Fabick Cat, a tractor dealer specializing in the distribution of Caterpillar® equipment, faced a challenge when it acquired a second Caterpillar dealership. The newly acquired dealership had its own custom-written order processing system running on OpenVMS with RMS files, different from Fabick Cat's IBM® AS/400 based system. Fabick Cat wanted a solution to provide a data warehouse for both systems to ensure uniform reporting and analytics for both companies. The initial plan was to FTP files from the OpenVMS server and load them into SQL Server. However, the amount of data downloaded every day and the manual nature of this approach raised concerns.

The company, a global leader in consumer health products, was facing several challenges. They wanted to 'win differently' with a digital business platform, improve access to information across the enterprise, reduce manual work and standardize processes, increase visibility across the global supply chain, and become more customer-centric. They were dealing with painful processes like manually collecting data from disconnected systems. The company had no way to detect issues in delivery flow, and customer interactions were reactive rather than proactive. Costs increased due to shipment escalations. The Approval for Product Release (APR) process was disjointed and required manually consolidating paper specs into binders across all R&D functions. Every region had a different framework with no way to monitor or share information. There was no workflow support, no integration to other systems.

The company, a leading marketing agency, was facing challenges due to the overwhelming volumes of data, the industry-wide revolution in digitalization, and a disruptive media and advertising environment. The company needed to deliver marketing messages to customers where they are, when they are receptive, and perfectly optimized for the right device or medium. They also needed to move beyond simple, post-campaign analysis to a set of analytic techniques that incorporated probability, statistics, algorithmic modeling, data mining, and machine learning. The volumes of data, computational resources, and technical knowhow required for this were tremendous.

Medellin, the second largest city in Colombia, was facing a number of challenges in its quest to become a Smart Digital City. The city's citizens were demanding better public-private cooperation and communication, public services accessible and accountable through the web, and a government able to respond to requests quickly and without mistakes. The existing processes for citizens to interact with the local government were cumbersome and error-prone. A concerned citizen would submit a paper request in person—with no telling how long it would take to get a response, if ever. Without tracking or a coordinated workflow, some requests were lost in a sea of paper.

The company, a top loyalty program provider, was facing a challenge in meeting the aggressive end-to-end Service Level Agreement (SLA) of 500 milliseconds for every transaction, as demanded by large retail prospects. The company's data center took an average of 20 percent longer than that — 600 milliseconds — just to query upwards of 32GB of customer data in a central, disk-bound database. Furthermore, Java-related garbage collection pauses caused unexpected spikes in response times that would have resulted in financial penalties for failure to meet the SLA, and in unhappy customers. In order to win new business from larger retailers, the company realized it had to move its data into fast machine memory.

The company, a global industrial powerhouse, wanted to embrace the Internet of Things (IoT) to drive advances in high-end manufacturing. However, the early versions of its open IoT platform had limited integration capabilities and could only connect their own products. It was impossible to import application data into the IoT platform or to export results into applications. The company wanted to transform its platform into a driver of key digital services business by harnessing data from other manufacturers’ products.

The bank, founded in 2010, faced several challenges as it grew rapidly to over 1.2 million customers and 55 branches in just a few years. The high barrier to market entry, consumer stickiness, and extraordinary growth were some of the challenges. The bank also lacked a unified process management system and had to deal with looming GDPR regulations and manual documents. As a newcomer in the field, the bank sought to find a balance between well-worn protocols related to process planning, optimization, and efficiency, and the demands of savvy customers for legendary service and great products. The looming deadline for enforcement of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in early 2018 only added fuel to the fire.

The company, a global leader in medical technology, services, and solutions, was facing several challenges. They were in the process of transforming into an outcome-based healthcare solutions provider and needed to quickly integrate acquisitions to maximize operating efficiencies. The company was also looking to change how the world delivers patient care. The company's systems were previously locked down by point-to-point integrations, which was not flexible and technology-dependent. The company needed a more flexible, technology-agnostic solution for lower-cost internal and partner integrations that could be quickly configured, turned on, and changed.

BSA Group, a leading provider of asset management solutions in Australia, faced several challenges in their quest to optimize building management. They needed to connect disparate systems and sensors in buildings to collect and analyze new information and find efficiencies. They also needed to consolidate this information into a single view for customers and provide integration and connectivity between disparate and proprietary building systems and vendors. The goal was to reduce energy and maintenance costs for customers while addressing new revenue opportunities in the market.

TDC Group, the leading telecommunications company in Denmark, was facing a significant challenge with the enforcement of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). A specific pain point for TDC was Article 30 of the GDPR, relating to the maintenance of processing activity records. This article lays out the obligations to store records by process controllers and representatives, documents erasure time limits and outlines transfers of data to third parties. It represents a serious compliance headache. TDC had a mountain ahead of it to climb. One of GDPR’s central requirements is for companies to generate ROPA reports detailing data collection, related processes, and uses in a way that makes data protection accountable. Easy to do with the right tools—and documentation—in place. Impossible otherwise.

Trackerando, a company specializing in tailored GPS and IoT solutions, was tasked with developing a high-end GPS tracking solution for high-performance sports cars and vintage cars. The challenge was to provide 24/7 tracking across Europe with reliable connectivity. The solution had to meet rigorous insurance requirements for these high-value vehicles and cater to specific customer wishes regarding the alarm function. The main issue was that once these high-priced collector items left the showroom and were taken out on the road, insurance companies designated them as “not insurable.“ The objective was to find a service provider who had the hardware and software to offer cross-border GPS tracking and a reliable alarm function.

Dataport, a pioneer in providing IT and communication services for government agencies in Germany, was facing several challenges. The company was tasked with digitalizing public administration, which was a significant undertaking. Additionally, they were dealing with ongoing high costs associated with throttled processors. The utilization of mainframe capacity was increasing, and there was a growing demand due to new customers. The company was also considering accepting Saxony-Anhalt as a new customer, which would further strain their mainframe capacity.

The telecommunications company, despite its success and growth, faced several challenges. The rapid growth at home and abroad resulted in a patchwork of loosely connected subsidiaries and thousands of internal and external processes to manage. Some processes were partially automated, while others relied on manual, sometimes paper-based steps. Technology costs were rising, and redundant technology and applications were impacting operating expenditures. The company lacked visibility into use or users, making it impossible to rationalize applications, standardize technologies, or calculate change impacts. A unified, digital approach to business process management was needed, capable of modeling all business processes and interactions between Customer Relationship Management and Billing.

The central bank of a Gulf country was facing challenges with its legacy IT architecture that had grown in silos over time due to the lack of an enterprise integration layer. This situation was posing massive systemic risks and adding costly inefficiencies, hindering the central bank’s security, reliability and governance standards. The bank was also planning to adopt new best-of-breed technologies which would have further complicated the situation. The bank needed a structured, strategic integration platform to ensure all its applications work together flawlessly and pose minimal risk to the disruption of business.

The company, a leading global producer of passive electronic components and interconnects, was facing a challenge with its legacy mainframe infrastructure. The IBM mainframe environment, which had been in use for over 30 years, was still functional but was not equipped to handle the demands of the modern manufacturing world. The company was ready to embrace the changes brought about by automation, green energy, and advanced robotics, but its infrastructure was not. The mainframe was handling accounts payable, burst reports, job scheduling, and source control, but the costs were escalating, and the system was becoming outdated. By 2013, backup hardware had become impossible to find, older users supporting the system were retiring, software updates were non-existent, and adding new functionality was off the table. The company was left with no support in the event of a disaster.

ING, a multinational banking corporation, was facing a challenge in monitoring rogue trading activities and market abuse. The bank had an overwhelming amount of data to analyze and needed to transition into data analytics. The existing manual controls were not sufficient to handle the vast amount of data and the complex regulatory requirements. The bank needed a robust, scalable, and flexible solution that could automate the monitoring process across the financial markets value chain.

Echo, a casino in Australia, was facing a challenge with their VIP customer service. The process of releasing funds for VIP customers was complex and manual, taking up to 20 minutes. This was causing inconvenience for the VIP customers who had to wait for a long time before they could start playing. The company wanted to transform this process into a fast and convenient experience for their VIP customers.

The Ayaydın-Miroglio Group, a multinational fashion retailer, was facing challenges in sustaining high growth in new sales channels, adopting a new franchise model for international expansion, keeping up with changing customer preferences, creating operational efficiencies, and improving workforce morale & reducing turnover. The company's growth was coming at the expense of efficiency, and hidden internal costs were mounting. Critical operational processes weren’t keeping up, especially with the added complexity of an ambitious international expansion plan. The company needed an engaged and enabled workforce to serve constantly evolving customer habits, preferences, and expectations.

The Miami Heat, a renowned basketball team, was looking to transform the fan experience at its venue, the American Airlines Arena. The team wanted to increase season ticket sales by delivering personalized content and experience, boost in-venue spend by providing a frictionless experience, and grow revenue via a mobile app, that would also allow it to go cashless and ticketless. The team wanted to ensure every season ticket holder’s experience was fun and trouble-free, and to do this it needed to enhance the arena with a new physical/digital experience. It was important to the Heat to make the right investments for its new app and customer loyalty strategy.

The organization, one of the world’s largest and most effective conservation nonprofits, was planning to consolidate all its applications from an in-house server to Microsoft Azure. It needed to make sure its core fundraising applications built on Adabas & Natural could run on the cloud as well. This would help it continue vital fundraising operations without interruption, as it simplified its IT infrastructure and looked to enable integration of future technologies. The organization has more than 4,300 users accessing applications for fundraising and donor engagement. These staff and volunteers contribute from around the world, so the organization had already modernized its application to enable easy access via the web or a mobile app.

Bega Cheese, a major player in the Australian dairy industry, faced challenges in its supply chain. The process was almost entirely manual, with farmers having to test milk quality and check vat levels themselves, then phone in the data to Bega Cheese. If there was extra production, Bega Cheese would have to rush to get tankers there quickly—if they were available. Milk tankers could sometimes deliver too-warm milk—or shaken-up milk (which changes the quality). The supply chain had to be much faster, and much more efficient. The company wanted to improve the efficiency of its supply chain, increasing efficiency and improving visibility to address these unique challenges.

TRAILAR, a subsidiary of DHL, developed an innovative solution that uses solar energy to power the onboard electrical equipment of commercial vehicles, thereby reducing fuel consumption and carbon emissions. However, the company needed a partner to help them leverage the data generated by their solution to offer new services and solutions. They required an all-in-one IoT platform that could manage devices, collect data, calculate fuel savings, and visualize data in real time. They also needed to prove the cost/usability benefit for customers and execute immediately without long lead times.

Bega Cheese, one of the largest dairy producers in Australia, wanted to make its suppliers’ milk journeys faster and safer. The company saw that it was missing new opportunities in its supply chain and wanted to make it faster, more efficient, more cost effective – and, at the same time, to reduce food waste. Bega’s Head of Supply Chain, Adel Salman, knew that the IoT could be an excellent solution. He could see the potential of using real-time data in the company’s supply chain – both inbound and outbound. But he needed a partner – one with deep expertise in using IoT for agriculture and industry. One with excellent government connections and industry contacts. He formed a committee that went around various universities in Australia to look for the ideal partner. And he found Swinburne University’s Professor Dimitrios Georgakopoulos, Director of Swinburne’s Internet of Things Lab.

Refrigerated transport is essential in Australia, and without it much of its agriculture, food processing, preservation and distribution, and even the pharmaceutical sector, would not be able to function properly. The global market for refrigeration is increasing, partly due to consumers becoming more health-conscious and wanting more fresh, healthy food, much of which is perishable. Producers must adapt to overcome logistics constraints and, at the same time, reduce the level of waste in the food industry. Nearly all of the produce eaten in Australia is grown there and Australia produces about three times as much as is consumed in the country. Each region has a different season, so seasonal produce has to be trucked from the growing region to the consumers in other regions. Refrigeration therefore is critically important to the Australian (and global) food chain. In the 1990’s, a shake-up in the transportation industry led to two big trucking companies dominating refrigeration. Because they had to squeeze costs down, they chose to no longer hire/train drivers to work with refrigeration units, so today’s refrigerated truck drivers have little or no experience with the units. QTRS fills that gap.

Clal, a leading insurance company in Israel, was facing stiff competition from regional InsurTech companies. The regulatory landscape was also becoming increasingly aggressive, impacting large companies with complex internal-external development needs. The company needed to transition from a bottleneck to a booster and turn a regulatory liability into a capability advantage. However, they lacked a comprehensive API management platform that could help them achieve this. The company also faced challenges with API bottlenecks and duplicates, rising costs, and the need for digital transformation.

LANXESS, a leading specialty chemicals company, operates in a fiercely competitive market worth over €1 trillion. The company needed to ensure timely, quality, and cost-effective delivery of its products. To thrive, LANXESS needed a solution that would provide its production specialists with operational and production data to continuously improve the operational performance of their plants. The company also aimed to democratize data for all its employees. In 2017, LANXESS established a dedicated service unit to push digital business models, introduce new technologies along the entire value chain, and work on the use of big data and the embedding of digital skills among its employees.

Farms in Australia are vast, averaging around 100,000 acres, with almost a billion acres being farmed in total. The majority of Australia's population is concentrated around the coastline and capital cities, leaving the agricultural land sparsely populated. This lack of population density results in limited Internet connectivity, hindering farmers' ability to adopt the latest technological developments that could help protect their crops and herds. The larger and more remote the farms, the more challenging the internet access and communication. The smallest undiscovered problem can create major issues with crops or herds. Powertec Communications, a service provider, works closely with farmers to ensure they are connected and can communicate, no matter where they may be.

Lyreco, a global office supply distributor, was facing challenges due to lack of real-time stock and sales insight. The company needed to improve service assurance and drive operational cost savings from restocking and servicing machines. The increasing digitalization, regulatory environment, and global competition were driving unprecedented change, and Lyreco needed to adapt its business strategies, better manage risk, and simplify critical processes to avoid being disrupted by change. The company recognized that more and more of the products its customers desire were becoming connected, providing deeper insights into product usage and allowing customers to decrease operational expenses, increase environmental awareness, and innovate with new service offerings.

KMC Global Controls & Automation, a technology-based company that provides control panels, automation and integration with remote and onsite support capability, faced several challenges. They needed to compete not only on cost but also offer value-added services to stay relevant and strategic. They aimed to ensure smaller manufacturers are successful at IIoT, create diversified and resilient revenue, and meet the growing need for remote monitoring. The company understood that IIoT is an evolutionary change every manufacturer needs for survival. However, small and midsize manufacturers often lack the ability to implement and maintain IIoT applications due to a lack of in-house expertise.

The mechanical engineering and industrial equipment industry is facing pressures from digitalization and agility. There is a need for a fast entry to the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) for Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs). The industry also requires machine-oriented digital service processes and a solution to merge heterogenous IT worlds. The challenge also lies in connecting intelligent machines and users. logicline, an IT consulting and project firm, aims to support companies in their digital transformation, and it relies on fast, customized implementation to deliver that support.