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Ashoka’s Changemakers, a global community-based website, was facing a significant challenge in managing over 130,000 user contacts and matching them with the appropriate foundations and nonprofit organizations. The organization needed to synchronize user data from their website with millions of records in their Salesforce CRM system. The manual entry and data duplication process they were using was creating more problems than it solved, causing many opportunities to slip through the cracks. They needed an automated way to synchronize user data from their website with Salesforce CRM.

Petzl, a company associated with adventure, exploration, and rescue, faced a challenge when they launched their B2B website. They needed an integration tool that would seamlessly connect their backend ERP system with their customer-facing portal. The goal was to provide retailers a real-time look at inventory availability without resorting to lengthy and complex hand-coded integrations. Additionally, they needed to connect ERP data with both the B2B customer-facing portal and Salesforce CRM, provide ongoing real-time synchronization of data, and provide a single view of all account data within Salesforce for access by sales team members.

ACAL BFi, a pan-European technical distributor, was facing challenges with its existing coding-based integration system. The system was proving to be unreliable and required too many technical resources, making it unmanageable as the company looked to scale. The company needed a standard platform to reduce the costs and resources required to provide a single view of the company’s ERP and CRM data. The integration was key to reliably and efficiently allowing ACAL BFi to see a 360-degree view of their customers and inventory, whether their users were working out of their JD Edwards ERP or Netsuite CRM applications.

In late 2016, Esri UK faced a data integration challenge. There was a specific use case the company needed to support, with multiple data sources that needed to be connected together to better manage and report on key business information. They needed to pull down information on technical support cases, product utilization statistics and licensing, which was all in several different systems. Their existing software could not support the technical requirements of these integrations. They wanted to connect to multiple API web services using SOAP/XML with the ability to pass dynamic values in the header segment. With just a small team and without the necessary software development skills to build the required solution in-house, Esri UK was not able to support such a deployment and needed to look elsewhere.

Hanson Wade, a company that organizes business conferences and community events worldwide, was facing challenges with its existing middleware platforms. These platforms were initially used for smaller integration workflows between Salesforce and the chat communication platform. However, as the company sought to build more complex integrations and scale the capabilities of these platforms, they started to encounter limitations. The company was dealing with data trapped in information silos, manual and error-prone data entry, restricted visibility over registration data and touchpoints, delayed financial reporting, and a system that was not scalable.

ZirMed had an aggressive timeline to move their homegrown customer support ticket system to Salesforce. Along with migrating data from their 10 year old customer support application, ZirMed wanted to synchronize all customer data to Salesforce. This would allow their operations team to access all the data they needed from within Salesforce, whether or not it was originally created in ZirMed’s homegrown application. The challenge was to migrate customer support data from a 10 year-old homegrown application to Salesforce and synchronize data to allow operations team to access all customer information within Salesforce. They also needed to provide a robust but easy to maintain integration platform that does not require outside experts.

Quiet Logistics, a Fulfillment to Consumer (F2C) provider, needed a solution to integrate various eTailer client systems with their own Fulfillment Management System (FMS) without altering internal or external business processes. Each client had a unique system and process, making custom code an unscalable and unmanageable option. The company required an easy, yet powerful integration platform to standardize these processes. The challenge was to onboard new eTailers with unique systems and business processes without requiring custom integration. The maintenance of the system also needed to be simple.

The YMCA of Greater Boston was struggling with managing incidents across their twelve branches. They were dealing with around 400 incidents a year, including policy violations and safety-related incidents such as slips, trips, and falls. The process was manual, involving the creation of a physical incident form, scanning it, and emailing it to the incident management group who was then responsible for ensuring its resolution. This method was inefficient and time-consuming. Without a centralized framework in which to collect and review incidents, it was difficult to track the status of the incident’s resolution, analyze the data being collected, and create actionable and meaningful reports.

Winona Health, a community-owned healthcare provider, was facing a challenge in managing over 3,000 incidents related to patient and visitor safety each year. The existing incident management software was not capable of integrating with the board-mandated Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) program. The separation of the incident management program from ERM was reducing the value of the program as incidents were manifestations of risk. The organization needed to track their risk mitigation activities back to their effort on hospital incidents to understand which controls were most effective and where to provide additional resources. The implementation of a new system presented logistical challenges as well. The client had just 45 days between signing their agreement with LogicManager and the end of their contract with the previous incident management solution. Any downtime in employees being able to report patient safety incidents would cause huge regulatory and liability concerns.

The customer, a leading wholesale financial services provider, was faced with the challenge of implementing the Check 21 Act, a new legislation that allows organizations to create digital versions of paper checks. This process, known as remote deposit, was met with resistance from some customers who were unaware of the new compliance process and ended their relationships with the company. The customer was concerned about the potential loss of customers and the financial impact of that loss. They also had concerns about their check-processing system managing a higher volume and the compliance concerns about new geographies.

The health insurance provider was facing major cash flow disruptions due to sudden losses of large accounts to competitors, especially during renewals. The company had multiple divisions and products, and used spreadsheets to report separate account revenue and cost data to the CFO. Connecting revenue to the direct costs, aggregating this information, and tracking data over time were error-prone and time-consuming processes. The cross-functional nature of product usage and double counting data made results difficult to interpret accurately.

The customer, a global security and aerospace company, was implementing an Enterprise Risk Management system in the corporate branch. The aim was to identify and assess risk across all business units, penetrating down to the vice president level. With over 500 participants in the Risk and Control SelfAssessment (RCSA), the risk management team was left with a vast amount of data and no means of aggregating it cross-functionally to departments, the appropriate business unit, or even the enterprise at large. The customer's method of data collection, consisting of disparate spreadsheets, provided no consistency or year-over-year trending. The risk management team spent nearly a quarter analyzing the data for audit and board reports, but the findings were only loosely tied to the company's strategic plan and not at all to the audit function, which rolls up to the same executive branch. The organization was also spending over $10,000 annually outsourcing survey distribution.

The LEGO Group, a global toy manufacturing company, has a comprehensive risk management program. The company's approach to risk management is proactive and extensive, and it was recognized as a recipient of the 2015 RMM Recognition Program. The company's risk management program is based on three core processes: an elaborate risk identification method, proactive risk management processes for key business projects, and workshop-based reviews of key strategies and complex initiatives.

C1 Bank, a rapidly growing bank in the US, had developed an Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) program with the support of upper-level management. The bank had invested in technology, staff, and training to build a robust risk management program. The risk team had implemented best practice frameworks, including the Risk Maturity Model (RMM), to establish processes for risk identification, assessment, and monitoring. However, the bank was facing a significant challenge in the coming year. It was about to undergo a merger with Bank of the Ozarks, which would require a shift in focus from maturing existing processes to ensuring a smooth transition of the ERM program to a much larger entity.

The International Air Transport Association (IATA) has a wide range of global responsibilities, including promoting safety, security, reliability, and cooperation in the airline industry. To effectively manage these responsibilities, IATA has developed and matured their risk management program since 2006. Initially, the program was aligned with the COSO framework, but as the internal growth of ERM required more comprehensive guidance, IATA adopted additional frameworks, including the RIMS Risk Maturity Model. However, the challenge was to implement a strong foundation for risk assessments that includes a standard methodology, processes, and a system for recording and reporting. This system would be used across the organization in the assessment and classification of risks to achieving business objectives.

Infinity Property and Casualty Corporation (IPACC) is a national provider of car insurance, specializing in nonstandard car insurance. They work with over 12,500 independent agents to provide insurance for those who cannot access it through standard providers due to prior driving history, age, vehicle type, and so on. The company was recognized in the 2015 RMM Recognition Program for its engagement across silos and levels. However, the company faces challenges in maintaining an open and effective line of communication between departments and increasing awareness of corporate goals across areas.

The University of California, a large public research university system, has a robust risk management program integrated into nearly every aspect of the University. However, due to its size, the University faces the challenge of knowing which areas of the program to focus time and resources on. The Risk Services department uses the RIMS RMM to assess the University’s current and optimal state of risk management processes. The results of their RIMS RMM assessment are used to validate strengths and identify areas for improvement in their ERM framework.

Chesapeake Employers’ Insurance Company, a non-profit, non-stock corporation providing workers’ compensation insurance to Maryland businesses since 1914, has been implementing new Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) initiatives to ensure the proactiveness of their program. The company has introduced a monthly risk dashboard and a Top 10 Risk Response Plan. These initiatives leverage existing aspects of their ERM program including risk appetite, tolerance levels, and Top 10 identified risks to reveal possible areas of improvement and an action plan for the risk team. The challenge was to ensure that the risk program was successful and that there was increased engagement from the ERM team.

Georgia Farm Bureau Mutual Insurance Company® was struggling with an inefficient risk management process. The company was spending a disproportionate amount of time and resources on constructing and sending out risk assessments via spreadsheets, leaving no time to synthesize the most consequential aspects into simple reports for management. This resulted in limited engagement from front-line employees and a failure to realize the true value of risk management. The company was also struggling with a culture where some departments and levels of the organization were not considered entirely risk-aware.

The bank, headquartered in the southern United States with more than 255 locations across the country, was facing challenges in managing third-party risk. Prior to partnering with LogicManager, the bank was using multiple third-party point solutions to manage their vendors, which resulted in poor integration, communication issues, and a lot of manual work to maintain accurate data and reports. The bank had recently undergone two mergers that doubled its size to over $20 billion in assets, and the corporate risk team grew from 12 people to 150 people in approximately 24 months. This rapid growth and expansion posed significant challenges in terms of due-diligence and data integration. The bank was relying on multiple processes and systems including Excel, SharePoint, and another external third-party management solution, which were inefficient and prone to errors.

Niu Solutions, a UK-based managed service provider, was seeking a cloud orchestration solution that could accelerate deployments while maintaining the quality of solutions provided. The company wanted to balance the benefits of IT automation with the skills of its technical team. Many of the orchestration solutions they evaluated were oriented toward vendor lock-in rather than taking a cloud-agnostic approach. Another major driving force behind Niu’s requirement was the deepening issue of ‘shadow IT’ being felt by customers. Shadow IT creates huge budgetary, security and compliance problems, particularly troublesome in highly-regulated industries like financial services and retail. Niu’s long-term view was to enable customers with more dynamic, self-serve capabilities, and bring the benefits of easy deployment but without the associated risks.

REN’s significant domestic and international growth coupled with a drive to further improve performance and quality of service lead to them commissioning two new datacentres in 2018 to host the country’s critical information and telecommunications systems. REN’s original datacentres were siloed, hundreds of kilometers apart, and focused on Disaster Recovery (DR) as the primary use case. Provisioning new applications or VMs took two to three weeks, involved stitching together disconnected technologies, and was both manual and error-prone. In addition, a focus on Virtual Machine (VM) provisioning rather than application architecture, a lack of telemetry and analytics, and the understandable difficulties of knowledge sharing amongst distributed employees and contractors gave the team at REN significant challenges as they tried to position themselves for future growth. Faced with technical debt and legacy processes, REN recognized the possibilities offered by implementing a unified approach to application orchestration and automation. Their new mission was to achieve a single end-to-end workflow with complete visibility to all stakeholders.

EUMETSAT, an intergovernmental organization that operates an extensive system of meteorological satellites, recognized changes in users expectations, needs, and behavior in relation to the use of its data. More users wanted to benefit from self-service provisioning and hosted services on a common data lake ideally in conjunction with their own local IT environments. These new demands, combined with EUMETSAT’s internal IT needs, resulted in the definition of two fundamental domains: mission-critical and general purpose. Both of these required external elasticity as well as an architecture that would allow a seamless user experience and access to hosted software and data services. To achieve this, EUMETSAT needed the flexibility to bridge a wide range of clouds, tools, vendors, and platforms.

Expedient's clients were looking to move numerous applications into a cloud operating model, which includes a mix of applications and assets they own on premises, in a hosting data center, or in a hyperscale cloud. However, figuring out the optimal placement of workloads from their current environment to the right mix of cloud operating model was a complex challenge. Many clients were only 30 percent of the way to that destination due to reasons such as not knowing how many of their applications would fit a hyperscale cloud model and not envisioning other ways to reach their objectives. Expedient needed a common control plane that could unlock and provide access to client compute resources while also giving Expedient tools to improve service delivery. The main problems that needed addressing were making it easier for clients to provision into multiple clouds without adding complexity, providing insight into costs to ensure clients were getting the best value for their dollar, and being able to provide governance and insight into security across clouds.

The large multi-campus state university had a diverse and open IT operations structure, with each college and administrative unit in charge of its local IT needs. A centralized IT services team focused on offering shared access to certain IT services, including hosted private cloud for dozens of groups and hundreds of end users. The university's virtual machine (VM) hosting service had built its own homegrown portal to serve the university. However, due to new IT priorities, the homegrown portal was no longer a key initiative moving forward. This triggered the need to find a new approach for self-service VM hosting and private cloud that was less brittle and easier to maintain. The IT team was ready to get out of the “wrench-turning” business of manually provisioning applications and VMs to university end users, many of whom had non-technical skillsets. These users often needed access to IT services after hours or on weekends and desired a self-service approach to provisioning. It was time to find a way to reduce service ticket volume, centralize hosted VM platforms, and up service delivery.

Ficolo, a data center and cloud delivery company, was facing competitive pressure to transform itself into a cloud player. The company wanted to offer wholesale hybrid cloud services to its customers, rather than simply providing commodity public cloud services. However, Ficolo was challenged to find the right approach to management and automation. The goal was to provide a semi-public shared cloud solution to multiple private cloud customers who were also using public cloud. At the same time, the team also saw the chance to help software-as-a-service (SaaS) providers develop and host their applications. For these customers, Ficolo had to not only provide multi-cloud management, it also needed a highly automated provisioning engine to improve the velocity of client software releases.

American Express Global Business Travel (GBT) faced major business and technology challenges in 2020. The first major area of focus was the speed and efficiency of automated infrastructure deployment in disaster recovery scenarios. The company had an established relationship with a third-party systems integrator that had a large team in place to manually test and execute disaster recovery, including provisioning applications and infrastructure. GBT decided to overhaul this approach to create a more time-efficient and cost-effective way to execute hot/cold site-level rebuilds. The success of the initial engagement with Morpheus spurred an interest in leveraging the platform to assist in datacenter consolidation and public-cloud adoption. This new project came with its own set of familiar requirements. It needed to be cost-efficient with a rapid time to market.

AstraZeneca’s Global Infrastructure Services (GIS) division acts as the centralized architecture and engineering team to support the huge volumes of IaaS and PaaS requests coming from seven key business units. Like most industries today, bio-pharmaceuticals is a segment where time is the enemy. Speed is the currency of competitive differentiation and as such the GIS leadership is under constant pressure to deliver more value in less time. After analyzing processes, the team determined that developer requests for resources took an average of 80 man-hours to fully deliver in a production ready state because of manual handoffs and approvals across systems and teams. The company was simply growing too quickly to continue with this type of bottleneck. The GIS team knew that unless they introduced additional automation and orchestration to streamline their processes, it could hinder future delivery times to their internal clients.

The company, a leading EMEA based FinTech Company specializing in optimizing high-speed financial trading, was facing a major gap between its development and operations teams. With over 5,000 users on its mission-critical platform, the organization needed effective DevOps to rapidly deliver new features that would satisfy user demand and outpace other providers in this highly competitive market. However, while the development part of the equation was moving fast, the operations team had yet to transform. Centralized IT operations were still utilizing legacy approaches to provisioning and software release, which meant rolling out new software features could be delayed up to 6 weeks. This caused cultural problems, creating a rift between app-dev and IT operations teams. The organization recognized that the only way to succeed in their DevOps initiative was to enable true self-service for development teams.

Exponential-e’s development teams were constantly on the lookout for solutions that could help their clients maximize their IT infrastructures, while at the same time, help Exponential-e differentiate itself from the competition. They uncovered three fundamental pain points surrounding cloud adoption: Data management remains a costly and increasingly sophisticated challenge for most organizations. Even with cloud data replication services, users are frustrated with their inability to allocate resources where and when they need them most. Most clients use more than one cloud service provider. However, the more providers they add to their hybrid environments, the harder it is to ensure data transparency and visibility across an entire business landscape. Plus, more cloud providers mean less client control. Cloud expansion internationally – in a ubiquitous manner - is nearly impossible. Instead of finding a cloud service provider with an equally strong presence in every region of the world, companies are instead realizing that both the large hyper-scalers and the regional providers offer only pockets of geographical domination.