Lumin Digital, a fintech company specializing in digital banking solutions, was seeking to build a modern, multi-tenant data platform to support advanced analytics, reporting, and enable various AI/ML use cases. The initial use cases identified were focused on improving abilities to monitor and detect risk involving user sessions and ACH transactions. The company's mission was to help financial organizations preserve and nurture their relationships with customers in today's evolving market. To meet their ambitious goals, Lumin needed a trusted partner to design and build the desired data platform, implement AI/ML use cases, and ensure that the platform was optimized for stable, cost-efficient performance.

Rosanna Chipkin, after leaving her 10-year career in construction, embarked on her dream of owning a content marketing business, Fait Creative Content, in February 2020. The primary challenge she faced was the lack of knowledge her clients, primarily small, female-led businesses in the creative industries, had about local SEO and its crucial role in effective content marketing. Many of these businesses were creating a lot of content but were not considering their ranking for search. They were prioritizing social media platforms like Instagram and not ensuring that they could be found on Google, which put them at a significant disadvantage. Rosanna's goal was to help these businesses understand and leverage the power of local SEO.

DonorsChoose.org, a classroom funding site for teachers in the United States, was facing challenges in managing weekly and monthly team meetings and email outreach to hundreds of people. The senior donor relationships associate, Danielle Curtis, was struggling to keep track of all the tasks, often missing important email responses, neglecting to pull metrics, or forgetting to put together an agenda for an impending meeting. The challenge was to ensure that nothing slips through the cracks, and all tasks are managed efficiently and effectively.

The Georgia Innocence Project, a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping wrongfully convicted individuals, faced significant operational challenges due to constraints of time and resources. The post-conviction criminal legal system, with its procedural barriers and the need to communicate with imprisoned clients, added to the complexity. The organization had to manage numerous moving parts, from handling appeals to tracking open records requests and managing intern applications. The team, which started with just two full-time employees, had to juggle office administration, communications, IT, volunteer and intern management, and fundraising. As the organization grew, the need for reliable systems, clear processes, and consistent information became critical.

FuseChicken, a smartphone accessory company, experienced rapid growth after a successful product launch. However, the company faced challenges in managing its operations due to the use of multiple different systems. The company's founder, Jon Fawcett, and his team were responsible for the entire process, from designing the cables to manufacturing and selling them online. The rapid growth of the company quickly outpaced many of these systems, leading to inefficiencies and errors. The company needed a platform that would consolidate all its systems, reduce errors and manual work, save time, and increase productivity. Specifically, FuseChicken needed to eliminate the need for recreating information and invoices in secondary systems.

Kern River Outfitters, a family-owned whitewater rafting business, was facing a significant challenge in managing its day-to-day operations. The company, which provides guided rafting tours in Idaho, Oregon, and California, generates thousands of online waivers for its adventure activities. These waivers are not just simple forms; they include detailed information such as allergies, emergency contact info, and more. The process of manually entering this data into their Customer Relationship Manager (CRM), Streak, was time-consuming and monotonous. The adventuring season, which lasts from April or May through the entire summer, meant that the number of waivers the company had to process was in the thousands. This tedious task was taking away valuable time that could be spent on other aspects of the business.

Andrew MacDonald, Chief Spud and web designer at Metal Potato, was spending a significant amount of time on administrative tasks, specifically invoicing. Each time a client made a payment, Andrew had to manually copy all the important details such as the amount paid, date, name, email, and service purchased to create a contact and invoice. This process was not only time-consuming but also repetitive and tedious. Andrew's goal was to focus more on designing sites and less on these administrative duties. He was looking for a solution that could automate the invoicing process and save him time.

OpenPhone, a startup that provides a business phone number solution for small businesses, was facing challenges in managing customer interactions. The company heavily relied on customer interactions, including Net Promoter Score (NPS) surveys and general inquiries. However, the team was struggling to send automatic follow-ups. The co-founder, Daryna Kulya, had to manually filter through replies and email customers. This process was time-consuming and inefficient. Furthermore, OpenPhone was in the process of rolling out their desktop Mac app, and were inviting users to apply for early access to new features. This added to the workload and the need for a more efficient process.

Soylent, a company that provides nutrient-rich food alternatives, faced two significant challenges. The first was the complexity of managing legal consultations during their Series A funding round. As a startup, they had to navigate the intricate process of securing substantial funding, which required extensive legal advice. However, the company lacked a legal background and had to hire a team of lawyers. The co-founder/CTO, John Coogan, found himself overwhelmed with information during these consultations, struggling to take comprehensive notes while actively participating in the discussions. The second challenge was building a thriving community around Soylent and maintaining open communication with their customers. They needed a seamless way to sign up interested consumers to their database and keep them updated on various aspects of the company.

SpeakerFlow, a startup offering a CRM solution and an education platform for public speakers, faced two significant challenges. The first was obtaining real-time data on prospects. Understanding how potential customers discover their product and their seriousness about making a purchase was crucial. However, they struggled with feeding their ad platforms with real-time data from their CRM about where their prospects were in their lifecycle stage. The second challenge was connecting different teams and handoffs. Handing off a new account from the sales team often relied on humans, leading to potential miscommunication and errors. They needed a solution that could seamlessly integrate their systems and ensure smooth team hand-offs.

Taylor & Hart, an award-winning jeweler specializing in custom-designed engagement rings, faced significant challenges in scaling their business. The founder, Nikolay Piriankov, recognized that the traditional diamond industry lacked transparency in ethical sourcing and customization. Traditional jewelry shops did not offer personalized experiences, and those that did were either too slow, too expensive, or both. The first bespoke ring they made took a full year to complete due to the numerous moving parts in the business and the need for constant communication among team members. This lengthy process was not only inefficient but also prone to errors in data entry, hindering production and preventing the business from scaling.

The AI company, x.ai, was facing a significant challenge in managing the scheduling of meetings and appointments. The process was time-consuming and involved a lot of back and forth emails to coordinate schedules. The company had developed an AI, Amy, to help manage schedules, but the process of recruiting participants for user research was still laborious. The team would send out an email blast with a Google Form attached and then sift through the responses to find people who met specific criteria. Once identified, they would reach out to set a time for an interview or observation. This middle step of sifting through responses was costing the x.ai staff essential time.

youthSpark, a leading innovator in the fight against human trafficking based in Georgia, had a mission to reduce the rate of exploitation and abuse of youths. As part of this mission, they conceived an idea for an automated deterrent initiative, known as Demand Tracker. The system would involve posting decoy ads to attract potential traffickers and buyers, recording their phone numbers, and sending them a deterrence message. However, the organization faced a significant challenge: how to build this automated system without the help of software developers. Finding a developer who could meet their specific needs, within their budget, and with the available time to commit to the project was proving to be an insurmountable task.

The Institutes RiskStream Collaborative™, a large enterprise-level blockchain consortium in the risk management and insurance industry, faced a challenge with the carrier to carrier data sharing of a first notice of loss (FNOL). This process was resource-intensive and time-consuming, leading to increased claims cycle time and handling costs. The consortium needed a solution that would facilitate early and accurate notice of loss data exchange between the relevant carriers’ claims systems. The solution had to be intuitive, easily blend into existing business processes and environments, and run on a platform that could be set up quickly and easily updated. It also needed to allow users to create, update, and match loss records with another network participant in a permissioned manner, privately sharing information and reducing data reconciliation issues between disparate data systems.

The IT technical champion at a global manufacturing company was aware of the organization's security vulnerabilities despite having no existing compliance issues. The team was limited by budget constraints, only able to afford one penetration test per year. This was a significant challenge as the company's attack surface was expanding due to their growing IoT footprint. The organization needed a solution that could identify and address these vulnerabilities effectively and efficiently, without requiring significant resources or disrupting their operations.

FeedMe, a Malaysia-based company providing a Point of Sale (POS) system for the food and beverage industry across South East Asia, was facing challenges with its reporting system. The company wanted to offer a robust reporting system that allowed users to generate their own custom reports. However, their previous solution, which was based on SQL queries and JavaScript to process data across MongoDB, CouchDB, and BigQuery, was becoming increasingly difficult to maintain and scale. FeedMe uses CouchDB in their client POS systems that can work either online or offline. The data from CouchDB is then fed into the BigQuery data lake for reporting. FeedMe’s backend systems are written in JavaScript, so they wanted to use JavaScript to process data from MongoDB and BigQuery. The challenge was to find a solution that could simplify their data processing and help them develop a data schema standard.

Lewis Management Corp., a privately owned business since 1955, had been struggling with tracking their business processes with complete visibility. The company, which focuses on land acquisition, land development, planned communities, and property management, was dealing with time-sensitive, paper-driven processes that were difficult to track. Despite efforts to reduce paper consumption in 2008, the remaining paper processes still caused bottlenecks. Additionally, the company faced challenges with forms submitted via their Intranet. These electronic forms were submitted without any automated workflow, leading to manual distribution to different departments for completion. This manual process made it impossible to ensure that forms were filled out correctly, there was no mechanism to assign tasks, and the submitted forms could easily be overlooked or lost.

Stadtwerke Bonn, a utility provider based in Bonn, Germany, was faced with the challenge of reducing operational costs while improving customer satisfaction. A key part of their customer service strategy was a self-service online portal used by customers to report their meter readings. This portal was a crucial part of their meter-to-cash (M2C) operations, which saw 367,000 total meter readings leading to invoices between January 2020 and April 2021. However, the complexity of the system, which also included other contact channels for collecting meter readings such as email, phone notifications, bot-supported system processing, and in-person visits, led to potential delays and errors. To identify areas for process improvement, Stadtwerke Bonn initiated a process mining initiative with Appian.

Żabka, a convenience store chain with 7000 locations across Poland and the Czech Republic, is known for its innovative approach and early adoption of unique technological solutions. As part of their plans for a new headquarters in Poznań, Poland, the organization wanted to go beyond a traditional building access control system. They aimed to create a modern, intelligent, and automated office for their employees, enabled by one integrated solution. This system would need to utilize mobile identities and a custom application to simplify the use of office functionalities, accelerate and automate administrative processes, and optimize the management of access control and building-wide security. The creation of such a large ecosystem would need to combine many different functionalities, and Żabka turned to a group of like-minded providers to create and implement their vision.

SPAR was first established in Austria in 1954, before expanding in the 1970s when the original founding families joined with other regional wholesalers to form SPAR Austria AG, a 100% privately owned Austrian company. SPAR has since grown into a food retail giant, generating €5.68 billion in food sales. The group also owns the Hervis sports fash-ion brand that sells a further €490 million and a shopping center business with revenues of €2.85 billion.From the introduction of the cash register to customer loyalty cards and business intelligence, SPAR has thrived during constant retail revolutions. But today’s tech-savvy consumers expect to be able to jump from mobile app to website and then visit a store to request home delivery. How could SPAR keep up with the enormous pace of change?

IT Era, an Advanced Consulting Partner in the AWS Partner Network (APN), often works with public-sector clients who face challenges such as tight budgets, small IT departments, and time-consuming procurement rules. One such client was the Instituto de Investigación, Innovación y Estudios de Posgrado para la Educación (IIIEPE), a publicly funded institute in Mexico that promotes innovation in education through research, technology development, strategic planning, and professional development programs. Until 2015, IIIEPE hosted all its online training programs on Moodle, a free and open-source learning management system, in an on-premises data center. However, when IIIEPE was given the opportunity to assist the Mexican Public Education Secretariat in providing a new platform for online courses for a national professional development program for high school teachers, they faced a challenge. Their on-premises data center was at capacity and setting up a new learning platform would have required procuring, configuring, and securing new physical servers, which would have been time-consuming and costly.

SharePoint, a global technology company, was faced with the challenge of modernizing their client's outdated solutions to enable new products, services, and revenue streams. The client, a technology leader with a 130-year-old history in manufacturing, utilities, infrastructure, and transportation, was driving the transformation of industries towards a more sustainable future. However, their existing solutions lacked scalability and proper performance, leading to poor business productivity and user experiences. The client's legacy IT landscape was composed of classic network drives and a Lotus Note-based email, and they had a complex multi-farm scenario, including SharePoint Online and on-premise. They needed an experienced and committed technology partner to support them with the migration and modernization of their dated solutions.

The case study presents three different enterprises: a Top-5 Global Retail Bank, a UK Retailer, and a European Multiline Insurer, each facing unique challenges in enhancing their customer experience (CX). The bank was struggling with personalizing CX, requiring more granular detail in their data and analytics, and managing CX across all their digital channels. The UK Retailer was unable to maximize customer relationships due to a lack of insight into their customers' online activities. Their aggregated data was always 24 hours out of date, and they could only infer what customers wanted based on past behavior. The European Multiline Insurer was finding it difficult to capture insights from customers self-serving online. The limited data they had was typically 48 hours old, making it impossible to react to customers in the moment.

Modernize a legacy IT to enhance public servicesAPIS IT works with government ministries, public administration bodies, and utility providers across the Republic of Croatia to plan for and provide critical IT infrastructure. To support this work and ensure compliance with EU regulations, APIS IT realized it needed to modernize its legacy systems. It sought to create a single, centralized platform to connect its modern technology with its diverse existing infrastructure, some of which included older frameworks and programming languages.

One of the largest banks in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, with a presence in over 60 countries, was grappling with the complexity of its commercial lending process. The bank, responsible for providing clients with more than $100 billion worth of credit, had to efficiently offer a variety of credit products and services to thousands of businesses across numerous countries and sectors. The process of assessing the creditworthiness of its clients was time-consuming and required the collection, review, and analysis of thousands of fields of both qualitative and quantitative information. This included financial statement line items, performance metrics, credit history, and natural language assessments of the borrower’s business prospects. The bank's credit officers had to navigate disparate systems, collaborate with relationship managers and credit analysts on credit structure and conditions, and request additional information before making a final decision. The average time-to-decision was often measured in weeks.

Wintrust IT officials wanted to enhance their data and voice networks. They reached out to top-tier providers for proposals that would help them build a best-in-class IT organization and an ecosystem of strategic suppliers to support the bank’s operations today and pave the way for continuing expansion.The organization needed a more effective, stable network to support continuing growth.

C & L Aqua Professionals, Inc., a wholesale chemical distributor and manufacturer, was facing operational inefficiencies due to the use of non-industry specific software, Peachtree Accounting, for 17 years. The software forced the company to re-key information and duplicate data into other software packages, leading to redundancy and inefficiency. The company was in dire need of a software solution that could eliminate these redundancies and streamline their business processes. The challenge was to find a software vendor that could offer a complete solution tailored to their industry-specific needs.

Avid Technology, Inc., a global SaaS media production solution provider, was faced with the challenge of enabling efficiencies and real-time collaboration across creative teams in the production process, without compromising performance or security. The company needed to deploy a cloud-based, global, online editorial suite to increase efficiencies in creating, editing, and enabling final production of media in a rapidly changing business landscape. The challenges also included capturing global customer access and scaling with quick deployment capabilities in a collaborative environment, connecting a diverse group of global users, ensuring high availability, optimizing application performance and usability by interconnection to a large number of global networks, and securing assets while allowing multiple contributors simultaneous access.

The Client is engaged in providing vehicle traffic counting for government services based on recorded video manual analysis.They considered applying an automation tool for vehicle detection and counting that would recognize a vehicle type according to certain categories among the general road traffic. This tool would optimize human efforts, eliminate errors, and speed up the workflow and consequently the results.

Baanx Group, a fintech company providing a range of financial services, was struggling to monitor voice data generated from their customer-facing teams. They were recording conversations, but this did not provide the level of visibility they desired. The company was dealing with a vast amount of client data, from customer calls and emails to web sessions and chats. Managing and leveraging this data while working with various systems was a significant challenge. Their existing solution for recording client calls was not able to accurately monitor the conversations of their sales and customer services teams. This lack of visibility and control over their data was a significant challenge for Baanx.