Coca-Cola Refreshments owns and manages Coca-Cola branded refrigerators in retail establishments. Legacy systems were used to locate equipment information by logging onto multiple servers which took up to 8 hours to update information on 30-40 units. The company had no overall visibility into equipment status or maintenance history.

Manufacturers rightly focus on improving profit margins and growing revenue. Attracting new customers, selling more products and lean practices can help. However, as equipment sophistication increases, so does the ability to monitor equipment. Manufacturers can now develop revenue from maintenance services. Preventive maintenance has its advantages but to really drive uptime and maintain service levels, predictive maintenance is needed. Seamless IoT and machine sensor data integration is critical as well as a low-latency messaging backbone for scalable, fast and reliable transport. Delivering potentially large quantities of data at sub-second speeds is key to downstream activities. webMethods Integration, featuring Universal Messaging, addresses this need with an enterprise-grade service bus for connectivity, messaging, transformation and security of machine data for advanced real-time analytics.

AEMO needed to modernize of the Gas FRC Hub a B2B platform for the gas retail markets throughout Australia and provide a reliable B2B platform that could scale to support the adoption of B2B procedures in New South Wales (NSW).

Fujitsu needed a solution that would provide greater flexibility for user interfaces, facilitate improvements in its 24/7 support, enable faster on-boarding of customers and increase cost efficiencies. Fujitsu also needed continuous availability throughout the transition process due to demanding Service Level Agreements (SLAs) and high penalties.

GreenFlex, a company that supports sustainable development, decarbonization, and energy efficiency, faced several challenges in its quest to expand its business. The company needed to deploy a robust and sustainable IoT technology to support its growth. It was crucial for them to monitor and control devices at customer sites in a safe and reliable manner. They also needed to integrate devices across a range of communication protocols and gather and act on data to meet efficiency targets. GreenFlex had previously built IoT capabilities into its digital platform, GreenFlexIQ, to monitor and manage customer sites remotely. However, they soon realized that they needed a new platform to support their ambitions. They needed a platform that could scale to connect more devices for production management and make it easier for the operations team to manage devices in the field.

Deutsche Telekom, a global leader in Machine-to-Machine (M2M) and Internet of Things (IoT) communications, was faced with the challenge of quickly establishing a presence in the fast-paced IoT market. The company needed to find a technology partner that could provide a fully rebrandable platform to launch a solution that could get customers up and running in minutes. Deutsche Telekom recognized that its enterprise customers, including Dürkopp Adler, Deutsche Afrika Linien, HUBTEX, and Definitiv, needed to transform their businesses to remain globally competitive and innovative. The company aimed to simplify IoT adoption and enable its enterprise customers to efficiently implement end-to-end IoT solutions. This would allow these businesses to increase end-customer service levels and customer satisfaction, lower operational costs, and transition from product-centric to service-centric companies.

The case study compilation presents a variety of challenges faced by different organizations across various sectors. Medical Industrie GmbH & Co. KG needed to optimize and streamline their B2B sales. Bank Sinarmas needed to comply with Indonesian Open-API Standards and exploit the ecosystem economy. MUDUM required a platform to harness the power of the API-driven ecosystem economy. OCP Group needed to standardize their APIs. Al Barid Bank was in the process of digital transformation. Marsa Maroc needed to digitalize its business workflows. PharmLog required an integration platform for seamless pharma logistics. Lufthansa Technik AG needed a B2B integration environment for standardized customer engagement. Socomec needed a hybrid integration tool to boost security and improve efficiency. Hellmann needed to integrate more than 750 application interfaces and over 500 customers.

The Dürr Group, a leading mechanical and plant engineering firm, faced several challenges in aligning its IT with its company-wide OneDürrGroup strategy. The company's consistent expansion and diverse customer base resulted in a complex IT infrastructure, characterized by different integration solutions and a hybrid application landscape. The company aimed to implement its OneDürrGroup strategy across all locations and divisions, which naturally impacted its own IT. The diverse range of solutions—on-premises, Integration-Platform-as-a-Service (iPaaS) and Software-as-a-Service—meant more cost and effort and required more expertise in different technologies, as well as a mass of redundant interfaces. The company believed that an integrated architecture could achieve significant streamlining in the HR landscape alone.

Staples Inc., the world's largest supplier of office products, promises to make buying products easy, including making customer deliveries the very next day whenever required. When Staples experienced an increase in delivery volume, the company needed an integration solution that could be implemented rapidly and scaled easily. The company had recently acquired Corporate Express and was seeking ways to maximize synergy and reduce costs across the business. They identified an opportunity to integrate transportation networks for a potential multi-million-dollar cost savings. However, the supply chain platform they had selected couldn't scale to handle the massive transaction volume. Staples was committed to finding a solution that did not slow down integration efforts with Corporate Express.

Bank Rakyat Indonesia (BRI), the largest national bank in Indonesia and the world's largest microfinance institution, faced several challenges in its quest to digitalize transactions and meet rapidly changing customer needs. The bank's complex architecture, which included over 200 different systems and multiple middleware platforms, made it difficult to integrate, operate, and monitor new applications. This complexity also hindered the bank's ability to quickly bring new services to market. Furthermore, BRI needed to reduce costs on smaller, shorter-term loans, a key component of its microfinance offerings. The bank's existing technology had limited capabilities and performance, and could not support its new digital banking initiative.

The case study compilation presents a variety of challenges faced by different organizations across various industries. Medical Industrie GmbH & Co. KG needed to optimize and streamline their B2B sales. Bank Sinarmas needed to comply with Indonesian Open-API Standards and exploit the opportunities of the ecosystem economy. MUDUM was looking to harness the power of the API-driven ecosystem economy. OCP Group needed to standardize their APIs. Al Barid Bank was undergoing a digital transformation and needed to strengthen its position as an inclusive bank. Marsa Maroc was looking to advance the digitalization of its business workflows. PharmLog needed an integration platform solution that improves their overall efficiency and creates maximum transparency. Lufthansa Technik AG needed a B2B integration environment that standardized customer engagement. Socomec needed to boost security, improve efficiency, and achieve total visibility over its business workflows. Hellmann needed to integrate more than 750 application interfaces and over 500 customers.

Brenntag Europe, a world leader in international chemical distribution, was facing challenges due to its continuous growth. The growth had led to a highly disparate and inefficient IT environment. There was a lack of enterprise-wide process standardization and visibility. The company also needed to comply with Sarbanes-Oxley criteria and improve its quality management for ISO certification and audits. The company desired to implement a consistent operational foundation, built with standardized and modular processes, to facilitate simplified implementations and the optimization of existing applications.

ATB Financial, a financial institution and crown corporation, was facing challenges in its business lending origination process. The process was slow and inconsistent due to manual data entry and interpretation, which led to human errors and slowed down the process. The subjective interpretation of the approval criteria led to inconsistent outcomes and often resulted in rework. It could take up to three weeks for a single customer to be approved with an average process time of about 11 days. ATB aimed to accelerate the process of onboarding small business and agricultural customers to one day or less. They also wanted to increase visibility to monitor and optimize processes and leverage agile business rules to boost the approval rate.

Apollo-Optik, Germany's largest retail chain for optical products, was facing challenges in serving its customers with high-quality products and on-time delivery. The company's IT landscape was complex and consisted of several different back-end systems, leading to redundancy in data and functionality. For instance, retrieving all data on a customer required calling upon many relevant functions in different systems. This inefficiency prompted Apollo-Optik to transition to a more efficient Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) and implement re-usable services across all systems. The company aimed to provide the highest level of quality in customized eyeglasses on time, every time, and needed a solution that could help achieve this goal.

The Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) was faced with the challenge of offering a single technology platform for all gas market participants to easily transfer information and data in a seamless way for each gas market. It also wanted to more effectively promote greater industry collaboration and flexibility for how participants interacted across the platform. A key part of this challenge was the modernization of the Gas FRC Hub, a B2B platform for the gas retail markets throughout Australia. The hub infrastructure was also planned for use in the NSW/ACT gas retail market.

STC, the major provider of telecommunication services in Saudi Arabia, was facing a rapidly changing business environment characterized by volatility and the need for new and innovative business models. Globalization was impacting the telecom industry as a whole and, in addition, technologies were converging, customers were becoming more highly educated and expressed demands that were both increasing in scope and diversity. Telecom companies, therefore, needed to invest in new and rapidly evolving technologies while at the same time deal with the commoditization of their products and services. Customer volatility and regulatory pressures were also compounding this competitive situation. Winning and retaining customers today is about service excellence and as prices point are lowered so are the entry points into these industries by competitors. To combat this, telecom enterprises are shifting their focus from growth to efficiency.

Piraeus Bank Group, one of the most dynamic financial organizations in Greece, was facing challenges due to its rapid international expansion. The bank needed a well-defined enterprise architecture at its headquarters that could be rolled out to its subsidiaries to streamline local operations based on the Piraeus Bank model. Additionally, the bank was experiencing a rate of growth that involved operational modifications on a daily basis, which needed to be efficiently maintained and distributed. The bank also aimed to create a strong, well-documented, comprehensive, and flexible enterprise architecture that would be valid for Piraeus Bank Greece but also applicable at the Group level. This would allow for efficient distribution of Group policies and operations and quick integration of newly acquired subsidiaries.

The Central Bottling Company (CBC) Group, which holds the Coca-Cola franchise for Israel, wanted to mobilize its retail portal as part of a broader initiative to speed up the ordering process. Smaller retailers were still placing orders with on-site sales people and through an online portal. By mobilizing the portal, the CBC Group aimed to create a convenient self-service channel for retailers. The Mobile Enterprise Application Platform (MEAP) needed to work with the largest variety of operating systems and offer superior time to market at minimal cost and with maximum internal support.

Cargolux Airlines S.A. was in a strong market position with impressive sales and constant profit figures when the top management decided to run a “health check” on the company’s processes. Management perceived inefficiencies with the organization and IT spending was not optimized to support it. “In addition, management felt that internal groups sometimes had different versions of the truth and decision makers were having trouble gathering the information they needed in a timely manner. Finally, over time each business unit had started to run their own systems and created databases that sometimes competed with each other. The risk of duplicated and unclear ownership of tasks had become too high.” Cargolux started to look for a way to streamline its processes and provide the foundation for creating a service-oriented systems architecture.

Nissan, one of the world's largest automobile manufacturers, was facing the challenge of fulfilling its strategy of producing and delivering made-to-order vehicles. The company had been relying on Software AG's Adabas and Natural for database management and application development since 1985. However, with the increasing customer demand for customized cars, Nissan recognized the need to improve database performance and application efficiency. The challenges of an overburdened database were inevitable as database backups were interfering with employee productivity and a high number of data files running in parallel on a critical path often created a bottleneck.

Ashland Manufacturing, a $5 billion US-based provider of specialty chemical solutions, was facing a series of challenges. The company was shifting its focus from construction materials to pharmaceuticals, a transition that brought about new challenges. This shift required higher added value, lower product throughput, and more control over production processes. The company was also dealing with seemingly 'unsolvable' production issues and a need for operational efficiency to boost quality and profitability. There was also pressure to increase Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) production throughput. Furthermore, the company had to navigate the new territory of strict GMP standards relating to pharmaceutical product quality.

Australian Unity, a leading provider of health, wealth, and care products and services, faced several challenges. The company had a directive to migrate critical on-premises applications to the cloud. They also needed a single source of truth across their complex, diverse business portfolio. The company desired to automate their complex membership rules process and felt the pressure to enable secure file transfer across the business. The company's diverse range of products and services necessitated an investment in IT to deliver what matters to its customers and members. Australian Unity needed a solution that could unlock data held in silos across numerous legacy systems and connect it to release its true value.

EFG Hermes Holding, a universal bank based in Cairo, was facing several challenges as it sought to expand into the non-bank financial product market. The company was developing a new consumer financing platform that required greater digital agility. They needed to provide a connected customer experience, modernize their legacy integration, and minimize disruptive back-end changes. The company's novel BNPL platform, valU, had grown in popularity since its launch in 2017. However, as the suite of applications expanded, the IT systems became less agile due to rigid point-to-point connections. This lack of agility led to service interruptions when replacing applications and delays in updates to the valU mobile app. To ensure an exceptional customer experience, EFG Hermes Holding recognized the need for a more agile, secure, and easy-to-maintain services architecture.

Schwering & Hasse (S&H), a Germany-based company, manufactures a large volume of copper magnet wire, a critical component of numerous electrical products. The manufacturing process requires minute tolerances for the insulation, with even a tiny deviation from the specification rendering the wire useless. S&H's mission is to manufacture as much wire as possible with as few errors as possible. However, the company faced challenges in maintaining high quality standards due to rapidly changing customer demands and product specifications. The existing information systems were not equipped to create a factory that was truly “transparent” to both line workers and managers. The company needed a system that could provide immediate and accurate visibility into multiple production quality factors in real time.

Schwering & Hasse (S&H), a Germany-based company, manufactures a massive volume of copper magnet wire, with 400 production lines producing 140,000 kilometers of wire per day in a 24/7 operation. The wire, which is coated with a thin layer of insulation, is a critical component of numerous electrical products, such as transformers and motors. The tolerances required for the insulation are minute, with even a tiny deviation from the specification rendering the wire useless. S&H's mission is to manufacture as much wire as possible with as few errors as possible. However, the company faced challenges in maintaining high quality standards due to rapidly changing customer demands and product specifications. The company's existing information systems were not equipped to create a factory that was truly “transparent” to both line workers and managers, and did not provide detailed, real-time information about every phase in the production process.

The Colruyt Group, a major player in Belgium's retail network, was struggling with inefficient communications and order management due to the use of manual processes and homegrown solutions. The company, which operates a vast network of retailers, distributors, and suppliers, found that these methods no longer met its need for efficient communications and order management. The existing process used manual processes for orders, invoicing, and change orders, resulting in inaccurate orders and drawn-out order-to-cash timeframes.

All direct trading operations at DWS are conducted via its IKS investment account service. As Europe’s largest supplier of public funds, DWS has been handling all necessary customer and account management since the late 1980s with an Adabas- and Natural-based mainframe application. In the late 1990s, DWS put its entire It landscape, including this essential application, to the test. the need for action arose in particular because of insufficient integration of the different It systems. A need for modernization was quickly identified in the IKS department, DWS’s internal distribution channel for the funds trade. Over the years, a number of isolated solutions with only limited interaction capabilities had emerged. The mainframe application was developed with Adabas and Natural in the late 1980s for central customer and account management. It was distressing that marketing and distribution applications, such as call center and document management, could only access the mainframe application via workaround solutions or, in some cases, could not access it at all.

To keep ahead in the fast-moving fashion industry, Bossini wanted to have better visibility into its business and operational processes by synchronizing real-time data across multiple orders, shipments and stock-keeping units (SKUs). However, the data resided in a number of systems, from point-of-sale (POS) solutions to Bossini’s warehouse management inventory. In order to achieve its goals, Bossini had to integrate a series of platforms including the old and new versions of its Oracle application and the company’s legacy platform. During the transition from legacy system to SOA, the company’s different platforms had to be integrated. Other applications like the company’s new POS system had to be connected not only to its new Warehouse Management System (WMS), but also to the old POS because the company was still in the midst of systems migration.

COLT had deployed the same systems in several countries and all of them were operating independently. As a result, there were over 10 instances of each application — and each one containing its own silo of information. Customer information was recorded in several systems and there was no consolidated view of a customer across the whole company. COLT also wanted to automate the provisioning process with the local telecom operators for certain products. This would require COLT to integrate its order handling system with that of the operator. This extended the scope of the integration challenge beyond the enterprise into the realm of B2B.

Alicorp, a leading food processing company in Latin America, faced several challenges in its ambitious 2025 roadmap. The company needed to unify technologies and processes across its four complex business lines. There was a demand for standardization and automation of processes across all geographies and subsidiaries. However, Alicorp struggled with a lack of process visibility, both internally and externally. The company also found it challenging to find an open process management platform that could integrate with its new SAP migration. The company's accelerated growth over the years had resulted in operational complexity, with different tech solutions solving local problems, new applications serving global customers, and system mergers following numerous acquisitions.