This US-based company provides a diverse portfolio of health and well-being services. It relies on a claims processing application to support its operations. This application was handling the organization’s existing claims volume, but changes within the healthcare marketplace, particularly around government healthcare initiatives, were expected to drive up that volume. A technology manager within the organization anticipated the growing demands on the company’s claims processing systems and took action. He created a modernization strategy for the organization’s two IBM zEnterprise® EC12 servers running IBM CICS-based application workloads to improve application performance and help accommodate the growing claims volume.

The company, a large grocery retailer based in the United States, was facing a challenge with its data management. With operations spread out across numerous states, it was essential for the company to collect data in a timely manner from all of its stores to make informed decisions. The company’s application environment had to support the movement of a great deal of information so that more than 2,400 grocery stores could deliver information on sales and operations to a central hub on a daily basis. However, the company managed most of these communications in large batches. Each store transmitted its transaction logs to the corporate data warehouse once a day. These logs were then parsed for analysis. This batch processing method delayed analysis and hampered theft prevention efforts. The company wanted to improve the timeliness of these data transfers to improve access to accurate information for day-to-day operations such as customer service, supply chain management, and monitoring of over-the-counter drug sales.

The organization wanted to make fundamental changes to its IT strategy. It sought to replace silos with enterprisewide applications and create greater alignment between business requirements and the IT department. As part of this transformation, the company needed to change the way it handled business rules. Its core ERP system relied on numerous COBOL-based applications for processing. Making changes to these applications could be tricky; they were poorly documented and the company had a shrinking pool of resources available to manage them. The organization began looking for a more flexible, responsive business rules solution that would enable it to get new and updated business rules to production quickly.

The voice and data services provider aimed to improve its services while enhancing efficiency, reducing costs, and empowering its employees with the latest technology. The company began providing self-service options in 2000 to better serve its customers. However, with the advent of smartphones, the company faced the challenge of staying on top of changing technologies and evolving customer needs. The company needed to update its application correspondingly with the frequent updates of the Apple iOS and Android operating systems. Additionally, the company had to accommodate growing numbers of customer self-service transactions and increasing amounts of data. The company also sought to empower its employees by enabling them to work on the device of their choice.

APIS IT d.o.o., a company that designs, develops, implements, and maintains information systems for the Republic of Croatia and the city of Zagreb, was facing a challenge with its increasingly complex technology environment. The company maintains a large and diverse array of systems, including mainframe and other types of servers. With the constant changes and additions to their systems, they needed a comprehensive monitoring solution that could integrate monitoring data from multiple systems to provide one view into its IT operations. This was crucial for them to continue delivering on their service level agreements (SLAs) and providing high-quality service to their customers.

The IT applications department at this company had an aggressive roadmap for improvement, including plans to reduce manual processes. The organization’s change request process for financial reference data was manual and labor-intensive, requiring staff to update and exchange spreadsheets by email. There was no process for gaining the necessary approvals for requested changes, which sometimes resulted in employees making revisions without key stakeholders’ approval. The company needed a BPM offering to automate this key process.

The US-based healthcare company was facing a challenge of accommodating a growing volume of healthcare claims. The company's existing claims processing application was handling the current volume, but changes within the healthcare marketplace, particularly around government healthcare initiatives, were expected to drive up that volume. The technology manager within the organization anticipated the growing demands on the company’s claims processing systems and took action. He created a modernization strategy for the organization’s two IBM zEnterprise® EC12 servers running IBM CICS-based application workloads to improve application performance and help accommodate the growing claims volume.

The data capture device manufacturer was struggling with managing and automating the software development lifecycle for its mission-critical product portfolio. The development team was using email to manage change requests, which often led to lost requests and delays in addressing them. The lack of a collaborative design solution made it difficult for engineers to collaborate on design changes.

Control Risks Group, a global risk consultancy, generates a significant portion of its revenue from its subscription services. The company's subscription team is responsible for managing these services, which involves encouraging prospective clients to sign up for a free trial subscription, monitoring the progress of the trial, then moving them to a full service and reminding them to renew or upgrade their subscription when it is due to expire. However, with subscription-related data held in several disconnected systems and governed by a completely manual set of processes, it was difficult for the subscriptions team to keep track of when to contact their clients and prospects. The team wanted to find a better solution.

CMC Electronics, a company known for its flight management systems (FMS) in the aviation industry, was facing a challenge in developing its next-generation FMS. The company had a range of FMS products, each designed to meet the specific needs of different sectors of the aviation market. However, this approach was time-consuming and required more effort to develop and maintain separate software for each target market. For its next generation of FMS products, the company decided to build a core system that would be used by all of its FMS products, and supplement it with customizable, reusable components that could meet the specific requirements of different markets. To support this new development process, CMC needed a new set of tools that would provide a collaborative environment for software and systems design, development, and testing.

Claranet, a managed services provider, was facing a challenge due to the increasing number of alarms and events in its infrastructure. This was a result of a growing customer base and managed environment. The company needed to resolve problems rapidly to avoid impacting customers’ services. The support teams needed to quickly identify frequently occurring issues and rapidly search historical events to assist with troubleshooting and ensure issues did not develop into service-affecting problems.

Commercial Bank of Ethiopia (CBE) was facing the challenge of maintaining excellent customer service and fast-paced growth due to the strain on processes and systems caused by rapid business expansion. The bank wanted to make banking more accessible by expanding its reach, responsiveness, and service offering. However, an aging core-banking infrastructure supported only some of its aims. In addition to targeting new domestic markets, CBE wanted to unlock the commercial potential of electronic banking services, both in branch and online. However, basic services such as bank transfers relied on heavily manual processes, which were time-consuming and inconvenient for customers.

Container Centralen, a provider of reusable plant and flower shipping containers in Europe, maintains over 3.5 million containers in its inventory, which circulates through 60 depots spread across Europe. For years, the company has faced a significant challenge: counterfeiting. Up to 20 percent of the container pool is counterfeit, creating a twofold challenge to CC. First, because the reusable containers belong to CC, it is responsible for their cleaning, maintenance, repair and replacement. Second, since customers are using more containers than they are paying for, CC is losing lease revenue while being responsible for containers it does not own.

The credit agency wanted to improve its decision management processes to increase the value of the products and services it offers its customers. The agency wanted to offer its customers, such as credit card companies and banks, more effective and targeted up-sell and cross-sell suggestions for consumers based on their recent financial history. The agency also wanted the ability to stay on top of consumers’ financial ratings after they received credit to help minimize risk for the lender. A key challenge in developing the agency’s systems was giving their customers the ability to rapidly make changes to their credit risk decisioning policy. This would improve their hit rates, improve the products that they’re selling and increase their revenue for the products that they’re offering.

Duas Rodas, a Brazil-based food additives manufacturer, aimed to achieve a sales target of USD 450 million by 2015 by expanding into international markets. However, the company's existing manufacturing assets were at their capacity limits, making it impossible to meet the increasing demand. The company's growth strategy involved significant investments in people, machinery, and technology, but a lack of standardized processes made it challenging to align manufacturing throughput with demand. The business units operated independently, and the lack of integration between client orders, inventory levels, and production planning made it difficult to achieve the necessary manufacturing output.

Equens, a leading European payment processor, was approached by a key banking client who needed new payment capabilities for its online banking processes. The bank requested that Equens use the IBM CICS Transaction Gateway, which provides application programmers with proven APIs for integrating CICS with numerous application platforms. Equens knew that if it could not provide the desired solution, the bank would turn to one of Equens’ competitors. Therefore, the challenge was to test and implement the IBM CICS Transaction Gateway V9 solution to meet the bank's requirements.

The European railway operator was facing stiff competition from low-cost airlines and coach operators. The company realized that its existing service offerings were out-of-touch with the way that its customers wanted to travel. More and more travellers were turning to the web and mobile channels to book tickets, find information and plan journeys. The operator recognized that the key to regaining ground from its rivals lay in offering customers more attractive prices and promotions, as well as an easier way to book and plan journeys. By developing service offerings that truly stand out and giving travelers greater flexibility, the company hoped to boost ticket sales and steal a march on its competitors. The company wanted to better engage with its customers by launching more desirable travel options at attractive prices, and to ensure that its offerings are always up-to-date.

Faurecia, a leading automotive components manufacturer, operates on a just-in-time basis, supplying global vehicle makers with emissions control technologies, seating, and interior and exterior systems. The company's customers demand faultless order fulfillment, and any failure to meet service levels can result in severe financial penalties and reputational damage. To run its worldwide operations, Faurecia relies on a comprehensive set of SAP applications, supported by IBM® DB2® databases and running on IBM Power Systems™ servers. These were previously deployed as a single instance supporting more than 200 production sites in 33 countries. However, as the company's business grew, it needed to minimize potential downtime for its critical SAP ERP applications. The company needed a new systems architecture that would support its expansion, reduce risk, and minimize the impact of planned maintenance on its supply chain, manufacturing, and customer service levels.

Italian software developer Foedus operates in a highly competitive market where innovation is key to maintaining market share. The company's flagship product, the OCTOBUS ERP solution, needed to be continually improved to keep up with the competition and meet the demands of its customers. In the aftermath of the global economic recession, many Italian software companies had cut back on innovation or outsourced operations. However, the demand for advanced, affordable solutions designed and manufactured within Italy remained high. Foedus saw an opportunity to meet this demand by launching an affordable, advanced, end-to-end enterprise management software offering aimed at small and medium firms.

Fransabank, one of Lebanon's largest banks, was experiencing rapid business growth that was putting a strain on its core systems. The bank was concerned about the performance of critical batch processing tasks at the start and end of each working day, and at the end of each month. These processing tasks, which ensure that all transactions are applied accurately and all accounts reconciled, are effectively a statutory requirement as well as enabling the bank to have an accurate view of its business performance. As the business grew rapidly and continuously, a main pillar of their IT strategy was to implement a robust, scalable and highly performing infrastructure capable of accompanying the business growth by processing a larger volume of data and transactions in less time. This would avoid any potential future service impact and secure the end-of-day processing before the branches opened at 8 am—without any concerns about the significant volume growth.

The IT applications department at this company had an aggressive roadmap for improvement, including plans to reduce manual processes. The organization’s change request process for financial reference data was manual and labor-intensive, requiring staff to update and exchange spreadsheets by email. There was no process for gaining the necessary approvals for requested changes, which sometimes resulted in employees making revisions without key stakeholders’ approval. The company needed a BPM offering to automate this key process.

Itaú BBA, the wholesale, investment and institutional treasury banking division of the Itaú Unibanco group, wanted to increase developer productivity and improve traceability through more optimized and automated workflows. The company had been relying on IBM Rational ClearCase, IBM Rational ClearQuest and IBM Rational Build Forge software to support its development efforts since 2002. However, in 2010, the company decided to supplement those applications with additional tools to create a more comprehensive application lifecycle management (ALM) solution. The aim was to increase developer productivity, improve development governance through greater traceability, integration and transparency, and reduce development documentation through automation and optimization of development workflows.

KPJ Healthcare used cost-intensive server and storage technology to support core applications, including its hospital information system and financial applications. These siloed, geographically dispersed and isolated platforms hindered clinical decision-making and business processes. The organization needed a solution that would consolidate and unify its vast medical records and associated medical information network.

Following the financial crisis, the UK banking sector was faced with a tidal wave of regulatory change. Banks suddenly found themselves in a situation where these issues needed to be addressed concurrently, and within tight deadlines. The potential size of customer payouts and regulatory fines was at a level which meant these issues were regular boardroom-level agenda items, so the stakes were high. The immediate response of most banks to such time-critical and unforeseen needs was to build pop-up operations. These were supported by spreadsheets and small databases, and employed significant numbers of temporary staff. However, the situation demanded a more strategic response to ensure the right customer outcomes, repair reputation and manage regulatory exposure.

Kingland Systems Corporation, a company specializing in solving customers’ complex compliance and data problems, was facing a challenge in setting up new customer environments. The company relied on the cloud to create copies of customer environments so that it could work on each customer’s data. However, the process was manual and could take up to two weeks. This was affecting the company's responsiveness and ability to quickly onboard new customers. The company was looking for a way to streamline these processes and improve its speed to market.

Lion Brewery (Ceylon) PLC, a leading brewery in Sri Lanka, was facing challenges with its end-of-life legacy ERP solutions and manual workarounds. These issues were dulling operational insight and efficiency, threatening to hold the company back from meeting its ambitious expansion goals. As operations expanded, existing business systems, some of which were nearing end-of-life, were unable to deliver the deep insight that Lion Brewery demanded, and threatened to hold the company back from meeting its goal of reaching wider regional markets. The company's existing mix of Baan, Oracle, DataStream, legacy and in-house systems were not able to provide the deep operational insight needed to support its ambitious growth objectives. Customization and additional line-of-business solutions had added to a complex and expensive IT landscape, which delivered much less than it promised.

The Hollywood studio produces high-quality family entertainment through the use of computer-generated (CG) animation. The company’s world-class creative talent and technological capabilities, allow it to deliver great stories, breathtaking visual imagery and a sensibility that appeals to both children and adults. However, the amount of computer time required to render animated films grows with each technological improvement. As such, HPC in the form of massive computer grids is a critical technology in CG film-making. The studio’s latest blockbuster, a children’s film required the equivalent of over 17 million processor-hours of computing time on some of the world’s fastest commercially available processors.

Hansgrohe SE, a market-leading sanitary fittings manufacturer, faced challenges after expanding its business operations into emerging global markets, particularly in Asia. The company struggled to provide top-notch support to an ever-increasing number of customers without letting costs spiral out of control. Previously, Hansgrohe’s integrated SAP applications were running on Oracle databases. As the firm expanded, the existing environment struggled to deliver the required performance, and licensing costs increased sharply when the business needed to scale up.

IT-Informatik, a provider of SAP solution hosting and cloud services for medium-sized companies, aimed to boost retention and win new business by creating highly competitive and flexible offerings. However, its complex hosting environment made it difficult to set up client environments cost-effectively. With existing systems at or near capacity, IT-Informatik looked for ways to expand the scope, performance and capabilities of its hosting and cloud services. The company realized that if it could accelerate the deployment of new SAP application environments, it could onboard new customers more rapidly and respond faster to clients’ changing business needs.

The Lefdal Mine in Norway, once a source for olivine, has been sitting empty for decades. The owners of the mine, a group of local residents and farmers, were looking for a way to utilize the massive underground space. The idea to transform the mine into a datacenter came about seven years ago. The natural security of the existing structure, Norway’s cool climate, and surplus hydropower made it an ideal location for a green IT environment. However, the transformation of the mine into a datacenter presented several challenges. These included the need for a reliable and green energy source, efficient cooling systems, and a scalable and flexible infrastructure that could accommodate the rapid growth in datacenter capacity.