The University of Leipzig faces several major challenges. Recognizing trends in the private sector, responding faster and better to changing industry requirements, teaching theory through practice and setting new standards in education are at the top of the list. Only by achieving this can an excellent university thoroughly prepare its students for their future careers. Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) and Business Process Management (BPM) are growth markets worldwide. In the medium to long term, the demand for specialists in these fields will be very great. It is thus necessary to recognize opportunities for collaboration with the private sector and share the responsibility for equipping the market with the needed talent.

Clal, a leading insurance company in Israel, was facing stiff competition from regional InsurTech companies. The regulatory landscape was also becoming increasingly aggressive, impacting large companies with complex internal-external development needs. The company needed to transition from a bottleneck to a booster and turn a regulatory liability into a capability advantage. However, they lacked a comprehensive API management platform that could help them achieve this. The company also faced challenges with API bottlenecks and duplicates, rising costs, and the need for digital transformation.

With the Internet of Things (IoT) expected to connect 50 billion devices by 2020, the way products are used and interacted with is changing. More products are being embedded with sensors that provide real-time data on how customers are using them. This presents a challenge for businesses to adapt dynamically and understand their connected customers better. One of the most overlooked topics in IoT is security. The platform allows you to give access to your distributors and customers using an advanced mapping authorization engine. The endpoint security technologies are customized specifically to the machine world of the IoT, offering tighter security control than networked VPN solutions.

LANXESS, a leading specialty chemicals company, operates in a fiercely competitive market worth over €1 trillion. The company needed to ensure timely, quality, and cost-effective delivery of its products. To thrive, LANXESS needed a solution that would provide its production specialists with operational and production data to continuously improve the operational performance of their plants. The company also aimed to democratize data for all its employees. In 2017, LANXESS established a dedicated service unit to push digital business models, introduce new technologies along the entire value chain, and work on the use of big data and the embedding of digital skills among its employees.

Farms in Australia are vast, averaging around 100,000 acres, with almost a billion acres being farmed in total. The majority of Australia's population is concentrated around the coastline and capital cities, leaving the agricultural land sparsely populated. This lack of population density results in limited Internet connectivity, hindering farmers' ability to adopt the latest technological developments that could help protect their crops and herds. The larger and more remote the farms, the more challenging the internet access and communication. The smallest undiscovered problem can create major issues with crops or herds. Powertec Communications, a service provider, works closely with farmers to ensure they are connected and can communicate, no matter where they may be.

In 2014, the bank was under pressure due to the wave of banking disruption sweeping across Western Asia. It was facing demands for new products and services, impending compliance with new banking regulations, and a process architecture that it could not cope with. The bank's existing processes were documented in an array of spreadsheets, releases were delayed, and there were no alerts. More seriously, there was no collaborative process environment to speak of, let alone process conformance across the board. The bank needed to incorporate the right tool to design and manage its governance workflow to keep the regulators at bay. However, the bank realized that the situation was more complex than it initially seemed and that a robust solution that went to the core of the business was required.

MB Bank, a rapidly growing retail bank in Vietnam, was struggling to manage its growth and the large influx of new customers. The bank was dealing with time-consuming, manual processes including new customer onboarding and a slow online banking system. Loan approvals were taking too long, increasing the risk of losing potential new customers to faster competitors. It was also difficult to identify where mistakes or errors had been made along the process chain. The bank wanted to build a computerized business process management system that could streamline and centralize its processes, and ensure compliance with local regulations.

Westfalen Weser Energie GmbH & Co. KG., a utility company, was facing major challenges due to global climate change and digital transformation. The pressure for green energy and greater requirements for risk management and data protection were increasing. The company's unique community-shareholding structure and participating communities’ willingness to invest in their own power grids have enabled the Group’s continued successful growth in recent years. However, this growth needed to be recorded in every area and available for continuous improvement. Processes, in particular, had to be documented transparently. WWE worked together with a variety of service providers and system operators, a complete ecosystem that it must be able to control. To do so, many processes and procedures had to be defined and documented. Due to its shareholding structure new partners are added regularly, so processes must continually be adapted.

Lyreco, a global office supply distributor, was facing challenges due to lack of real-time stock and sales insight. The company needed to improve service assurance and drive operational cost savings from restocking and servicing machines. The increasing digitalization, regulatory environment, and global competition were driving unprecedented change, and Lyreco needed to adapt its business strategies, better manage risk, and simplify critical processes to avoid being disrupted by change. The company recognized that more and more of the products its customers desire were becoming connected, providing deeper insights into product usage and allowing customers to decrease operational expenses, increase environmental awareness, and innovate with new service offerings.

The Israeli Ministry of Labor, Social Affairs and Social Services was facing a challenge with its 20+ year-old mainframe application. The Ministry processes more than 80,000 cases per year, serving citizens via ministry departments and local authorities, associations and organizations. The legacy system was developed 20 years ago using Natural, Natural Construct and Adabas. The Ministry was using 20+ year-old, green-screen application technology and there was no way to open it up to the municipalities using the internet. The hundreds of municipalities that handled the cases had to file them with the Ministry through a mostly manual process. This slowed the processing down and sometimes left people at risk. Paper forms were being passed from the municipalities to the Ministry and back again, often requiring five different signatures for approval each time. Some individual cases took up to six months to process and, sometimes, cases would get completely lost in the shuffle.

The bank was facing several challenges due to the rapid growth in mobile banking, disparate process modeling standards and tools, regulatory compliance risks, rising costs, and the market impacts from AI. The bank needed to tackle these challenges to continue its growth and maintain its position as a leader in the banking industry. The bank also wanted to leverage the advances in computational power and machine learning algorithms to disrupt the banking industry with AI. However, the bank needed a solution that could handle the skyrocketing uptake in mobile and online banking, growing inefficiencies due to disparate process modeling standards and tools, and rapidly rising costs.

KMC Global Controls & Automation, a technology-based company that provides control panels, automation and integration with remote and onsite support capability, faced several challenges. They needed to compete not only on cost but also offer value-added services to stay relevant and strategic. They aimed to ensure smaller manufacturers are successful at IIoT, create diversified and resilient revenue, and meet the growing need for remote monitoring. The company understood that IIoT is an evolutionary change every manufacturer needs for survival. However, small and midsize manufacturers often lack the ability to implement and maintain IIoT applications due to a lack of in-house expertise.

The mechanical engineering and industrial equipment industry is facing pressures from digitalization and agility. There is a need for a fast entry to the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) for Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs). The industry also requires machine-oriented digital service processes and a solution to merge heterogenous IT worlds. The challenge also lies in connecting intelligent machines and users. logicline, an IT consulting and project firm, aims to support companies in their digital transformation, and it relies on fast, customized implementation to deliver that support.

Emirates NBD, a leading banking group in the Middle East and North Africa region, faced several challenges. The banking industry was rapidly changing, and there was a need to digitalize standard operating procedures. The bank required a central architecture repository for SOPs and bank IP. There was a business case for ensuring jurisdiction-based regulatory compliance and pressure to connect all areas of the business using dynamic process flow, simulations, and modeling. As the bank expanded globally, it needed to boost its efficiency, customer experience, and regulatory agility to meet and surpass the competition. The old way of using manual process flow forms no longer met the bank's requirements.

Dubai Municipality, the government entity overseeing services and facilities in Dubai, was facing several challenges. With a population influx, the demand for municipal services was increasing. However, the Municipality was struggling to keep up with the demand, leading to processing delays in many service areas. Additionally, it lacked transparency in its business processes and had an ill-informed pricing structure. This was particularly problematic as Dubai, which has no income tax, is heavily reliant on service fees. The lack of cost transparency and institutional pressure to streamline revenue collection, combined with a push by Dubai’s government to improve customer service, called for a top-of-the-line business process management solution.

BANCOR, a public financial institution in Argentina, was facing challenges due to its reliance on manual business processes. The rapidly changing banking industry and the need to document regulatory compliance were among the issues the bank was grappling with. The absence of a bank-wide process map and the need to integrate new customer-facing products were also significant challenges. The bank's systems were stuck in the past, with 98% of its processes documented in paper manuals and cumbersome instruction documents. This lack of system automation was causing inefficiencies, hindering staff efficiency, risking non-compliance with auditors, and making it harder to keep up with ever-shifting banking regulations.

Restek, a leading developer and manufacturer of chromatography consumables, operates in a highly competitive market. To differentiate itself, the company focuses on providing exceptional customer service, which it refers to as 'Plus 1' service. However, to maintain the high levels of service its customers expected, Restek recognized the need to modernize its business and digitalize customer interactions. The company wanted to streamline the entire customer interaction process and make it accessible to every employee. This would give the company more flexibility to unlock new opportunities for its customers. However, Restek found itself with a bit of a silo problem. In order to provide the ultimate Plus 1 service it wanted, everyone at the company needed to be able to access a 360-degree view of the customer. To do that, Restek needed to break down the silos between their ERP, CRM, website, and other ancillary systems.

The multinational luxury fashion company, which started from humble beginnings, has grown into an international powerhouse through several major acquisitions worth more than $3 billion. These acquisitions posed a risky prospect in the luxury fashion business, where competition is fierce. The company's IT leadership team wanted the Information Systems (IS) teams to have visibility into their portfolios to develop project plans and future IT strategies to support the company's ambitious business transformation goals. The existing process involved manual updates to a Microsoft® Access® database, visualization in the Visio® modeling tool, and PowerPoint® for presentations. This process was updated twice a year, which was not sufficient for the rapid decision-making required in the company's dynamic environment. The company needed a centralized platform for IS and Enterprise Architecture (EA) to collaboratively collect the information necessary for planning IT support for business goals and strategies.

The bank's array of applications were divided into three separate repositories, creating a disconnected web of applications that was in danger of inflating costs, impeding compliance with new banking regulations, and leaving management ill-prepared for an industry-wide digital transformation. The bank needed a comprehensive and accurate overview of its application landscape, extensive reporting capabilities for management, risk and audit compliance purposes, and the analytics and insights to help its leaders make robust, fact-based, strategic decisions.

Trackerando, a company specializing in tailored GPS and IoT solutions, was tasked with developing a high-end GPS tracking solution for high-performance sports cars and vintage cars. The challenge was to provide 24/7 tracking across Europe with reliable connectivity. The solution had to meet rigorous insurance requirements for these high-value vehicles and cater to specific customer wishes regarding the alarm function. The main issue was that once these high-priced collector items left the showroom and were taken out on the road, insurance companies designated them as “not insurable.“ The objective was to find a service provider who had the hardware and software to offer cross-border GPS tracking and a reliable alarm function.

Innovam, a Netherlands-based company that develops and administers innovative educational programs for the automotive sector, was facing several challenges. The changing market conditions demanded cost reductions. The company was also in the midst of a strategic change towards a 'blended learning' model combining online and traditional classroom training. This new focus on e-learning meant Innovam’s IT infrastructure was more essential to its business than ever. Yet its existing application landscape wasn’t cutting it. The company relied heavily on a monolithic enterprise resource planning system, which was ill-suited to meet its primary IT needs: planning and managing training, allocating staff, and delivering online learning through a sleek and user-friendly website. Changes in this system were sluggish and fraught with risks, making Innovam less flexible. Running it on-premises was also expensive—at a time when the company needed to cut costs.

The bank was facing a challenge with its array of applications divided into three separate repositories, creating separate islands for private banking, investment banking, and technical infrastructure. This disconnected web of applications was inflating costs, impeding compliance with new banking regulations, and leaving management ill-prepared for an industry-wide digital transformation. The bank needed a comprehensive and accurate overview of its application landscape, extensive reporting capabilities for management, risk and audit compliance purposes, and the analytics and insights to help its leaders make robust, fact-based, strategic decisions.

Telstra, Australia’s leading telecommunications and technology company, was facing a constantly changing telecommunications landscape. The acceleration of IoT services and the pressure on water utilities and government to cut waste, digitalize, and streamline water management presented new challenges. The company saw the Internet of Things as a huge strategic opportunity and a chance to capture new network revenues and expand into new sales channels. However, to achieve this, they needed a carrier grade, secure and open IoT platform.

AAFMAA, a non-profit insurance company with over $1.2 billion in assets, was looking to improve customer engagement, increase return on assets to stay competitive, and provide self-service to members. The company was managing more than a billion dollars in assets with only 75 people on staff in its entire organization. The challenge was to provide members direct self-service access to its core policy system from the Web and mobile devices, while keeping costs low and maintaining a superior credit rating.

CEM, the sole electric utility in Macau, is facing new challenges as it enters the IoT era. The company is developing an advanced metering interface, adopting new forms of electronic payments, and planning a network of charging stations for electric vehicles. However, these new technologies require stronger capabilities to ensure seamless integration with its back-end core and the ability to replace legacy systems. The company needed a stable, secure, multi-channel integration platform to support its future operations.

The State Office for Salaries and Pensions in Germany was facing a growing demand for online services and the need to integrate modern IT systems into mainframe applications. The agency was also looking to digitalize all administrative processes in the long term. The agency handles around 1 million applications for financial assistance annually, totaling more than €1 billion per year. The past decade has seen a growing trend in public administration toward customer-friendly web portals and decentralized applications. The agency was looking to expand webMethods into a central hub for all its applications.

The telecommunications company, despite its success and growth, faced several challenges. The rapid growth at home and abroad resulted in a patchwork of loosely connected subsidiaries and thousands of internal and external processes to manage. Some processes were partially automated, while others relied on manual, sometimes paper-based steps. Technology costs were rising, and redundant technology and applications were impacting operating expenditures. The company lacked visibility into use or users, making it impossible to rationalize applications, standardize technologies, or calculate change impacts. A unified, digital approach to business process management was needed, capable of modeling all business processes and interactions between Customer Relationship Management and Billing.

The Health Maintenance Organization (HMO) was facing growing challenges in internal communication and knowledge management due to its rapid growth and innovation-backed success. Siloed applications and a lack of end-to-end process management and control made oversight difficult and put data integrity at risk. For instance, provider fee-payment systems had become so complex to maintain that it took extra manpower and time to process charges to members and payments to providers. The organization needed to make patient medical records quickly and readily available, increase auditing and monitoring of transaction and data movement, improve back-end IT systems and process efficiency, and open 25 years of custom legacy applications and data to all platforms, including a new digital business platform.

The central bank of a Gulf country was facing challenges with its legacy IT architecture that had grown in silos over time due to the lack of an enterprise integration layer. This situation was posing massive systemic risks and adding costly inefficiencies, hindering the central bank’s security, reliability and governance standards. The bank was also planning to adopt new best-of-breed technologies which would have further complicated the situation. The bank needed a structured, strategic integration platform to ensure all its applications work together flawlessly and pose minimal risk to the disruption of business.

The customer, a leading global financial services company, was facing challenges due to its diverse portfolio of services and management options. The complexity of analytic models increased as the company grew, and the internal data science and IT teams were reaching their capacity. This increased the underlying risk of the company’s business model and threatened to remove a competitive advantage. The company was using a dedicated team of data scientists creating hand-coded fraud models. However, with millions of customer accounts, a large service portfolio, new product launches, and geographically dispersed operations, manual coding became a major liability. The process of converting algorithmic fraud models to “production ready” dramatically slowed the process of integrating them into the operational business processes.