The M Group Architects & Interior Architects faced the challenge of creating dynamic, functional, and aesthetically pleasing office environments for their clients. They needed to ensure that their designs not only met the clients' aesthetic preferences but also supported their operational needs and corporate culture. For instance, KPMG LLP required a new office space that adhered to their nationwide standards while enhancing the work environment for their employees. Similarly, Thompson Hospitality sought a grand entrance for their new office space to reinforce their corporate identity and create a lasting first impression. These projects required careful collaboration with various stakeholders and the integration of advanced technologies to achieve the desired outcomes.

The Park at Lakeshore East, located in Chicago, was a significant project for The Office of James Burnett (OJB). The property had a history of various uses, including a railroad freight yard and a golf course. The challenge was to transform this 28-acre mixed-use development into a high-density residential community with a six-acre park as its focal point. The park needed to be built first to attract potential homeowners and businesses, as Chicago places a high value on green spaces. The developers wanted to move quickly, and OJB was tasked with examining the master plan and programming a high-end, residential open space. The goal was to create a front yard for the development that residents would see as an extension of their homes.

The Monte Rosa Hut was conceived as one of fifty projects undertaken to commemorate ETH Zürich’s 150th anniversary. The original lower elevation Monte Rosa Hut was in great need of repair, and the new structure was intended to provide alpinists and hikers with protection from the elements, as well as a comfortable, clean space to eat, rest, and commune with fellow travelers. Additionally, it aimed to provide ETH Zürich with valuable research on effective sustainable practices. The students were challenged to create a building that could be constructed far from public power and water supply grids, yet provide enough energy and water to serve almost all of its lodgers’ needs, while weathering the extreme wind, snow, and earthquakes that plague the area.

Around the middle of the 20th century, Morecambe was a vibrant and thriving seaside resort. With the rise of the cheap package holiday and the collapse of the manufacturing industry, the area suffered a serious slowdown. Morecambe still relies heavily on tourism, hospitality, and catering to buoy its sluggish economy. Starting in the spring of 2006, the town made great strides towards reclaiming its glorious past, most notably with the restoration of the art deco style Midland Hotel. And in 2007, Lancaster City Council and their regeneration team called “Winning Back Morecambe” sought a landmark design to fill the open space between the sea and the promenade. Entrants were encouraged to design a small café that could redefine an area alongside several weathered and worn seaside buildings. After considering several different firms for the job, the council selected Arca in the fall of 2007. Lee and his team met with local neighborhood representatives and discovered that these representatives were far from conservative in their views of the space. In fact, they even supported ideas for unorthodox designs with a commanding presence. This was historic, since the last building to be placed in the area between the promenade and the sea was the second Midland Hotel, built in 1933. Arca understood the great importance of what they were about to undertake.

When Pat Phelan launched Cubic Telecom in 2007, he aimed to revolutionize global communication with the maXroam service, which created the first truly global telephone network. The company quickly gained traction, winning a TechCrunch award and forming partnerships across various industries. However, the rapid growth led to an overwhelming volume of customer support requests, making it difficult to manage through a single email account. With a daily case load reaching 150 to 200 emails, it became clear that a more robust trouble ticket system was necessary to handle the increased demand and maintain customer satisfaction.

In a competitive talent market, Interactive Intelligence needed an upper hand — a candidate relationship management solution that would allow it greater control and more meaningful engagement with prospects. The first candidate relationship management (CRM) tool that Interactive Intelligence used didn’t result in positive ROI, prompting the company to seek a more effective solution. The company required a system that could work in tandem with Jobvite Hire to help it form deeper relationships with potential employees and streamline the recruitment process.

In the niche industry of mobile gaming, Kabam recruiters struggled to find and then market to enough talented candidates with relevant work experience to fill their many open positions.

Management decided to decommission their legacy Oracle Enterprise Financial Reporting System and move to a software solution that could be configured to work with their business. They wanted to speed up their overall budgeting process from start to finish and improve the productivity of department heads and the Finance team. The G&A budgeting process exhausted a considerable amount of employee time. Management wanted the new process to be one that allowed managers to focus their time and energy on more value-added tasks. The Finance group would internally prepare 90 budget templates in Excel for G&A expense planning. These spreadsheets were sent to a group of 30 managers, many with budgeting responsibilities for multiple departments. Each manager would review their plans against the spreadsheet allocations, enter their financial data into the template and return the completed version to the Finance team by email. Once the templates were returned, the Finance team uploaded them into the Essbase database for the purposes of consolidation and report generation. The process was cumbersome enough to necessitate many overtime hours. Management began seeking a solution that offered simplicity and control. They wanted their users to make a smooth transition to the new system – to minimize downtime and training needs – and concluded that a solution that leveraged Excel in one way or another would be ideal. However, management also needed the centralized control and automated consolidation capabilities found in most premium Corporate Performance Management (CPM) systems.

The finance team faced several challenges in their month-end close processes. The data received from the bank often differed from the data in their General Ledger (GL) due to uncleared cheques. This discrepancy required manual input of information about these cheques into all month-end close spreadsheets until they cleared. Additionally, the use of uncontrolled spreadsheets allowed unauthorized changes, and the data was stored in a single workbook that could be easily lost or damaged. The lack of a formal workflow process made it difficult for management to track user-end changes and the status of each task.

The Finance team was creating and emailing Excel templates to hundreds of users and manually inserting received data and actuals into reports. This daily exchange of dozens of emails led to issues with version control and introduced the possibility that important data would be lost. The Finance team had to manually consolidate hundreds of spreadsheets over a span of several weeks, prolonging the budgeting process and leaving little time for more value-added work, such as discussion and analysis. The use of uncontrolled spreadsheets meant that contributors, approvers, and reviewers could make unauthorized changes to data or formulas.

The company faced significant challenges with manual data collection and consolidation, which was time-consuming and prone to errors. The Finance team often received multiple versions of the same spreadsheet, leading to issues with version control. Additionally, the company could not verify the accuracy of data received from overseas suppliers, and the lack of a single source of data prevented consistent decision-making across the organization.

Many factors affect the price of the client’s product before it reaches the customers, meaning several changes to the recognizable revenue had to be made in real time on a monthly basis. A single, uncontrolled Excel workbook contained all the client’s data; any user could access the spreadsheets and make unauthorized changes and there was no way to recover the data if the workbook was lost or damaged. A single month could contain several accounting entries, resulting in the need for the Finance team to perform multiple VLOOKUPs. The Finance team had to manually determine what figures had changed from one version to the next, which increased the risk that details would go unnoticed and took time away from more value-added work.

AES, one of the world’s leading electrical power distributors, faced significant challenges in their financial reporting processes. The company was manually creating, collecting, distributing, and consolidating 170 Excel spreadsheets for external reporting purposes. This manual process was exceedingly time-consuming and error-prone. The Finance team had no way of knowing whether submitted spreadsheets contained errors since data from SAP BPC did not automatically integrate with their templates. This lack of integration required the Finance team to manually review thousands of figures for errors and search for changes between spreadsheet versions. Additionally, BPC provided limited visibility into process flow, and sections of the database would become locked and difficult to unlock, further complicating the reporting process.

The Finance team was manually creating, distributing, collecting, and consolidating budgeting spreadsheets from 60 users. Email overload led to issues with version control and made variance analysis exceedingly difficult. Received spreadsheets were arranged differently, and the Finance team had to manually manipulate each one to ensure they were all in the same format. The Finance team could not confirm the accuracy of received data without manually comparing spreadsheets to the data contained in the GL. It was difficult for Finance to determine the status of each task without exchanging phone calls and emails with users, which prolonged the budgeting cycle and increased the possibility that data would be lost.

For every month-end close process, the Finance team downloaded five separate trial balance reports from their ERP and created 40 separate reports for all 40 entities of the organization. The Finance team then copied and pasted the data from the ERP into Excel spreadsheets to further manipulate their format. The entire process was repeated if changes needed to be made to the month-end close templates. The Finance team was manually performing inter-company eliminations over a period of several days.

The Finance team was exporting spreadsheets from multiple source systems and manually aggregating them, which was error-prone and time-consuming. This left little time for value-added work such as proper reporting and analysis. Additionally, the team had to manually compare spreadsheet versions to ensure consistency, further complicating the process.

Finance managers were facing significant challenges with version control and email overload due to the manual process of sending and receiving hundreds of budgeting spreadsheets across multiple departments. They struggled to determine the status of tasks in the workflow without constant communication via emails and phone calls, making it difficult to ensure projects stayed on schedule. Additionally, new information had to be manually consolidated into templates, and the use of uncontrolled spreadsheets allowed any user to change formulas or data, potentially impacting the accuracy of the budget.

The client faced several challenges with their existing Clarity 7 system. The conversion to Clarity 7 required new templates that did not integrate well with the client’s source system. This led to a constant need to rely on external consultants to build templates, preventing the Finance team from taking true ownership of the budgeting and forecasting processes. The team had to collect data via email from dozens of sources and then manually copy and paste the data into Clarity, prolonging the processes and leaving little time for discussion and analysis. Additionally, ongoing use of Clarity 7 required hard coding and heavy reliance on costly external consultants for system changes and the creation of new templates.

The Finance team was manually aggregating budgeting and forecasting data from a variety of sources through a series of daily emails. This manual aggregation led to issues with version control and email overload. Additionally, the Finance team had to manually extract historical figures from their GL and paste them into reports to perform analyses. The client could not provide explanations for budget discrepancies within their Excel templates and needed to document details about the discrepancies in separate reports.

WCA, a large U.S. waste management company, faced significant challenges in their budgeting process. The Finance team received budget templates in various formats and styles, requiring manual alterations before consolidation. Management lacked insight into users' workflow status without exchanging emails and phone calls. Additionally, a great deal of manual, time-consuming work was necessary to keep ledgers balanced across the organization's companies. Completing true budget to actuals reporting was difficult because the budget resided outside of WCA's reporting system.

One of the largest athletic footwear companies in the world faced supply chain planning challenges typical for their industry. Boasting an enormous portfolio of high-fashion products, particularly in the Asian market, the company's planners struggled to keep up with high product style turnover and countless new product introductions. Additionally, they faced planning obstacles brought on by an extensive network of omnichannel sales including direct ecommerce, brick and mortar, as well as a world-wide network of distributors and retailers. Employees across the globe were working in silos, speaking various languages, and using different processes. The company required a solution that would support the input of critical insights from the Sales teams about changes in the market like new customers, retailers, channels, trends and products. Attempts at data-gathering and analysis in a siloed environment had resulted in lack of c-suite confidence in the forecasting and planning processes. The company needed a planning system that was flexible, unified, and supported a global rollout.

The company wanted the ability to analyze a range of potential outcomes in two separate areas. Pharmaceutical R&D decision making is perhaps the most perplexing and high-stakes responsibility in the modern enterprise. The reasons are no secret: Drug developers make huge investments, some with 10-year development timelines, or more. They face extreme technical and regulatory uncertainty about these investments. Meanwhile, they must cross-manage a vast portfolio of potential products at varying stages of development. Drug development pipelines are massive risk portfolios dotted with a few hard-to-see, and harder-to-realize, opportunities for reward. This can frustrate even advanced portfolio management processes. It is impossible to know, for example, which projects will make it to market, fail to gain regulatory approval after years of investment, or never make it out of the discovery phase. Despite these unknowns, the pressure to replenish pipelines with high-potential future revenues is relentless. Facing these odds, one top-20 global drug developer approached Vanguard Software about the possibility of a system that could address this challenge. Along with many other attributes, the company wanted a system that could apply advanced modeling and simulation to complex drug-development data. The end goal was to better inform management decision making. At the time, the company was targeting several challenges. According to an Associate Portfolio Management Director with the company who spoke recently with Vanguard Software: “Our existing system was time-consuming. It was difficult to update and maintain the data, and it offered little flexibility as far as managing what-if scenarios. It was not able to provide some of the more advanced analysis that we wanted. We had to do that in Excel.”

Long development cycles, huge R&D investments, and a high chance of failure make the pharmaceutical industry a risky business. For Novartis Vaccines & Diagnostics, which develops preventive vaccine and diagnostic tools, it’s crucial to effectively manage its R&D pipeline and vaccine investment decisions. In order to be competitive, Novartis sets strategic objectives for the timing and number of its commercial product launches. Having the right portfolio of vaccine development projects across the various stages of its R&D pipeline is key to achieving these objectives. If the project portfolio becomes unbalanced, it must be rebalanced by investing in new vaccine development projects. To improve its portfolio management process, Novartis first required better forecasts of how vaccine development projects might move through its R&D pipeline. Then, using these pipeline performance forecasts, Novartis sought to optimize its acquisitions of new vaccines to augment its existing R&D project portfolio. Finally, Novartis needed to understand how its portfolio management decisions translated into financial performance.

A Midwestern Department of Transportation (DOT) wanted to manage and forecast their cash flow, but their spreadsheet-based system was inflexible and slow. The DOT had difficulty knowing how to apportion variable funding streams across over 2000 construction projects in different phases of completion. Looming budget cuts made understanding cash flow critical. The DOT’s spreadsheet-based financial forecasting system had multiple weaknesses: Forecasting was slow and prone to error: Forecasting took weeks. The DOT finance group manually inputted thousands of data points and assumptions from multiple sources into complex spreadsheets that were too slow to open and difficult to edit. Errors were inevitable. Timely responses to change not possible: The DOT could not easily adjust forecasts for common issues like motor fuel tax changes, budget cuts, seasonality, or project delays. Responses to legislative inquiries took approximately four weeks. Expertise resided in a single person due for retirement: Only one person could understand the forecasting process and its impact on the DOT’s cash flow. The DOT was unable to train another person due to the incredible complexity of the system.

One of the leading online auto parts distributors worldwide faced challenges managing a very complex supply chain with three distinct sourcing channels. With a mission to make it 'Easy to Buy Auto Parts,' they focused their planning efforts on high order fulfillment. This meant they planned to keep in stock, come rain or shine whether through a domestic supplier, an international shipment, or the drop-ship option! When it came to stocking over 100,000 parts, planners at Buy Auto Parts would make their best guess as to which channel to choose to source each item. If they anticipated large, long-term demand, they would source the materials from an international supplier, whose lead times were longer but costs were low. If there was medium demand on the horizon, planners would choose to source domestically at higher cost. For the short term, small bursts in demand, planners would opt to drop-ship the item from a domestic supplier, incurring even higher shipping costs but shortening the lead time and reducing carrying costs. Whatever it took to keep the needed items in stock. Doing all this work in spreadsheets became disjointed and error-prone. Buy Auto Parts was carrying a lot of cash in inventory because their planners were having trouble matching the demand curves to their inventory plan, and would lean toward fulfillment when unsure.

Tele2 faced the challenge of improving its customer experience by personalizing contact channel display for its web visitors. With over five million customers in Sweden and the Netherlands, and many more browsing their sites, Tele2 needed to understand the behavior of each visitor to develop relevant browsing experiences. The company sought a solution that could interpret, understand, and react to the mass input of behavioral data in real-time. Tele2 wanted to ensure that the contact channel offered was as relevant to the visitor's needs as possible, bridging the online/offline gap to make full use of its extensive call center operations.

Having grown at a rapid pace in a short period of time, 1st Central wanted to ensure its omnichannel customer journey is as simple as possible for its customers. 1st Central wanted to gain a clear picture of how these online and offline customer journeys impact the organization in order to develop a more coherent omnichannel customer contact strategy. That would, in turn, enable it to deliver a smooth experience, maximize sales conversions and minimize operational cost.

By 2012, Prometheus had established itself as a major provider of analytic tools to Australia's health funds. However, the company recognized that the information needs of health funds were evolving, and it was time to enhance its offerings. The competitive landscape was shifting, with data utilization for decision support becoming a critical differentiator. Prometheus needed to adapt to these changes to maintain its market position. The company had a solid user base with its WIZ OLAP engine, which was already integrated into several health funds and industry-managed applications. Despite this success, Prometheus realized that the growing demand for data visualization and advanced reporting capabilities required a new approach. The challenge was to find a solution that could complement their existing OLAP engine without diverting their focus from their core expertise in data analysis and health fund operations.

Gateshead NHS is recognized as a digitally mature Trust and has been linked to Newcastle University Hospital as a fast follower, as part of the Global Digital Exemplar (GDE) programme, to further accelerate their digital transformation. David Thompson, the Information and Development Manager, identified significant bottlenecks from an analytical and operational perspective. Cognos and QlikView were not being used to their full potential, with QlikView used exclusively for financial information and Cognos being difficult to use. David aimed to decentralize report building and find an easier tool for the wider business to create and consume content without extensive training. The Trust also had to manage nationally mandated performance and KPI metrics, with a significant amount of time spent preparing information and supporting route cause analysis.

Summit Innovations faced the challenge of optimizing drive-through operations for quick service restaurants (QSRs). The primary issues were monitoring vehicle activity, reducing waiting times, and improving speed of service. The existing system needed to provide real-time data and alerts to help management and staff identify and respond to bottlenecks. Additionally, there was a need for a more sophisticated data analysis and reporting system to compare efficiency across different properties and improve overall operational performance.