X

Times have not been easy for Russian banks in the last years, during which customer expectations have changed and posed massive challenges to the core business of financial institutions. This is even more true for the second-largest Russian bank, VTB, which has its roots in the Soviet era and not only faces new market circumstances but also has to fight with historical legacies such as inefficient processes. The first step to move to a process-owned organization and become more customer-focused was the creation of the Process Excellence Center in 2014. The department is highly visible within the bank and reports directly to the board. While the goal was clear and supported by top management, the question of how to achieve process transparency and efficiency was not. It was the IT consulting company Ramax who introduced so-called process mining to VTB in September 2015.

At Photonicare, the team was always wearing different hats to maintain their agility, and implementing a paper-based quality system seemed like a retroactive solution. They believed such a solution would ultimately lead to more inefficiencies and time spent on manually documenting product and quality activities where quality could slip through the cracks. In order to avoid this, they began searching for a cloud-based, purpose-built solution that would contribute to improving their internal team efficiencies and maintaining their agility. As an early-stage company, the team at Photonicare is always looking for ways to improve their efficiencies while maintaining their agility. Ryan Nolan, Co-founder and VP of Clinical Operations, recalls their antiquated way of doing things in the beginning when it came to documenting things on paper. As a result of having to wear multiple hats and juggle competing priorities at a startup, they reached a point where their documents weren't as organized as they wanted them to be. Knowing this antiquated way was a time-consuming solution for managing documentation and quality processes, Ryan and the team at Photonicare began searching for a purpose-built solution that was as agile as their team.

Innovere faced significant challenges in establishing a compliant Quality Management System (QMS) due to their lack of in-house medical device expertise. This was crucial for scaling their product development efforts efficiently. They needed a QMS partner to enhance their industry knowledge and accelerate their path to commercialization. Additionally, they found that many companies were using paper-based systems, which they deemed inefficient and unsuitable for their needs.

The vision at SOLIUS was to bring the product to market as a medical device, meaning that their team was aware of the quality management regulations they would have to comply with. With four team members at the time, managing compliance and a QMS was an immediate hurdle they needed to overcome. They began to vet solutions that would help them manage the regulatory and quality requirements of their target markets, without them becoming overwhelmed with compliance efforts. They began searching for a solution that was cloud-based, secure, affordable, scalable, and came with advice from industry experts that could guide them along the way.

Priority Designs, an industrial design consulting firm, faced a significant challenge in securing more advanced medical device design projects. Despite their extensive experience in product design across various industries, they lacked the necessary ISO certifications and a compliant quality management system (QMS) to take a product through the full process and turn it over to manufacturing. Potential customers frequently inquired about their ISO certifications and quality system, but Priority Designs had to decline these opportunities due to their lack of compliance. This gap in their capabilities prompted the team to seek a solution that would enable them to win more design work in the medical device sector. They needed a structured quality system to store records and create a design history file (DHF), as they were not recording their activities or aware of the regulations around record-keeping for medical device design. The search for a suitable QMS led them to discover Greenlight Guru, an eQMS system purpose-built for medical device companies.

C2DX, Inc. faced the challenge of ensuring a quality-first approach after acquiring a product from Stryker. They needed to establish a robust quality management system to maintain high standards, continue delivering a high-quality device, and provide the same customer experience that Stryker's customers had come to expect. Additionally, they aimed to implement an electronic quality management system (eQMS) that could support both their immediate needs and future growth.

Canterbury Scientific faced significant challenges with their paper-based Quality Management System (QMS). The system, while functional, was outdated and inefficient, leading to issues with document progression, timeline management for nonconformances, and change controls. The paper-based system required constant involvement from the quality team, particularly impacting the manufacturing and Science, Design, and Development teams. The need to update design history files and design manufacturing files further complicated the process. The realization that their existing QMS was not suitable for the 21st century and the updates to ISO 13485:2016 standards acted as catalysts for seeking a more modern, scalable solution.

Delta Development Team faced the challenge of developing a portable refrigeration unit for extreme military applications. They needed to navigate complex military requirements and regulatory guidelines for medical devices. The team sought a solution that would allow them to maintain control over product development, manufacturing, and regulatory processes to ensure speed to market. Initial attempts with tools like Google Suite proved insufficient for their needs, prompting them to seek a more robust, automated quality management system.

Amnion Life, a startup medical device company, faced significant challenges due to their lack of in-house expertise in the medical device industry. The team was new to the field and uncertain about the necessary steps to ensure compliance and success. They were overwhelmed by the complexities of establishing processes and managing multiple ad-hoc quality systems. The anxieties included questions about whether they were doing things right, what else they needed to be concerned about, and if their processes were compliant. These uncertainties hindered their efficiency and left them feeling overwhelmed. They realized the need for guidance in implementing a Quality Management System (QMS) and understanding the regulatory requirements for medical devices. They sought a provider who could not only offer an eQMS but also serve as a partner to support their efforts.

Spark Biomedical faced the challenge of bringing a medical device to market to combat the opioid epidemic. The company needed to ensure that their device was safe, effective, and compliant with FDA regulations. Additionally, they required a robust quality management system to avoid issues like those experienced by Powell at St. Jude Medical. The company also needed to develop an app for device-to-cloud connectivity and data analysis, and they required engineering expertise to finalize the hardware for their Sparrow Therapy System.

The newly-opened music venue 172 in the Rio All-Suite Hotel and Casino needed a robust point-of-sale (POS) system to manage their operations efficiently. With the grand opening fast approaching, the property operators required a solution that could be implemented quickly and meet their high demands. They needed a system that could handle secure financial transactions and optimize guest service, ensuring a seamless experience for patrons. The challenge was to deploy a POS system that could go live on a tight timeline while providing comprehensive reporting and analytics to control costs and streamline operations.

Density and rider counting were the main problems. It was incredibly hard to determine exactly which buses were overflowing capacity and which ones were going under ridden. BT knew that this info could help to improve their services, if only they could collect it. The added problem they faced was the fact that their buses did not use electronic fare boxes. This led the BT to determine that fixed route software with automated rider counting capacity was needed in order to get a clearer and more accurate picture of their operation. For example, how many students versus faculty, staff and citizens were using their system? Knowing these pieces of info could allow BT to determine where their buses should be, depending upon ridership and time of day. They needed to share valuable rider data with Virginia Tech, but they couldn’t. On top of bus density was the issue that faced their dispatchers. Saddled with a great deal of paperwork for information management purposes, dispatcher time wasn’t being used to optimal amounts. With attention focused on spreadsheets, valuable time and resources are drawn away from areas such as customer complaints and calls.

The Community Transit Program of Western Community Action faced the challenge of operating at capacity with their dial-a-ride services. To continue their commitment to 'Connecting People and Communities,' they needed to create a flexible fixed route bus service in the City of Marshall. This was necessary to offset the maxed-out dial-a-ride system and ensure availability for all who needed transportation. The program had to work with community partners to implement these changes effectively.

For the past 25 years, the only method for paying bus fares was for riders to have exact change (in cash form) or paper tickets (purchased elsewhere). If riders wanted to purchase packages of tickets (to receive bulk discounts) or to buy a day/month pass, they would need to mail in a check or locate a vendor for in-person purchases. While this has been the traditional method that transit agencies have employed, the modern rider demands a better experience. Because so many other products and services are easily accessed via online purchasing and on mobile devices, riders have come to expect a streamlined process, enabled by technology. Adrienne Moretz (Community Relations Manager for TransIT Services tells us that 60% of their riders have mobile Internet access. “It was time for an update,” she says, with regards to the methods by which riders could access faring options.\n\nTransIT knew what they wanted: mobile ticketing. But could it be financially feasible? For example, smart card reader systems are expensive to set up and require a significant investment in infrastructure. They began to seek a method for enabling the same benefits for their riders, but with less implementation and maintenance expense.

As they have grown over the years, Circle of Care began to employ more staff and volunteers, making for a more complex schedule. It became increasingly difficult to provide the same level of service to each of its members while keeping costs within acceptable amounts. Suddenly, managing the sheer number of people and transportation needed became a burden on schedulers. In the early days, it was sufficient to have a person in the office with a spreadsheet and a phone in order to keep everything running smoothly. But this was evidently no longer the best option.\n\nGrowing the number of members and caregivers is one of Circle of Care’s important and supported values and they have achieved this through the years. But suddenly, they found themselves with a staff of 500 and more than 300 volunteers, spread over a diverse collection of home support and community programs including: Homemaking, Personal support, Social work services, Meals on Wheels, Transportation, Day programs for seniors with dementia. As is usually the case for all non-profits, savings are felt directly at the ground level, with members seeing the benefit to fiscal responsibility. They are mainly funded by community resources and the City of Toronto. This means that transparency and reporting are highly important features and challenges that needed to be addressed.

After the regional transit authority canceled key bus routes in two neighborhoods already underserved by fixed route transit, Jersey City took its transportation needs into its own hands. The city aimed to improve mobility and complement existing transit options. The challenge was to provide a comprehensive public transit solution that could serve commuting and other trips, especially in areas with limited fixed route services. The goal was to create a city-controlled, on-demand public transit system that could offer greater connectivity to light rails and major downtown employment centers.

The Devonport peninsula faces significant congestion on Lake Road, the only route in and out of the area, due to many travelers relying on personal cars to reach the Devonport Ferry Terminal. This congestion leads to high demand for limited parking spaces and contributes to increased emissions. Auckland Transport (AT) sought a solution to reduce congestion, increase ferry access, and improve the commuting experience for residents. The challenge was to convince a population that typically drives alone to share their rides and use an alternative mode of transportation.

The Republic of Liberia in Africa has a serious history of illegal logging, which remains a significant issue. To mitigate this, the United Nations developed a barcode system to track logs through the supply chain. NRD S.A. was chosen by the EU to help Liberian authorities curb illegal logging. They needed a system to streamline legal logging operations, including verification and licensing of authorized logs for export. NRD invested in 440,000 hectares of forest area in Brazil and Liberia to initiate sustainable forest management. Data collection was crucial, with each tree earmarked using barcodes generated from parameters like GPS location, dimensions, and log time. The forestry department maintained a central database stored on the cloud. Trees were chosen for logging based on quality and carbon dioxide neutrality, making the process traceable and transparent.

J.J Richards, a leading Australian waste management company, faced significant challenges with their legacy systems, which were built on outdated Windows DOS architecture. These systems were not easily accessible, lacked integration, and were unable to support modern, responsive applications. The IT team, primarily skilled in .NET, struggled to build new applications rapidly. Additionally, the company lacked multi-channel mobility solutions and had an unmanageable supplier management system reliant on Microsoft Excel. The need for a digital overhaul was urgent to meet the demands of tech-savvy customers and streamline internal processes.

Banko di Seguro Sosial (SVB) faced several challenges in modernizing its mission-critical applications. The existing applications were built on legacy technologies such as the Microsoft stack and Centura framework, which were not scalable to meet the dynamic requirements of government policies and other departments like healthcare, tax, and insurance. This resulted in critical processes such as premium payments, tax payments, and healthcare processing being adversely affected, leading to a deteriorated customer experience. Additionally, the user experience across applications was inconsistent due to the use of deprecated frameworks like Microsoft Silverlight. SVB's investment in Microsoft SQL Server was also expensive, and they needed a platform that could reuse the existing schema and stored procedures to save costs and effort.

The client, a global jersey wear apparel industry leader based in South Asia, faced significant challenges with their Order Management System, which was built using legacy Oracle Forms and Reports. The system, although functionally adequate, was difficult to use and required a skilled workforce for maintenance. It was not in sync with modern-day requirements, such as mobile workforce support and dynamic business needs, leading to high maintenance costs. The business sought to invest in future-proofing technology while reusing important business assets gathered over two decades, including business logic and application-specific data.

One of the most important challenges that the WaveMaker team had to overcome was the stringent security requirements of the bank’s internal IT team. As a rule, all applications in the IT department went through rigorous vulnerability and penetration tests under rigid constraints before deployment. Additionally, every application had to be certified for US compliance and regulations. Also, WaveMaker had to conform to the client’s internal infrastructure. Security restrictions prevented internet connectivity for internal systems. This posed a major challenge in releasing updates and dependencies of the WaveMaker platform.

Modernization on top of legacy technologies was cumbersome and involved high latency, existing systems did not support open-source technologies. Existing technologies could not interface natively with other internal and essential systems like SAML and LDAP. Some existing technologies were expensive and their licensing model was not cost-effective. Delay in go-to-market with application updates arising from Government policies and rules that are subject to change over time.

Since the financial crisis of 2008, risk management and capital adequacy have become a top focus for regulatory bodies around the world. It has increasingly become important for many businesses to provide accurate and timely risk reporting to regulatory agencies. Older risk systems often store data in relational databases (RDBMs), sometimes using 3rd party software and schemata. The transfer of this data from front to middle and then to back office systems is often a fragile, batch-oriented process. These flows can be hard to understand and transform. Additionally, bringing together this data often requires lengthy development projects to compensate for mismatched schemata and platforms.

Machinima, a digital content company, faced the challenge of ensuring data protection during its transition from Google Apps to Office 365. The company had to maintain continuous operations without downtime, given its large network of influencers and substantial viewer base. The Director of IT, Ed Becker, was responsible for cleaning up the network infrastructure and migrating to Office 365. He needed a reliable backup solution to safeguard SaaS data, as traditional on-premise backup methods were labor-intensive and costly. Becker's experience with Backupify for Google Apps influenced his decision to continue using it during the migration to Office 365. He recognized the importance of having a robust backup system to protect against user errors or data corruption.

Rehab Pro LP faced a critical situation when 30 GB of essential business data was corrupted by the Locky ransomware. The infection, spread through a spam email disguised as an invoice, was discovered by Rainey Riley, the Billing and IT Manager. The company quickly called on their managed services provider, Rigidnet LLC, to address the issue. David Tidwell, Help Desk Supervisor at Rigidnet, acted swiftly to restore the previous night's backup, ensuring the company was operational within minutes. Tidwell then identified the infected drives and backed up the data to a point before the Locky encryption, preventing a major data disaster.

When Dustin Brandt, ATK Director of IT, joined the team, the company was leveraging Google Apps for work but without a backup and recovery solution in place. Departments were constantly challenged with off-boarding issues and managers struggled to recover key documents from the deactivated Google Apps accounts of departed employees. Another pain point? When a newly married employee would change their work email to reflect their new surname, Google’s directory would no longer recognize them as owner of said account and they would become new users, preventing access to their ‘old’ mailboxes. What may appear to be smaller issues have cost the IT and management teams valuable time at ATK. Brandt decided that a change was in order. He began to research cloud-to cloud backup options. It came down to Google Vault and Backupify for their Google Apps backup needs. When comparing the two, Brandt noted some immediate differences. Price-wise, Vault was more expensive for the number of users Brandt needed to support. As a company that surpassed their annual growth goal halfway through the year, this option could put a serious dent in the IT budget. Brandt decided to move forward with a Vault trial anyway and while the eDiscovery ability it offered was helpful, he was still concerned about inactive users taking up licenses.

Pediatric Home Service (PHS) needed a managed service provider (MSP) to support their 24/7 IT infrastructure, ensuring continuous uptime and data protection for their home-based healthcare services. The nurses at PHS rely on Google Chromebooks to chart health data into electronic medical records, which are stored on PHS' custom-built software. The headquarters houses all application servers, database servers, and their Citrix environment. Rick Mueller, head of IT services at PHS, sought an MSP that could protect all their data, both cloud and local, at all times. Additionally, PHS required a solution to streamline the process of managing data when employees departed, which was previously time-consuming and cumbersome.

Around 2:00 AM on a Sunday, Aldridge’s client monitoring system detected an outage at Complete Pharmacy Care (CPC). Upon arrival, the technician found the server room in a state of destruction: a hole in the ceiling allowed rain to damage the equipment, hard drives were pulled, and network cabling was torn out. The pharmacy’s CEO, Leonard Lynskey, realized the gravity of the situation as the server room hosted critical systems including prescription records, email, and phone systems. The destructive act seemed aimed solely at crippling the company, as almost no medication was stolen.

Recently, while reassessing long-time client Hiestand & Co’s backup and disaster recovery (BDR) solutions, Computer Rescue 911 noticed the firm’s Windows Server Backup was intermittently failing. Hiestand & Co is a certified public accountant (CPA) firm, so avoiding downtime, especially during tax season, is critical. Recognizing the potential downtime costs from failed data backups, Computer Rescue 911 recommended they implement Datto’s solution. On the same day that Hiestand & Co gave them the go ahead to install a Datto SIRIS, Computer Rescue 911 sent a technician to the firm to get them set up. On Wednesday of that same week, Hiestand & Co called the MSP because their server was no longer booting. The Computer Rescue 911 team determined that the failure was due to a bad RAID array. Luckily, they had already taken a proactive approach by updating Hiestand & Co’s BDR solution just days beforehand.