The COVID-19 pandemic has necessitated the need for real-time, accurate, and easily accessible data to track the spread of the virus. The founders of Wellifi - Flatten the Curve, Craig Bramscher and Ron Hom, identified this need and sought to create an app that would provide visual data on COVID-19 cases in the United States. The challenge was to develop an app that would allow users to view up-to-date numbers of cases at a glance, track locations that are important to them, and share this information with friends and family. The founders also wanted to chart and map out trends, which they believed were more important than total numbers in the context of understanding how different cities, states, and regions in the US were faring.

Writier, an online writing tool, was founded by Rae Auker, an entrepreneur with a tech background. The challenge was to create a tool that could help writers overcome writer's block and generate high-quality content quickly and efficiently. The tool needed to be capable of generating sentence completions based on the context of the article and the user's writing style. Additionally, it was important to provide features that would help writers manage, track, and organize their content in multiple languages. The challenge was not just to build a tool that could meet these requirements, but also to do so quickly and without the need for extensive coding.

YardGuru was born out of a personal need of its founder, Dylan Anderson, who found the process of booking a gardener to be a hassle. The traditional process involved calling a landscaper, arranging for them to visit the property, and then receiving a quote for their services. This process was time-consuming and inconvenient, especially for busy individuals or those with unexpected circumstances that required immediate gardening services. The lack of transparency in pricing and the inability to compare different service providers were additional challenges. The founder wanted to create a solution that would streamline this process, but initially struggled with the lack of time and funds to launch the project.

Jeff Lillibridge, the founder of Yestr, was seeking a way to reminisce with his older sister about shared memories. He found that there was no existing solution that facilitated this kind of interaction between siblings. The challenge was to create a platform that would encourage siblings to engage in daily interactions, unlocking old memories and strengthening their bonds. Jeff had a background in managing websites for NBA teams and had a good understanding of graphics, marketing, and coding. However, he did not consider himself an expert in any of these fields. He initially sought a technical co-founder or funding to build his idea into a reality, but was met with frustration.

Paritosh Mehta and Monica Mehta, creators of YourVegRecipe, a food blog specializing in vegetarian recipes, were faced with the challenge of creating a platform that was both user-friendly and capable of hosting, scaling, and deploying their content. They needed a solution that would allow them to focus on the business aspects of their blog, rather than the technical development. The Mehtas also wanted to build a community where users could interact, ask questions, rate recipes, and even contribute their own recipes. They needed a platform that could handle these functionalities while also providing a seamless user experience.

Accenture, a global professional services and consulting agency, was facing a challenge common to many large organizations: the demand for IT solutions was greater than what could be met by the central IT team. The company wanted to democratize and evangelize a low-code platform to empower citizen developers to solve their own problems. Accenture recognized the value of Microsoft's Power Platform and aimed to grow its Center of Excellence (CoE) to offer all five Power Platform products at scale. The goal was to reduce IT demand for short-term applications by 30 percent, allowing professional developers to focus on more complex projects. The challenge was to change the culture by decentralizing what is traditionally seen as a centralized function, and to find a solution that would accelerate productivity and give employees an opportunity to solve problems in real time.

Alstom, a leading rail company, is committed to providing sustainable and digital mobility solutions to a world undergoing significant change. The company's strategic plan for 2025 focuses on providing smarter and more sustainable mobility, which necessitates the acceleration of its digitalization efforts. Alstom operates across the entire value chain, from high-speed trains to onboard systems, and is organized around three divisions: rolling stock manufacturing, signaling, and maintenance. Each division is developing digital applications to enhance the rail service offered to its customers. Key objectives include ensuring the punctuality of transport services, improving fleet orchestration, providing high-quality information on intermodality, and enhancing safety. Alstom also aims to reduce the environmental impact of its operations through digital services that identify sustainable solutions. However, the company faced the challenge of rationalizing its infrastructure and capitalizing on rapid innovation.

AmTrust, a leading global property and casualty insurance company, was grappling with the need to balance rapid innovation with compliance in a highly-regulated industry. The company was conducting software development in the traditional way, which was time-consuming and less efficient. They were looking for a way to shorten their software delivery cycles without compromising on quality, security, and compliance. They wanted to enable rapid prototyping and collaboration with their business partners throughout the development process in an Agile manner. To alleviate these pressures and cut its software development queue, AmTrust sought an alternative application development approach that would improve app dev efficiency and augment traditional development practices. They decided to search for a low-code platform that was stable, recognized, and wouldn't disrupt their existing IT team's development processes.

Established in 1979, anb is one of the largest banks in the Middle East, serving over two million customers with a comprehensive range of Retail, Commercial, and Investment banking services. Traditionally, the bank's customer experience involved face-to-face interaction via its numerous branches, sales centers, remittance centers, SME centers, and corporate branches. However, with the increasing demand for digital self-service and the Saudi Government’s sustainability agenda—“Saudi Vision 2030,” anb needed to invest in its digital channels. The bank needed to digitalize customer touchpoints to minimize the environmental impact caused by face-to-face banking and meet the increasing customer demand for digital services. The challenge was to speed up development, improve agility, deliver web and mobile applications, and enable continuous delivery.

The Exceptional Family Member Program (EFMP) in the U.S. Department of Defense, which provides services to employees with special needs family members, was facing significant challenges due to its paper-based system. The lack of an integrated system, reliance on manual processes, and the absence of performance metrics led to dissatisfaction among service families. The system was slow, lacked transparency, and had no accountability. Furthermore, the system was unable to report case status, leading to wasted energy and time on follow-up calls and complaints. The situation was further exacerbated by the fact that active-duty personnel typically face a permanent change of station every three years, forcing families to repeat the same tedious form-filling and care justification process each time. The U.S. Congress, recognizing these issues, mandated improvements to the system, including the introduction of performance metrics, user status transparency, and robust case management features.

Boston Scientific, a global provider of medical devices and innovative medical solutions, faced a challenge in enabling rapid digital experiments for hospital clients. The company's Healthcare Solutions & Partnerships (HS&P) team identified a recurring problem where physicians failed to review up to 90% of patients who could have benefited from a heart procedure called 'LAAC' (Left Atrial Appendage Closure). The lengthy process of reviewing patients' clinical history led to repeated readmissions. The team hypothesized that an algorithm could use patient data to flag patients who might need the LAAC treatment and streamline the tasks, communications, and collaboration needed for a multidisciplinary physician team to diagnose and treat patients. However, previous digital experiments had suffered from slow and hard-to-change coding and restrictions from third-party, white-labeled software.

Dah Chong Hong (DCH), a Hong Kong-based conglomerate with a presence in 13 Asian markets, faced the challenge of integrating IT systems across its five business units. The company's IT landscape was highly fragmented, with each unit developing its own applications tailored to its unique challenges. This resulted in distributed and inconsistent data that was slow and costly to consolidate. The company also relied heavily on paper-based processes. The management needed a centralized view of processes across the organization to make informed decisions and respond to market changes on time. One of the processes that needed improvement was the electrical appliance repair service, which was highly manual and inefficient, involving phone appointments, onsite cash payments, and a complex billing procedure that took about a month to complete.

Entel, a leading telecommunications company in Chile and Peru, faced stiff competition from more agile competitors due to its complex IT legacy. With over 20 million mobile subscribers and annual revenues of over $2.4 billion, the company needed to become more responsive to market opportunities and customer preferences. In 2017, Entel launched Transformación Digital Entel (TDE), an ambitious program aimed at transforming the company into a completely digital telco. This involved replacing virtually all its core systems to establish an agile architecture fit for the digital age. To accelerate this transformation, Entel sought a new approach to application development that would enable faster development, support continuous delivery, avoid legacy debt, and support the development of world-class customer experiences.

Gen Re, a leading provider of reinsurance solutions, was grappling with a complex IT architecture that included custom-developed and packaged software applications, a legacy of Lotus Notes apps, and various process automation technologies. The company also had in-house Cloud applications running on Microsoft Azure. This varied technology landscape, built over many years, led to silos between applications and in some cases, the rekeying of duplicative data. Gen Re aimed to reduce technical debt, speed up development, and improve agility. The company wanted to embrace an agile development approach with rapid iterative development and continuous feedback from users. However, the existing technology landscape and legacy systems posed significant challenges to achieving these goals.

Chatsworth International School was struggling with a manual, email-based purchase requisition process that was slow, inefficient, and prone to errors. The school administration, divided into primary and secondary sections, had to process purchase requests through a complex hierarchy of approvals. This process involved extensive email communication for raising requests, seeking approvals, and tracking progress. Locating and honoring requests was a significant challenge as all the information was buried in email trails, leading to slow processing and disruption of regular school operations. Additionally, the use of offline Excel sheets for tracking purchase requests posed risks to data security and was susceptible to calculation errors.

Carrier, a manufacturer of products across HVAC, refrigeration, and fire/security segments, faced a significant challenge in modeling manufacturing costs for complex parts requiring multiple manufacturing processes. The company's cost engineering group was tasked with optimizing product cost and value through improved supplier negotiation and cost-effective design. However, traditional tools like Excel spreadsheets or traditional cost estimation software were not well-suited to generating accurate manufacturing cost models for this high-tolerance, multi-faceted production process. Precisely modeling manufacturing costs for this assembly without the capability to analyze an actual 3D model was simply not possible. Additionally, Carrier was also aiming to meet their emissions reduction goals, which required a detailed understanding of the carbon emissions associated with their manufacturing processes.

Caterpillar, a leading manufacturer of construction and mining equipment, diesel and natural gas engines, industrial gas turbines, and diesel-electric locomotives, was seeking to be more proactive with their cost and design decisions. The company was dealing with large, complex, interconnected, and interdependent product and part designs, which required a more proactive strategy for their product cost and design decisions. Caterpillar was also struggling with manual costing, which was time-consuming and less efficient. The company was trying to eliminate the need for cost reduction, which required additional resources and thus increased costs. Furthermore, Caterpillar was negotiating the cost of a part with a supplier for over a year without success.

Eaton, a premier power management company, was facing challenges in improving time to market and profitability in the highly competitive electric vehicle (EV) market. The traditional manufacturing environment, characterized by siloed departments each with its own database and processes, was hindering timely, accurate, and effective collaboration. This was particularly problematic given the current prevalence of supply chain shortages. The company needed a solution that would allow it to quickly understand the impact of design on the supply chain, identify potential manufacturability issues early in the design process, and innovate faster.

GE Aviation, a leading provider in the Aerospace and Defense industry, aimed to advance their product cost management technologies. The company wanted to build a business culture where everyone was focused on product cost and had the tools to do so. However, they faced challenges around cost data. The data was available but was hidden among disparate and discrete systems, making it difficult for users to access and utilize the right information. Additionally, the company struggled with departmental and organizational silos, which led to connected handoffs and interdependencies that cost valuable time and money. The company needed a solution that would consolidate and streamline cost data, break down silos, and provide the right cost estimation tools for different phases of the product life cycle.

HARMAN, a high-tech electronics company with 30,000 employees and $8.8 billion in revenue, was facing a challenge in managing supplier costs. The company was in need of a technology that could efficiently integrate with design and sourcing workflows, work directly with 3D CAD models, and handle the varied manufacturing processes required by their diverse and often complex product offerings. The main issue was the lack of transparency in the pricing offered by third-party suppliers. HARMAN needed a solution that could provide detailed insight into product cost structure and quickly analyze a design to correctly allocate costs using unique, supplier-specific cost drivers. This was crucial for building a true partnership with suppliers and avoiding contentious negotiations.

Jabil, a manufacturing services company with 238,000 employees and a revenue of $34.5 billion, faced a significant challenge in streamlining target costing and improving communication between its design and manufacturing teams. The lack of a clear method of communication between these two teams often led to inefficiencies in the product development process. Each team was responsible for target costing measures of the products they were designing and building, but without a shared platform for communication, meeting or beating company target cost goals was a daunting task. The challenge was to find a solution that would not only streamline target costing but also foster seamless collaboration between the design and manufacturing teams.

Rafael, a pioneer in defense, cyber, and security solutions for over 70 years, had set challenging design to cost targets as part of their company roadmap. The goal was to manage cost from the design stage all the way up to manufacturing, including initiatives related to procurement, project management, system engineering, and requirements management. However, achieving these targets required the right tools and technology. Rafael's engineers, who are typically expected to have vast amounts of expertise and knowledge, needed a technology that they could rely on to work together efficiently, seamlessly, and collaboratively to meet these design to cost initiatives.

Signify, a global leader in the lighting industry, was seeking to enhance its procurement practices to ensure the acquisition of parts with the best cost, quality, and availability. The company aimed to expand its capabilities for generating should cost analyses for its products purchased from external vendors by 8 times. A 'should cost' refers to a projection of a given component’s cost if efficient manufacturing and distribution practices are followed. This understanding can help negotiate lower prices, identify opportunities for cost reduction, and foster more collaborative supplier relationships. However, manual should cost estimation is a time-consuming task. Signify needed an automated approach to optimize costs for their diverse portfolio of products. The company had previously partnered with aPriori in 2017 to generate select should cost models for mechanical parts, which proved successful.

Banagher totalhealth Pharmacy, an independently owned pharmacy based in Banagher, faced significant challenges in managing its workforce. The owner, Joan Hennessy, struggled with scheduling, time tracking, and payroll management. The Time and Attendance data was often inconsistent, leading to manual filling of timesheets and high labour costs due to inaccuracies in overtime or holiday rate calculations. The scheduling process was also cumbersome, involving a combination of Excel spreadsheets and WhatsApp messages to organize, publish, and share the rotas. This often led to staff missing their shifts due to missed notifications or misreading the rota, leading to rising frustrations.

Base Wood Fired Pizza, a thriving pizzeria chain in Dublin, was facing significant operational challenges despite its success. The company, which prides itself on offering artisanal, fresh, and authentic pizzas, was struggling with back-office administration, employee scheduling, attendance, and reporting issues. One of the biggest challenges was ensuring compliance with all relevant legislations, including staff working hours, break times, wage calculations, and holiday pay. The lack of a formal process to manage these legislations was a significant issue. The manual clock-in system for staff and timesheets was ineffective and often overlooked. Staff would forget to record their hours or break times, leading to inaccurate labor costs and error-prone calculations for holiday and overtime hours. Additionally, the physical storage of documents such as employee contracts, working visas, and supplier information was time-consuming and messy, indicating a need for digital transformation.

Bayley & Sage, a retail company with 13 locations and over 200 employees, faced significant challenges in managing their operations. The previous solution they had implemented was not fit for purpose, creating more work than needed. They needed a system where they could have detailed customer support from the very beginning and an easy to use solution not only for employees but also management, payroll, HR and other departments. The main wants from the new solution were; support and training while rolling out, efficient and effective roll out and a complete overview of the entire business in one location. With 13 locations to manage, it was difficult to keep track of employees hours, payroll, time off requests, scheduling, labour costs, and good customer service. One of the main problems they encountered was managing staff across different locations. They had no way of accurately tracking the hours they had clocked in for and when they had clocked in onsite.

Polbeth Service Station, a 24-hour food, drink, and convenience store with a Subway franchise, was struggling with outdated, paper-based employee scheduling and payroll systems. The daily rotas only included the employee's name and assigned shifts, with scribbled notes indicating actual hours worked. This approach was not only time-consuming and laborious but also prone to errors and lacked real-time visibility. The management had to manually enter these hours into the payroll system, a task that took an entire day and often resulted in errors. The station also faced challenges in scheduling staff for the shop floor and the Subway department due to a lack of clarity. Furthermore, the absence of an accurate system to track staff arrival and departure times led to overestimated wages and a lack of accountability.

Joseph, the owner of Raleigh's Centra, a convenience retail group in Ireland, was seeking ways to enhance the operational side of his business. Despite the manual processes being functional, he felt the need to implement more efficient systems rather than improving the existing ones. The lack of digitalization meant that managers were unable to be as active on the shop floor as required. They struggled to focus on their team, ensure proper training, and efficiently handle customer queries. Furthermore, the business was facing challenges with data management. Managers had little control over data collection, accuracy, price changes, or actual gross margins, leading to inconsistencies. The absence of a centralized documentation management system resulted in errors in pricing and actual gross profit calculations.

Centra, Ireland's leading convenience retail group, faced significant operational challenges in managing its stores. The owner of Centra stores in Dublin, James Ryan, admitted that before implementing IoT solutions, all store operations were manually handled. Managers used Excel to create weekly rotas, which were then printed and pinned up in the store and shared in the work group chat. The absence of a formal system for time off and unavailability often led to last-minute adjustments to the schedule, finding staff to cover shifts when others were unavailable or had booked off. Furthermore, James and his managers lacked full awareness of labour costs across the stores, which negatively impacted store performance.

Ellen Chew, a leading restaurateur in London, and her team at the Chew On This Group, faced significant operational challenges in managing their expanding collection of restaurants. They were previously using a software that failed to efficiently fulfill their operational duties or improve employee engagement and customer service. Consequently, they reverted to manual operations. Managers used Excel to create weekly rotas, and all employee time and attendance were tracked manually. Employees recorded their hours on a sheet of paper, which then had to be manually entered into payroll, consuming a significant amount of time. Often, employees would forget to record their hours, leading to further delays and communication issues to ascertain the correct hours. Manual calculations also led to error-prone payroll and a lot of frustrations.