SMEC, a professional services firm, was looking for efficient field data collection methods to deliver high-quality end products, specifically a complete asset inventory, to their clients. They needed a solution that could integrate into their maintenance management systems, develop inventory and classification systems for assets, collect and inventory asset data, and assess the condition of assets. They were also looking to improve their technological systems to enhance their engineering processes and continuously improve upon existing methods and outputs.

MSI, a consulting firm specializing in international development services, often operates in remote and dangerous parts of the world. The firm's field-based teams face numerous challenges, including lack of mobile networks in remote regions, difficulty in finding critical locations due to lack of infrastructure, conducting surveys in multiple local languages, and dealing with local authorities who might be suspicious of their activities. Additionally, frequently changing inspection criteria and client information requests require field teams to rapidly pivot and shift priorities.

TREKK Design Group, a civil engineering firm, was facing several challenges with their inspection and data collection processes. They were using outdated paper-based inspections which were not compatible with their existing Access databases and EsriTM ArcGIS OnlineTM. They were also facing quality control issues with their field data collection, including inaccurate or irrelevant data and missing location information. Inspections of incorrect assets or structures within complex lines or grids were also a problem due to inaccessible or missing spatial components. The teams were also frustrated with non-purpose built inspection and data collection tools while trying to deliver on customer reporting and compliance requirements. Unreliable hotspots and Internet connection also resulted in teams “flying blind” in the field, unable to access databases or reliably collect information.

The Cancer Registry of Baja California Sur was facing challenges in collecting and analyzing medical records and related data for the purpose of scientific research and public health policy formulation. The existing process involved field staff collecting all data by hand on paper and manually entering patients’ locations. This method was time-consuming and often resulted in inaccurately recorded locations. The COVID-19 emergency further complicated the situation, requiring the rapid collection and analysis of data to efficiently allocate resources and avoid duplicating efforts in delivering support packages.

Desert Channels Queensland (DCQ) is a community-based not-for-profit organization that provides funding to assist landowners across the Queensland section of the Lake Eyre Basin to undertake projects that improve water quality, restore ground cover and native vegetation, protect habitat, and rehabilitate erosion. They run multiple projects that are all planned and run based on surveys and data, and all require ongoing monitoring. The challenge was that managing projects over such a vast area used to require compromise due to limited resources. Data collection and processing was time-consuming and only the bare minimum was done. Personnel had to be sent out on survey or landholders would bring in maps, monitoring sheets or GPS points, maps had to be interpreted and digitised, data sheets entered and GPS data downloaded. This was all resource hungry—510,000 square kilometres, numerous projects, 15 staff = big challenges!

Premier Utility Services was preparing for a large gas meter inspection and leak detection project in upstate New York. This project involved surveying over 3,300 miles of pipeline and the inspection of over half a million gas meters, which included a scheduling component to facilitate field visits for meters located inside buildings. As they began transitioning their fieldwork operations to the Fulcrum platform, they requested technical support to help facilitate this transition.

Village Earth, a not-for-profit organization, was tasked with conducting a housing needs assessment for five American Indian Tribes in South and North Dakota. The aim was to challenge existing Federal Census data, which often undercounts rural populations due to difficulties in data collection. Many Native American Reservations lack a complete inventory of households, consistent addressing systems, or even marked roads. Additionally, it is common for Tribal members to locate a house or mobile home on their own land without registering it with their Tribe’s housing authority, making it virtually impossible to find using existing records. The technical approach to data collection also presented challenges in terms of efficiency and team management. Issues included quality control monitoring, distribution of work, and data digitization.

A major gas utility in the northeastern United States was faced with the daunting task of physically inspecting all of their approximately 2.1 million gas meters to comply with expanded mandated natural gas meter inspection requirements announced by the Public Service Commission (PSC). The utility had to locate all the meters, inspect them to ensure they were in good working order, and take photos to verify to the PSC that the inspections had been completed. The utility's current data was collected on paper and digitized, but it was rife with misspellings, omissions, typos, and there was no established nomenclature. The utility needed a digital workflow that would get everyone on the same page, eliminate inefficiencies, and enable the field techs to work a lot faster.

In 2019, the State of Michigan required water providers to complete a water distribution system material inventory. This inventory needed to include water service line material information and be complete by January 1, 2025. For the City of Wyoming, a community of approximately 75,000 residents with over 20,000 water service lines, this information needed to be better organized and aligned. Also in 2019, the City of Wyoming began implementing an Advanced Meter Infrastructure (AMI) network, transitioning away from the manual water meter reading process. Additionally, approximately 50% of the water meters in the city will be replaced within the next 5 years. Staff sought a solution that was able to collect, retain, report and map all of the information needed for the water service line material inventory and AMI endpoint and water meter installations, as well as link between different billing and work order systems.

Carrington Risk, a consulting firm that helps companies manage all types of risk across their properties, was struggling with the process of surveying client's properties for potential risks. The CEO, Kristin Carrington, would have to take the paper report from the previous year with her and mark changes on it with a pen. Then she would go back to her office and create a new report of her findings — making changes to the Word document, entering recommendations, and matching up photos. These reports are often up to 50 pages long. Kristin knew there had to be an electronic solution to her report-writing problem, so she took to the Internet to find it.

The Philadelphia Water Department was in the process of removing their high pressure fire hydrants, which were left in place after the High Pressure Fire Service (HPFS) system was decommissioned in the mid-1990’s. Rodriguez Consulting was brought into the project to provide a final inventory of the hydrants and to document any potential construction impacts to surrounding street features such as ADA ramps, paving, poles, etc. The initial assumption was that the inventory would be performed using paper maps and digital cameras. The objective of the asset inventory was to assess the location of existing inactive HPFS hydrants and the potential impact that removing the hydrants would have on the surrounding pavement, street furniture, and ADA ramps.

The customer was looking for a way to reduce the total cost of its material handling equipment used in its warehouses across the country. The customer’s corporate office had no visibility into its forklift inventory or related costs within each of its 80 branch locations. Several branches have low asset usage needs and believed rentals were a better option than leasing new equipment.

Go Ape, a rapidly growing outdoor adventure company, was struggling to manage and identify with their business as they expanded. They had too many different data sources, too many spreadsheets, and too much information in too many places. Everything was fragmented, and every report pack took too long to pull together. The company needed a simple yet effective reporting solution to allow them to reconnect with their business and allow them to manage in real-time. They also faced challenges in managing their recruitment process, which involved hiring up to 500 people in the space of 3 weeks each year. They needed a solution that would allow their managers to access, retrieve and process applications, as well as conduct interviews.

Godrej Consumer Products Limited (GCPL), a major player in the Indian FMCG market, was facing challenges with its reporting process. The company was dealing with duplication in reporting and delayed response times across departments. This was affecting the decision-making process as the reports were not available in real-time. GCPL was using SAP ERP as its foundation which was supported by the SAP Netweaver Business Warehouse solution for Business Intelligence, analytics, and reporting. However, the company was looking for a self-service, user-friendly BI solution that could provide improved analytical capabilities at all levels across the organization by allowing users to segment data across geographies, products, and sales hierarchies.

Good Health, a manufacturer and distributor of natural health products, was facing several challenges. The company was receiving multiple report requests from internal employees and external partner companies. There was a high volume of ad hoc communications among company employees, and there was no efficient way to track the manufacturing and distribution of products. Furthermore, the company had little insight into which product lines weren’t selling. The company's ERP system, while housing the necessary data for business operations, was increasingly difficult and time-consuming for reporting. The rise in requests for different reports from staff members was becoming burdensome as each report had to be manually prepared.

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.

Groupe Rossel, a multimedia publishing house, was facing challenges in providing uniform reporting and analysis capabilities for the diversified business lines and companies within the group. The group's operational management teams required data to optimize their business lines, including distribution, sales, subscriptions, and marketing. However, the company did not have a strategy in place to support these data and reporting requests. For instance, figures on sales and subscriptions required two full-time IT employees spending three days a week to generate the report, while two full-time business line employees spent five days a week gathering the required data.

Grupo Munreco, a leader in the Spanish watch manufacturing sector, needed a business intelligence (BI) solution that would provide the group with fast access to all company information, as well as a tool to help managers carry out analyses from different perspectives. They wanted a solution that was flexible, fast, user-friendly, and provided self-service BI. The company wanted to optimize its order fulfillment service, monitor each and every one of the orders and repairs processes, and integrate them within an automated warehouse system.

Gemeente Haarlem, a city council in the Netherlands, was under pressure to reduce costs and improve performance management while also introducing new service delivery models to boost efficiency. The council had adopted a business lead approach to performance management and was working towards developing a shared services strategy for ICT, and other areas, such as finance and HR, between its different departments. ICT formerly operated semi autonomously using disparate data sources and had accumulated more than 100 million records. A principal driver for the change programme was to embed a performance management culture throughout the organisation and transform the delivery of public services. Cost effective, easy to use, business intelligence (BI) technology emerged as a vital tool for achieving success with the change agenda in the long term.

Halton Group, an international company specializing in indoor climate products, was facing challenges in managing its worldwide growth. The company's existing enterprise software systems were unable to deliver the types of reports and analysis needed to proactively manage day-to-day business operations. The business warehouse module connected to one of its enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems was complex to operate and provided a limited number of reports. Halton needed a solution that promoted self-sufficiency and did not require programming or any extensive set-up to create and run reports. The company also needed a product that could integrate with its multiple enterprise software applications to centralize and standardize its reporting processes and improve supply chain efficiency and customer service.

Hauni Maschinenbau, a mechanical engineering company for the international tobacco industry, faced the challenge of integrating several companies with disparate databases into a single tool. The company needed a solution that could trace procurement activity outside of the standard procurement channels, such as 'purchasing mavericks' and unauthorized decentralized purchasing by departments. The lack of a unified system made it difficult to track and manage procurement activities effectively, leading to inefficiencies and potential losses.

Haworth, a global manufacturer of adaptable workspaces, was facing challenges in maintaining customer satisfaction throughout its supply chain. The company had over 100 gigabytes of data stored in disparate systems, which was continuously growing. This made it difficult for Haworth to quickly mine through the data to identify and resolve delivery issues. The company needed a streamlined approach to quickly identify delivery discrepancies and resolve them. They sought a comprehensive in-memory business intelligence (BI) solution that could provide meaningful business insights.

In 2008, Haws Corporation was facing significant business concerns that led to the need for a new Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system. The company moved to a Microsoft Dynamics AX ERP system in 2009, but found that the system did not deliver the Business Intelligence (BI) capabilities it needed. With data visibility challenges into sales orders, profit margins and inventory costs, and backlogs not being measured efficiently, Haws needed a better BI solution. Further, sales and finance departments solely depended on individuals like Jim Martin, Database Administrator, to build the reports they needed within their departments. As a result, Martin spent the majority of his time creating reports, which required significant time and resource investment. To keep up with competitors and the commoditization of the drinking fountain industry, Haws needed to continue its overall company growth by maintaining a high quality water product and simultaneously meeting the market demand for pricing. In order to achieve this goal, Haws recognized that it was critical for the company to analyze and interact with its data more efficiently and comprehensively.

Haymarket Media Group, the largest privately-owned publishing company in the UK, was facing a growing volume of business data which left the company data rich but information poor. The company was sending more than 13 million emails every month to bulletin subscribers and for marketing activity. However, without visibility of the data, it was impossible to derive any business intelligence from it. Initially, Haymarket tried to solve this with BusinessObjects’ Crystal Reports and Excelsius software but after six months of work creating dashboards and static reports from management accounts a prototype still wasn’t ready. Then in May 2009 QlikView offered Haymarket a ‘Seeing is Believing’ demonstration. The QlikView software was installed on a server, data loaded, and a dashboard built using 10 million records from their own financial data within three hours. What had previously taken them months was done in hours in QlikView.

The Netherlands Association of Universities of Applied Sciences (HBO-raad) is the interests and employers’ association for the Dutch universities in this sector funded by the government. The association acts to strengthen the position of these institutes, maintaining a wide network to this end. Among the most important duties of the association is acting as spokesman and maintaining the lobby for the government, as well as initiating and carrying out projects involving quality and supporting its members. As an employers’ association the Netherlands Association of Universities of Applied Sciences also represents all 40,000 employees in the sector. Part of the HBO-raad’s service brief is to collect and provide benchmarking information. This information is public and is used principally by its members, the education ministry and the press. This is information from internal and external sources concerning intake, enrolment, results, study duration, staffing and progress. Prior to the introduction of QlikView, this information was placed on the HBO-raad website in brief static summaries.

HDFC Life, a leading private life insurance company in India, was facing several challenges. The company was struggling with the proliferation of data and its existence in silos, which was impacting the senior management’s capability to make informed decisions. Every department had their own method of generating and storing information which lead to proliferation of silos and inadvertently raised the cost and time to accessing accurate information. The company also wanted to reduce response times to customers and improve satisfaction, provide a strategic decision-making model to senior management, and accelerate business growth and improve market standing.

Heembouw, a one-stop provider of building services, was facing challenges in enhancing visual management in support of the Lean management philosophy. The company was struggling with minimizing error margins during the data entry process for management dashboards and automating the input process for existing dashboards. The publication of the dashboards was too time-consuming for the employees as they had to retrieve data from source systems and enter them manually into Excel sheets. With 30 to 40 project dashboards a month, automating this process seemed a viable option. Moreover, visual management was starting to play an increasingly important role in the organization, so many dashboards had already been developed in Excel.

Helsingborg Hospital, one of Sweden's largest privatized emergency hospitals, was facing a challenge to maintain its regional leadership position and high standards of service and medical care. The hospital was struggling to improve the quality of information and statistics that abound in the numerous data systems to drive operational improvements. The hospital needed a solution that could help it leverage the vast amount of data it had to improve its operations and maintain its leadership position in the healthcare industry.

Holmes Murphy & Associates, a premier independent risk management and insurance brokerage firm, was facing the challenge of managing the complexity of its ever-increasing variety of data sources. The company processes large volumes of diverse data from a wide variety of sources in complex formats. The data consists of everything from fixed format text, to spreadsheets, to web data, and no matter what format it comes in, they have to work with it. The company needed to implement a solution to manage the complexity of its ever increasing variety of data sources. Further, Holmes Murphy needed a means to codify its business rules and ensure consistency in the data by reducing human error.

HEAG Südhessische Energie (HSE), a major power sector enterprise, faced the challenge of analyzing sophisticated data structures in response to new, dynamic market requirements. The company needed an analytical solution that could evaluate all market and client data flexibly and quickly develop knowledge from the data. The company also had to deal with large volumes of data.