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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.

Cool Running Events (CRE), an event management company, faced significant challenges as it expanded its operations. The company, which specializes in the production, management, and marketing of pop-up events, had grown to manage multiple events across various locations. This expansion led to an increase in the size of their team, which in turn, created a need for a reliable scheduling and timekeeping system. One of the main concerns was the scheduling of employees. Given the unpredictable nature of events, assigning shifts was a complex task. Some shifts required full-time staff, while others needed part-time or on-call employees. Managing this across several locations was becoming increasingly difficult. Additionally, tracking the hours that staff clocked in and out was challenging. The lack of a formal process for staff to submit their working hours led to inaccurate records, which in turn, resulted in higher labor costs. The process of gathering data from multiple sources in inconsistent formats for payroll was also a significant challenge.

Crêpeaffaire, a rapidly expanding crêpe shop chain, was facing challenges in managing its growing workforce and expanding locations. The software they were previously using was not fulfilling operational duties efficiently, nor was it improving employee engagement and customer service. The team lacked visibility over crucial aspects of the business such as sales and labour costs, employee performance, and inventory. They were keen to identify more opportunities for growth and realized that a deeper insight into their sales and labour costs would be greatly beneficial. The People Manager, Marta, admitted that the general management of the workforce had become increasingly difficult due to the team's growth and location expansion.

McCarthy’s Pharmacy, a leading community pharmacy and healthcare provider in County Cork, was facing significant challenges in managing their workforce across nine locations. The team was spending hours each week creating and adjusting weekly schedules, a process that was not only time-consuming but also prone to errors and miscommunications. The use of spreadsheets for employee scheduling was becoming increasingly unfeasible. After the schedules were manually created, they were distributed to staff via email, Whatsapp, or printed and hung in the staff room. This process was inefficient and led to issues such as staff forgetting to record hours worked, shifts being switched without the manager's knowledge, and staff not showing up due to changes in the published schedules.

Berklee College of Music, the world’s largest independent contemporary music college, faced the challenge of updating its curriculum to reflect evolving trends in music production and enable collaboration between its campuses in Boston, Massachusetts and Valencia, Spain. The college needed to incorporate cutting-edge technology into its curriculum to prepare students for real-world production environments. The college recognized that collaborative work processes have become the norm in the music industry, and in the future, distant collaboration will be a standard work process. Therefore, it was crucial for Berklee to provide its students with the tools and experience to master these processes while they were still students. The college also wanted to create the most professional studios possible to address these industry changes.

The challenge faced by renowned composer Brian Tyler was to compose music across a wide range of genres, from orchestral to rock to hip-hop scores. The music industry demanded a versatile solution that could keep up with his diverse musical history, which included stints in numerous orchestras, choirs, ensembles, and rock bands with the likes of Elton John and Slash. As a first-call film composer, he needed a tool that could handle the fast-paced and demanding world of film scoring, where he was required to write for an orchestra or a hip-hop score interchangeably. The challenge was to find a software that could handle all aspects of the writing, recording, and creative process, and be versatile enough to accommodate his diverse musical needs.

The creation of Butterscotch’s single “We Are All We Got” presented a unique challenge. The team, consisting of producers Mischke and Neff-U, and voice percussionist virtuosa Butterscotch, had great ideas but were constrained by their busy lives and travel schedules. They were concerned that these factors would hinder the creative process. The trio had never worked together before and didn't know what to expect when they got into the studio together. They were together for only a few hours in the studio, and they were worried that their busy lives and travel schedules would halt the creative process. The challenge was to find a way to continue the creative process despite their physical separation and busy schedules.

The Carolina Panthers football team was faced with the challenge of creating engaging, immersive content for multiple platforms to drive game day attendance, viewership, and sponsorship revenue. The team needed to deliver content year-round, from NFL drafts and stadium upgrades to player fitness during the off-season. The demand for video content was growing exponentially, with fans seeking diverse content across various platforms. The team's broadcast television had been the primary content producer, but in-venue entertainment and social media presence were becoming increasingly important. The team's PantherVision department was tasked with creating unique, high-quality content for the game board at the Bank of America Stadium, while also managing content for corporate partners and sponsors. The challenge was to keep the content flowing, repurpose media across departments and platforms, and elevate the fan experience.

Fifteen years ago, Chapman University’s Dodge College of Film and Media Arts was a small program catering to an enrollment of 200 students. The school aimed to prepare students for successful careers in film, television, broadcast journalism, digital arts, and more. However, as the school grew rapidly to accommodate over 1,400 students, it faced the challenge of providing in-depth professional training that mirrored the workflows used in professional media facilities worldwide. The school needed to create a cutting-edge learning environment featuring industry-standard technology workflows to ensure its graduates entered the workforce with real-world experience.

The challenge faced by Chick Corea, a renowned pianist and composer, was to efficiently complete professional compositions within tight deadlines while maintaining an orderly filing of all his compositions and arrangements. As a veteran in the industry, Corea was already an established musician when Sibelius, a music notation software, was introduced in 1993. He was quick to recognize the potential benefits of using a computer for music notation and scoring. However, the challenge was to leverage these benefits to create beautiful, captivating scores in a shorter amount of time, and to keep an orderly filing of his compositions and arrangements for a smoother workflow.

The case study revolves around the challenges faced by film editor Christian Siebenherz and his post-production team in creating high-quality films with special effects, particularly disaster movies. The team had to deal with a limited budget and a small team size, which made the process of video editing, special effects, and color correction complex and time-consuming. The challenge was to streamline and simplify the post-production workflow to ensure the efficient creation of high-quality films. The team also had to deal with the complexities of editing action sequences, maintaining continuity, and creating realistic special effects, particularly in disaster scenes. The challenge was further compounded by the need to manage large projects and multiple users, and to quickly move scenes around and splice together different structures.

CINE PLUS, one of Germany’s leading media service providers, was facing a challenge due to the increasing demand from their customers for higher resolutions and larger data volumes. This necessitated an investment in new storage to support their professional productions. Prior to the upgrade, CINE PLUS was operating four Avid ISIS | 5500 storage engines at its Berlin headquarters. Despite being a loyal Avid customer, the increasing demand required a more robust solution. CINE PLUS needed a solution that would not only meet the performance, energy efficiency, and stability standards set by Avid but also seamlessly integrate with their existing infrastructure.

The Conservatory of Recording Arts and Sciences (CRAS) in Arizona, a highly regarded audio recording, sound engineering, and music production school, faced a challenge with its outdated live analog console. The existing system was aging and lacked the ability to network with other classrooms or integrate with the existing Pro Tools setup. The school needed a modern system that could provide students with real-world training and experience, and seamlessly integrate with the existing infrastructure. The challenge was to find a solution that offered excellent sound quality, proven reliability, and advanced workflows, while also being user-friendly for the students.

Acclaimed music producer, Damian Taylor, was tasked with producing an album for the popular band, The Killers. The project required a recording system that could handle massive and complex sessions, as Taylor's contributions spanned all aspects, from technical to creative. The project also involved frequent movement between Taylor's Golden Ratio Studio in Montreal and the band’s Battle Born Studios in Las Vegas. The challenge was to find a system that could handle large amounts of tracks and system-intensive plugins, while also being portable and compatible with the rest of the studio's equipment.