers. The challenge was to find a flexible, easily accessible, and fast solution that their customers demand.

Rackspace Technology was dealing with a chaotic data environment, which was more of a liability than an asset. The business intelligence team was spending more time fact-checking than delivering actionable insights. The company needed to transform its data into a strategic asset that could help it compete better in terms of customer experience. To achieve this, Rackspace Technology established its Global Data Office.

Corporater, a Norway-based company, was looking for a business intelligence (BI) solution to help their customers visualize and make sense of their vast and varied data. The company needed a tool that would empower end-users to see insights and take action. While Corporater typically developed software internally, they carefully weighed the option of partnering, instead of building, a visual analytics tool. They evaluated several options, considering factors such as integration simplicity, ease of doing business, reputation, and visualization capabilities.

CSC ServiceWorks (CSCSW) services laundry locations and air services at gas stations across the United States. These services are often overlooked because when they’re working well, no one thinks twice about them. But these are historically coin-based industries. As currency has increasingly moved into the digital sphere, these services are less convenient for the general public. About a decade ago, the payment technology for laundromats and air machines started to shift so that people could pay with a swipe of a card. It was a nice leap forward. As the years rolled on, the rise of the Internet of Things (IoT) made smart payments with mobile devices possible, connecting information on these payments to a main network. Now, we can monitor all of our machines from a central location, provide convenient app based payment, and offer a higher level of service. Just as CSCSW served a traditional coin industry, we had a traditional on-premise data warehouse platform when I joined the company as Chief Digital Officer in 2019. We have developers for these warehouses, who would run and share reports with others when necessary. It was functional in the past, but as we gained more data this wasn’t a viable solution. With connected machines, our thirst for data and analytics within the company grew exponentially. We needed to have easier access to the data within the organization so people could get the information they needed on their own, and developers could focus on more important work besides pulling queries and running reports. We needed a more efficient way of dealing with data and driving value for our consumers, clients and employees.

J.B. Hunt, one of the largest transportation and logistics companies in North America, was seeking to increase efficiency and customer responsiveness by gaining real-time insights into its operations and assets. However, the company faced the challenge of not impacting production systems while doing so. They had implemented a Microsoft Azure Databricks data lake but needed to accelerate the flow of analytics-ready data into the lake.

Naylor Association Solutions was facing a challenge in their marketing-sales processes, particularly in lead scoring and qualification. The company was using a CMS that required account executives to fill out nearly 30 different data fields, which were then used by the marketing automation platform for scoring and qualification. This process was time-consuming and frustrating for the salespeople, who viewed many of the fields as unnecessary. On the other hand, the marketing team couldn't provide a better justification for the data other than they needed it for their processes.

Beyond 12, a technology-based services organization, aims to increase the number of low-income and first-generation students who graduate from U.S. colleges and universities. However, they lacked a data scientist on staff who could build a predictive analytics model. They needed a robust in-house tool managed by their existing engineering staff for a viable and scalable solution. The objective was to refine Beyond 12’s approach to addressing their analytics needs and to provide coaches with a bird’s-eye view of their students. This would enable them to provide the right assistance to the right students at the right time.

Healthcare is a complex and disconnected environment where innovation and breakthroughs rely on navigating vast quantities of data from disparate stakeholders. IQVIA, a leading global provider of advanced analytics, technology solutions and clinical research services to the healthcare sector, specializes in meeting this challenge. In the UK, IQVIA works across eight key areas that include patient experience and outcome measures, costing, benchmarking, clinical coding and population health. It also runs one of the world’s largest life sciences laboratories supporting widescale clinical trials. Principal customers of IQVIA’s healthcare team are hospitals of the UK’s National Health Service (NHS). They use IQVIA’s insights to learn how to fund increasingly complex patient pathways and drugs, how to better manage resources and how to maximize the use of data to improve their services with a view to improving patient outcomes.

Universal Business School Sydney (UBSS), one of Australia’s major independent higher education providers, faced two key challenges. Internally, it aimed to support students on their journey to a successful academic conclusion of their studies. Externally, it had to satisfy the high standards of compliance expected of the country’s registered higher education providers set by the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TESQA). UBSS had to access multiple internal and external data sources to meet its mission of providing a richer and deeper understanding of the teaching and learning process, as well as enriching its students’ experience. The complexity involved six different academic management systems the organization uses while interacting in real-time with various departments for academic data, visa and immigration data, and international student intelligence.

ADP Netherlands BV, a part of international market leader ADP Inc., provides a wide range of HR, payroll, tax, and benefits administration solutions to approximately 1.2 million employees in over 6,000 companies every month. The company was facing a challenge in providing its customers with relevant and easily accessible information about Human Resources. The static reports generated by ADP using Cognos Imprompto and Clarion Report Writer were not meeting the dynamic reporting and analysis needs of their clients. The HR departments of their client companies were becoming more accountable and needed to provide information directly to the board of directors. This required the HR departments to have their business processes clearly mapped out. Furthermore, line managers needed feedback and overviews of various HR aspects such as employees with a high number of sick days.

Ahlers AG, a leading manufacturer of men’s clothing in Europe, faced challenges in managing and controlling production, storage, and sales due to increasing vertical integration and global competitive pressures. The company needed to provide business data quickly and precisely for decision-making. They required real-time answers to various questions related to sales trends, sales planning variations, stock quantity at the point of sale, and strategic planning of the next collection. The company initially started with a traditional OLAP tool, but it presented many shortcomings in managing high volumes of data, flexible analysis with evaluated dimensions, and speed and performance.

The B. Braun Group, a leading healthcare supplier, was facing issues with reporting and analyzing data due to the slow speed of their SAP warehouse. Not every team member had access to the SAP warehouse, leading to a loss of time for managers who were busy putting together reports in Excel, instead of actually spending time analyzing the data. The building of reports to analyze a combination of both internal and external figures was a problem, resulting in incomplete reports that could not be analyzed properly. Reporting took too much time from both the business managers and the IT department. The reports were slow to access and not in all cases complete as the capabilities to combine external data were missing. This was affecting the competitive position of B.Braun in the Belgian market, since managers were not able to get immediate insight into their customers’ sales figures, the results of the different product ranges and the net profit margins.

Berenberg Bank, a Swiss bank specializing in investment advice and asset management, was seeking to improve its customer relations management. The bank wanted to provide its staff with a toolset that would optimize their consultancy services through classic ABC customer analyses and individual reviews of customer data. The bank's management wanted an improved overview of the entire customer situation, including the composition of the customer portfolio, the number of new customers won, and the income produced with various products in different market segments. The bank also wanted each consultant to be able to access the appropriate figures for the profit margin account to monitor yields and losses on the portfolio. The data required for these analyses came from various sources, and the only way to analyze this data was via a laborious, error-prone, and rather protracted journey with Excel spreadsheet software.

Cendris Customer Contact, a service provider, was facing challenges with their existing reporting system. The company relied on static reports from different source systems and monthly reports based on Excel. This resulted in problems due to the use of different types of data from various source systems. The slow speed and lack of flexibility in reporting left much to be desired. Furthermore, they wanted to provide their clients with uniform, up-to-date and consistent reports all with a comprehensive look and feel. The company's first step towards a full Business Intelligence solution was unlocking the different source systems, including Synergy, an Exact business process management solution for time registration, leave, absenteeism and payroll management; and Globe also from Exact, for the financial administration and different systems for calling, planning and email handling.

Cheshire and Wirral Partnership, a provider of services for people with mental health, learning disability, and drug/alcohol problems in the Northern UK, was facing a challenge with their Business Intelligence. They needed to make it more flexible, easier to understand, and intuitive. The existing system was not providing the necessary insights and was not user-friendly for the clinicians and managers who needed to use it.

DeLuca Homes, a leading homebuilder in America, was facing several challenges. The company needed to proactively manage complex construction schedules while reducing administrative costs. They also needed to efficiently manage the company’s data needs without overburdening IT. Furthermore, they wanted to streamline supplier relationships based on analysis of real buying trends and buyer preferences. The company was growing and diversifying, and their geographical sphere of development had grown from throughout the mid-Atlantic region of the US, to southeastern Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, and Florida. They had also opened a new regional division in Orlando, Florida, which now accounts for 50 percent of DeLuca Homes’ sales. The company is vertically integrated with in-house capabilities for land acquisition/development, architecture, construction, manufacturing, mortgage, and title. Controlling every facet of the business provides DeLuca Homes with complete control over the end result – to deliver the finest homes in the finest communities.

Pharmaceutical companies often struggle with negotiating profitable deals with managed care organizations. The lack of transparency into data and the time-consuming process of aggregating data across various sources often leads to suboptimal discounts and deal profitability. Companies need a solution that can provide insights into the potential value of managed care entities, recommend discounts for each account, and project the impact of the deal over time. They also need a tool that can answer specific business questions and deliver insights across disparate data sources.

Estrella, a Swedish snack food producer, was bought from Kraft Food in 2008. One of the conditions of the deal was that Estrella could only continue using Kraft Food’s IT systems during a transition period of six months. This meant that Estrella had to build a completely new IT structure from the ground up in record time. During this period, the company had an enormous need for information and a basis for decision-making. There was no CEO, hardly any administrative staff and only a small number of management personnel in place. The new owners, the Norwegian company Herkules Capital, needed to be able to monitor the company’s development, to an even greater extent than usual, through a number of key figures. The company needed to be guided by remote control from Oslo. The company had used an ERP solution from SAP for many years, but did not have time to procure and put in place such a large and complex system.

Flipkart, the largest B2B e-commerce business in India, experienced rapid growth and diversification, expanding its network of warehouses and procurement operations. This scale added to the need for Flipkart to continually upgrade its business discovery software to better serve multiple business units with new applications. As a startup, Flipkart initially used open source technology to support the launch, but soon found that open source business intelligence (BI) tools had limited functionality. Scalability was a problem and it was hard to drill down into their data to produce complex reports. Flipkart was experiencing an increasingly complex data flow from different business units—for example, inventory and supply chain.

FrontPoint Security, a leading provider of self-installed wireless home security systems in North America, was experiencing rapid growth. This growth trajectory was outpacing the capabilities of its existing Business Intelligence (BI) solution, which was unable to provide employees with the timely insights they required. This resulted in backlogging, inefficient reporting processes, and an inability to make timely decisions. The company needed a solution that could provide insights on how customers were using their systems, customer satisfaction, and the effectiveness of the company’s marketing practices. At a higher level, the management team needed answers from its data that spanned across multiple business systems so that decisions could be made allowing the business to keep up with the high growth environment.

Gestamp Automoción, an international group dealing in the development and manufacture of components and metal assemblies for motor vehicles, was facing a challenge with its data management. The company had a large amount of information, a large number of users, and disparate, international information coming from eight different enterprise resource planning systems (ERPs) across its production plants. The information wasn’t unified and there was no way to achieve this automatically with the legacy system. Reports were prepared using macros and in presentations or spreadsheets. Gestamp Automoción needed a complete, efficient reporting system. The company was looking for an application to complete its FULLSTEP GS purchasing platform and integrate information from that platform with data from the company’s various ERPs.

Greencore Northampton, part of the Greencore Group, was facing challenges in analyzing electronic point of sale (EPOS) data. The company was using Microsoft Excel reports to monitor sales performance, which involved complex pivot tables and took hours of work to produce. As a result, they were often slow to react if a particular product wasn’t selling well in a particular store. They had no real-time information on which were the best-selling lines, so stores in some areas ran out of stock and in others they had to throw away food. The aim was to reduce waste and improve the availability of sandwiches and wraps at M&S stores in the UK.