TE Connectivity (TE), formerly known as Tyco Electronics and now a global leader in connectivity and sensing solutions, has distinguished itself from the competition with the kind of cutting-edge industrial technology that makes our modern world possible. A broad range of industries, including automotive, aerospace, energy, consumer electronics, and healthcare, rely on TE鈥檚 engineering expertise and innovations to transform their operations. Every year, the company produces more than 235 billion parts in 140 factories around the world.

Closely tracking recent breakthroughs in generative AI, TE was enthusiastic about how the technology could help search and summarize internal documents. These feature important proprietary information, and the company needed them to be readily available to staff.

During the request-for-proposal process, 乌鸦传媒 and Amazon Web Services (AWS) proposed building a solution that would harmonize TE鈥檚 diverse datasets, establish a central repository, and build an intuitive chat function in a clean user interface (UI).

鈥淏ased on that flexibility, that background, that proven experience, we felt 乌鸦传媒 and AWS were right for us. We certainly haven鈥檛 been disappointed. That was the right choice,鈥� said Phil Gilchrist, Chief Transformation Officer at TE.

The development process: Building an LLM with proprietary data

With 75 million engineering documents spread across 66 different databases, it was difficult for TE鈥檚 research and development (R&D) teams to find the right information. The scattered nature of the information also meant subject matter experts often had to answer questions about specific projects when researchers could not locate relevant reference documents.

There was a tight deadline for producing a solution. In just over three months, the team ingested a wealth of marketing and operational data and 2.5 million engineering documents 鈥� many of which needed to be scrubbed 鈥� into a modern UI. AWS supplied the cloud infrastructure and fully managed services, such as Amazon Bedrock, that enable the integration of high-performing, Gen AI foundation models, and Amazon OpenSearch Service, which makes it easy to deploy and operate various search, analytics, and visualization capabilities.

Meanwhile, 乌鸦传媒 used retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), an architectural approach for retrieving response from large language models (LLMs), to integrate these services into an enterprise-scale solution.

鈥淲hat they were able to do was launch a safe, secure solution into our security framework and our document structure almost immediately that鈥檚 very scalable, very secure, and something that so far has had a high quality of operation,鈥� Gilchrist said.

A cross-company team continues to improve the tool on an almost daily basis with the ingestion of additional content (including all 75 million engineering documents by April 2025) and tweaks based on user feedback.

鈥淗onestly, the team worked flawlessly together to stay on it,鈥� Gilchrist said. 鈥淓veryone really wanted to make it work and we did make it work. So, I would say based on that common objective and a tight timeline, we had no choice but to work very closely together, and that was a fantastic experience.鈥�

The transformative solution: TELme

The result was TELme, a conversational platform powered by Gen AI that collects and organizes the company鈥檚 diverse pool of internal knowledge about various industries and products in a single place.

TELme is TE鈥檚 Gen AI implementation based on Claude 3.5, the AI assistant created by Anthropic, and trained on proprietary data. It is all organized under a single application programming interface.

鈥淔inding the right document was like finding a needle not just in one haystack but in 66 haystacks,鈥� Gilchrist said. 鈥淭ELme allows us to remove the haystacks and just find the needles.鈥�

TELme establishes continuity and allows the company to hand down knowledge from one generation to the next. 鈥淲e believe TELme will come to represent the sum of intellectual knowledge of the company in one form or another. But not only that: it鈥檚 a knowledge base that can be put into action. What that LLM will enable them to do is find the right piece of information right up front within seconds, rather than within a morning of trawling through extraneous documents.鈥�

TELme goes beyond knowledge management. It provides an enterprise-wide research environment that fosters collaboration and communication.

Workers in human resources, finance, and accounts payable at a leading consumer goods company were spending tens of thousands of hours on repetitive, mind-numbing tasks.

Information was stored in various ways and locations across the company, so workers often spent as much or even more time searching 鈥� by writing emails, cold-calling, scrolling internal systems, etc. 鈥� as performing their main tasks.

For example, accountants cannot manage a balance sheet if they don鈥檛 have the necessary numbers for processing outgoing payments, receiving invoices, paying suppliers, updating ledger accounts, and so on. If any of these data languish on a personal computer or in someone鈥檚 inbox, it will take time to track them down.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, employees understandably had more questions 鈥� mostly related to benefits and policies 鈥� for HR and payroll. Most requests arrived through a shared mailbox and were answered by tracking down the appropriate documents and exchanging them over email. This cumbersome process opened the company to security risks and resulted in a backlog of requests, despite all the time invested.

Building a solution: Automated workflows for greater efficiency

Recognizing the need for change, the company reached out to 乌鸦传媒 to request an all-encompassing solution that could improve productivity and reduce labor by streamlining and automating processes across the enterprise.

乌鸦传媒 relied on its expertise with the Microsoft Power Platform, a collection of low-code development tools for building custom platforms, to build a sleek, efficient solution that would modernize business processes from data collection and security to version capturing and reporting.

With a deep knowledge of Power Platform鈥檚 arsenal of tools 鈥� especially Power Apps, Power Automate, Power BI, and Power Virtual Agents 鈥� 乌鸦传媒 worked closely with the company to target pain points and address the monotony of pushing paper, so workers could focus more on what they do best.

Data at one鈥檚 fingertips

乌鸦传媒 used its custom software engineering expertise and Power Platform鈥檚 capabilities to create a secure, cloud-based data collection system that automatically captures item-level version history. The new system rapidly and automatically delivers quick and accurate responses to frequently asked questions. These scalable automated processes, which also benefited from increased data security, provide near real-time reporting to drive insights for continuous improvement and quickly mitigate business risks.

Business teams could standardize their processes by using automation templates and workflows. This effort increased productivity and process accuracy. As a result, HR managers were able to find advanced insights using dashboards that allowed them to refine their processes based on employee feedback.

Better user experiences all-around

The overall experience for the end user has improved immensely thanks to easy-to-use web forms, instant text and email notifications, quick-action cards for approvals, digital signatures for documents, dynamic document generation through standard templates, and more.

The team built a centralized, digital interface to house the entire process of capturing, organizing, and retrieving data. This dashboard makes it easier to retrieve information users need to do their jobs more efficiently. In addition, the project team developed custom apps that run on company-managed mobile devices and support offline mode. If necessary, external users can get secure, temporary access to the app for information. When this happens, simple business-to-business integration using authorized guest accounts for suppliers and outside counsel bypasses the need for a virtual machine or laptop and the associated software licenses, which reduces costs.

It鈥檚 also become easier for auditors to accurately examine the company鈥檚 reporting, thanks to version control, change management, and automatic data retention.

All of these changes mean vital information will no longer get lost on someone鈥檚 personal hard drive, where it is inaccessible to the people who need it.

Unlocking productivity

乌鸦传媒 created automated solutions that handle manual processes, generate reports, and address other frequent pain points that had previously kept workers from focusing on higher priority work. These solutions have saved a substantial amount of time.

A team of three developers deployed around 40 automations that handled over 100,000 requests and saved 30,000 hours over the course of two years. In particular, the self-service chatbot resulted in a 50 percent reduction in HR call volume.

These initial business outcomes are cause for celebration, but they aren鈥檛 the only changes. The introduction of modern digital communications and collaboration tools has resulted in increased user adoption and engagement, and the use of Power Platform has expanded throughout the company. As the company continues its digital business transformation journey, 乌鸦传媒 will provide ongoing support and stands ready to address ongoing needs as they evolve.

HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) is the UK鈥檚 tax, payments, and customs authority. It collects the money that pays for the UK鈥檚 public services and helps families and individuals with targeted financial support. The department is transforming its IT estate to provide a cost-effective, resilient, more productive, and sustainable IT platform. A key component of this is the migration of more than 650 services from existing data centers to the cloud.

In line with this transformation strategy, HMRC wanted to replace the legacy technologies that ensure tax receipts are collected, recorded, managed, and allocated to the correct accounts. This included a pair of closely aligned services used to investigate and resolve anomalies such as overpayments and unallocated tax receipts. One of these services accepted details of receipts from individuals and businesses across all tax regimes while the other enabled HMRC staff to view customers鈥� payment information and managed overpayments and account allocations.

With its strategic goals in mind, HMRC sought the support of 乌鸦传媒 to decommission and replace both systems with a new cloud-based service built using a modern technology stack.

Stakeholder engagement ensures solution design meets user needs

Engaging closely with HMRC stakeholders, a team of 乌鸦传媒 experts designed a solution that merged the two mainframe-hosted systems into one, using cloud native services provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS). The team followed DevOps and Agile methods while working through an agreed project backlog to deliver incremental system change.

The complexity of HMRC鈥檚 IT estate meant that it was imperative to account for the unique needs of each tax regime in the solution design. Working in collaboration with HMRC, the team undertook comprehensive user research and stakeholder engagement to fully capture these requirements. This was validated by extensive proof of concept, prototyping, business confidence, and user acceptance testing to ensure all needs were met.

The resulting new system is a containerized set of services within HMRC鈥檚 container platform, which was developed by 乌鸦传媒 to enable dynamic scaling to meet peaks and troughs of demand.

A new AWS relational database service stores the persistent data, replacing indexed mainframe master files used by the legacy services, while a green screen user interface (UI) was replaced in the new service with a modern browser-based UI. This ensured that key information would be presented in an intuitive format, enabling 3,500 users within 12 HMRC directorates to navigate the system and access data, events, and records quickly and easily.

Throughout this process, the project team followed UK government Security by Design principles to ensure that data could be protected both in transit and at rest.

A resilient and secure digital platform that retains legacy expertise

The new service successfully launched in full over a single weekend without major incident. Crucially, it retained all the assembled data and business functionality from the legacy services, enabling a seamless transition to the cloud and vital continuity for users while unlocking key benefits.

As a highly available, end-to-end service, the platform operates across multiple availability zones, with applications and infrastructure able to scale to meet demand. This provides flexibility to handle the peaks and troughs of traffic inherent to the demands of HMRC鈥檚 tax regimes and contributes to the department鈥檚 sustainability goals by scaling down to a minimal footprint overnight.

This cloud-agnostic solution supports the department鈥檚 strategic exit from existing data centers as a key element of its transformation agenda. It reduces HMRC鈥檚 dependency on proprietary platforms and ensures that existing business and tax regimes continue with minimal changes. At the same time, moving from legacy technology 鈥� which required increasingly scarce, highly specialized skills to maintain 鈥� to modern, robust, and resilient systems reduced operational risk.

Ongoing change is supported through fully automated testing at unit, system, and performance proving levels. Previously, implementing system changes was a manual process that could take weeks or months. Now, changes can be implemented, tested, and deployed in just a few hours.

With the new service fully integrated into HMRC鈥檚 IT estate, the sharing of data can be achieved in near real time. For example, integration with the Government Banking and Payments鈥� Intelligent Payment Processing system is helping to streamline the resolution of payment problems by identifying trends and patterns that can be addressed at source. This collaboration demonstrates how operational risk in legacy systems can be mitigated through system modernization and cloud migration.

HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) is the UK鈥檚 tax, payments, and customs authority. Its purpose is to collect the money that pays for the UK鈥檚 public services and to help families and individuals with targeted financial support.

Given the department鈥檚 critical role, it needs to be able to respond to change and deliver digital services quickly while adhering to stringent quality, security, and compliance processes and controls. Historically, this meant that translating an idea or concept into a fully developed digital service could take many months to complete. HMRC wanted a fast-track solution that allowed it to maintain these essential controls while enabling innovation and realizing benefits at pace.

Empowering service owners to focus on the needs of end users

Building on the successful use of containerization to migrate its legacy services from private data centers to a modern, cloud-neutral model, HMRC partnered with 乌鸦传媒 to launch the HMRC Container Platform (HCP).

乌鸦传媒 experts worked closely with HMRC from the outset to build a roadmap and to design a solution that simplified the build, deployment, monitoring, and maintenance processes for HMRC鈥檚 development teams. The result was a comprehensive platform as well as services, tools, information, and templated forms that enable HMRC service owners and developers to focus on the needs of end users in the knowledge that the security, compliance, and approvals processes have already been managed. To further reassure HMRC, the project team set up a two-week hypercare service in support of new features or service releases.

With the solution in place, the team continued to work with HMRC stakeholders to create practical user guides that help teams use the service in a self-sufficient way. To drive continual improvement of the platform鈥檚 availability and utilization, the team incorporated performance metrics tooling, while auto-incident reporting and prioritized scrum-team allocation drives operational insight, and observability enables continual cost optimization in line with FinOps best practices.

HMRC and 乌鸦传媒 evolved the platform so that it could work using cloud-native and managed cloud-provider services, driving sustainability through technical solutions. This has delivered additional features on top of the standard managed cloud capabilities offered by hyperscalers to align with HMRC鈥檚 compliance and security frameworks. Furthermore, the HCP acts as an enabler by expediting and greatly reducing the time taken to deploy applications onto the platform. As a result, it is now the department鈥檚 recommended route through which all container-based applications and other digital assets are developed and launched.

Benefits for service owners and developers

Making a new cluster operational, managed, and repeatable often takes weeks. But the HCP creates a repeatable and consumable service in just a few hours. Project and service owners can simply fill out an automated form, eliminating many time-consuming activities and providing everything required to deploy applications and make them accessible to both internal and external end users.

Working with multiple HMRC teams, 乌鸦传媒 operates the HCP using the latest DevSecOps tools and standards and drawing on its global platform engineering expertise. Infrastructure is built, scaled, and patched using infrastructure-as-code automated pipelines to provide a seamless user experience.

The platform supports multiple services and provides a fully managed service that incorporates patching, upgrades, and supports all platform tooling using site reliability engineering (SRE) principles. This allows HMRC to have complete control over quality, security, and compliance. Everything is deployed and managed using Open Source software and aligns to Cloud Native Computing Foundation principles. All this ensures industry standards are met and allows developers to focus their attention on delivering new features to meet HMRC鈥檚 business needs.

By adopting this technology approach, HMRC is enabling innovative ideas and new services to be conceived and launched at speed, delivering benefits much more quickly than before. Opportunities for quick wins can be pursued with confidence, aligning with HMRC鈥檚 drive to enable self-service and self-sufficiency.

Benefits of containerization

Containerization allows software developers to create and deploy apps faster and more securely. Using traditional methods, developing code in a specific computing environment can result in errors and bugs when transferred to a new location, for instance from a desktop computer to a VM or from a Windows to Linux operating system. Containerization eliminates this problem by bundling the supplication code with its related configuration files, dependencies, and libraries. That single package of software 鈥� the container 鈥� is then abstracted away from the host OS, allowing it to stand alone and become portable and able to run on any platform or cloud without issue.

The ITZBund pioneers sustainable IT

In 2021, the IT and software industry contributed four to five percent of global emissions. Also in public administration IT systems are significant sources of CO2 emissions. Within this context, the Informationstechnikzentrum Bund (ITZBund) operates several data centers, indicating a substantial potential for energy and resource savings.

At the same time, the ITZBund has a political mandate and bears a special social responsibility to use energy and resources as efficiently as possible. The organization therefore aims to lead by example as a pioneer in sustainable IT in the federal administration. The framework for this is set by the Sustainability Program of Measures and the Energy Efficiency Act in Germany, which established the legally binding goal of achieving a climate-neutral federal administration by 2030. Of course, this is no easy undertaking given the relatively short amount of time!

The European Eco-Management and Audit Scheme (EMAS) helps organizations achieve carbon neutrality by continuously assessing, reporting, and improving environmental performance. EMAS covers energy use, waste management, and GHG emissions, ensuring credibility and transparency in environmental protection.

The EMAS regulation mandates a thorough evaluation of an organization鈥檚 existing environmental standards, a comprehensive review of relevant environmental regulations, and necessary internal restructuring followed by an official environmental declaration. This process requires a significant investment of time and resources. For ITZBund, this involved analyzing the extent and specific contributions of all activities towards sustainability, examining organizational interactions, and conducting a detailed assessment of the completeness of departmental tasks that support sustainability objectives.

The ITZBund collaborated with 乌鸦传媒, leveraging their extensive sustainability expertise and many years of experience within the German public sector, to establish itself as a leader in sustainable digitalization within the federal administration.

From guidelines to tangible measures

The sustainability transformation of the ITZBund comprises four main pillars:

1. Concept development
2. Analysis of the status quo
3. Introduction of EMAS
4. Derivation and implementation of measures

The ITZBund created a sustainability concept to serve as a guideline for all sustainability initiatives. This concept considered the ecological, economic, and social aspects of sustainability and concentrated on implementing EMAS, data center management, sustainable procurement, real estate, fleet management, and software sustainability.

The second step was to ensure transparency on ITZBund鈥檚 sustainability status and establish a database. The project team interviewed employees about ten fields of action, considering both ecological and social aspects. They created an initial energy and greenhouse gas balance by surveying properties, data centers, the vehicle fleet, and travel activities. Using emission factors, they calculated ITZBund鈥檚 GHG emissions.

The third step was to adopt a structured approach to sustainability by introducing EMAS. This included evaluating land use, water consumption, waste generation, and material flows. The team also clarified responsibilities, created extensive documentation, and established an environmental reporting system.

ITZBund and 乌鸦传媒 implemented measures to enhance sustainability. As part of EMAS, they developed an environmental program with climate targets and specific measures to reach them. This included green IT, environmentally friendly procurement, hardware disposal, and efficient data center operations using renewable energy. The sustainability of the software was evaluated by creating a concept and criteria catalog based on the Blue Angel (鈥淏lauer Engel鈥�) German ecolabel.

Results and outlook for the future

In 2023, EMAS was implemented at 11 ITZBund locations in an initial rollout. The second phase is now in progress, which includes recertifying the first 11 locations and certifying three additional data center locations.

Due to the complexity of the ITZBund as a central IT service provider for the entire federal administration, the large number of stakeholders involved and the scope of EMAS, certification required a corresponding resource effort. However, the organizational structures that have since been established now provide a stable basis for all sustainability activities at the ITZBund. These are now more deeply anchored in the organization and more widely distributed following the introduction. Today, cross-departmental cooperation is much more strategic and, thanks to the comprehensive database that has been created, there is an improved level of knowledge about the status quo of sustainability.

EMAS is an important tool in the effort towards climate neutrality by 2030. Using the established structures, tailored measures can be created. Their implementation enhances environmental performance and contributes directly to sustainability. One significant step was changing the power supply for ITZBund鈥檚 data centers to 100% green electricity.

The ITZBund aims to enhance its sustainability and support the federal government鈥檚 sustainable digitalization. Implemented internal measures will be shared with all federal administrations. With the adoption of EMAS, the ITZBund now has the organizational structure to promote sustainability within the federal government.

Business success is dependent on recruiting and retaining the best available talent, regardless of the market or industry in which an organization operates. This means that a company鈥檚 HR team, the processes that support it, and the employee experience it provides are all critical to long-term success. As such, they must be kept up to date with modern technology and a suited approach.

So, when a major global pharmaceutical company identified that its HR systems were not fulfilling employee expectations, the business knew that it would have to take action. The organization reviewed the situation and discovered that the multi-faceted processes intended to provide support for a diverse set of circumstance had become confusing and difficult to navigate. In addition, this had led to repetitive loops, redundant work, and more manual effort than desired, all while limiting the time available for user interaction and continuous improvement.

Uninterested in taking half measures, the pharmaceutical company launched a global transformation project that would reimagine its HR processes, forge stronger bonds between various working groups, and increase the speed with which innovation could take place. All of this depended on changing the way the organization developed and introduced new technology and services. As a result, the company set out to implement an agile iterative approach to product development and engaged 乌鸦传媒 as its partner to gain access to extensive technical expertise and a rich background of transformation success.

Educational effort supports Agile development

Transitioning from existing strategies and ways of working to an Agile structure required learning and awareness, without which the various teams involved would lack the ability to keep pace with employee needs and expectations as well as the rate of innovation. To respond to this need, the company and 乌鸦传媒 launched a flexible coaching campaign.

The partners established a team of expert coaches that could engage with different teams in order to educate and inform key stakeholders and team members on how to adapt to an Agile approach. This group engaged with product owners and project managers while also occasionally supporting entire teams. These coaches worked with the organization and its external suppliers to develop more effective project management techniques and apply more efficient working models. In this way, the company鈥檚 internal innovation leaders learned to more effectively manage and empower agility as they developed new tools or services and eventually rolled them out for wider use.

Through the coaching initiative, 乌鸦传媒 experts enabled the company鈥檚 HR product owners and teams to adopt an iterative development approach that ensured more extensive testing while simultaneously accelerating the rate at which new solutions could be introduced for employee use. This ensured that the company could develop more value-oriented projects with shorter lead times.

Accelerating the development and release of new HR features

Following the educational campaign, the company introduced an incremental approach for product development organized into six-week program planning meetings and program reviews. Moreover, the project rapidly created and prepared new teams while providing a sustainable way of working that fosters innovation and collaboration. Collaboration is driven by a structure that ensures regular alignment between different teams by establishing clear priorities, enabling regular stakeholder feedback related to new features, and clarifying dependencies that required stable inter-team connections.

As a result, employees now report higher satisfaction with the organization鈥檚 various HR services and systems. Regular updates and a user-centric focus ensure that this will continue while the greater frequency of inter-team collaboration guarantees that this work can be performed at greater speed. More effective coordination within the company and its suppliers also ensures that the organization will be able to develop new products and applications faster while delivering greater value.

Using its new development approach, the company has since launched a large number of new products and achieved general cost savings related to HR processes. These solutions are available across the world to support a substantial number of workers. With faster updates, greater flexibility, and more effective HR support, the company is now more able to support its employees with user-friendly systems and a commitment to continuous improvement in the future.

The combination of multiple next-generation technologies has the potential to improve fire prevention as well as the speed and effectiveness of emergency response and subsequent ecosystem recovery. This minimizes the frequency of fires and their environmental impact, reducing the risk of accidents to personnel and reducing costs.

However, this will not be possible without an integrated approach in which each phase feeds back to the previous one, enabling a more coordinated and sustainable response to forest fires.

Despite the availability of multiple technologies that can significantly contribute to preventing, anticipating, combating, mitigating, and recovering from the effects of environmental disasters, there are several barriers that currently prevent the full potential of these technologies from being exploited. The main barrier is the lack of integration, interoperability, and standardization between different systems and technologies. This lack can hinder information exchange and complicate real-time decision-making. Research into interoperability standards and protocols is essential to overcome this obstacle and ensure that different technologies can work together effectively.

The TREEADS Project

The TREEADS Project, part of the European Union鈥檚 Green Deal program, is a collaborative effort involving 47 partners from 14 European countries and Taiwan, aiming to combat wildfires through advanced technological solutions and demonstrate the effectiveness of a holistic approach.

The TREEADS Project proposes a comprehensive forest fire management system that includes state-of-the-art products. Its holistic approach involves considering and integrating all facets and stages of fires in their different phases (prevention, detection, and restoration) to create a global and interconnected solution.

In the TREEADS project, this approach is managed by the integration of various innovative technologies and methods, such as:

• Virtual reality for firefighter training.
• Aerial drones equipped with LiDAR and EO/IR cameras for real-time monitoring.
• Seed capsules with restoration gel for ecological and recovery use.
• Fire detection systems based on social networks.
• Decision support systems.
• Insurance models and risk transfer solutions to provide comprehensive coverage and response.

鈥溛谘淮� is making a very strong commitment to having sustainability as a priority in all projects. This initiative is a clear example.鈥�

Aurora Ramos, Lead 5G/6G Conn

乌鸦传媒鈥檚 unmanned vehicle command and control center

The Command and Control Center (CCC) is a service designed to compose missions and communicate them to unmanned vehicles in real time during a field operation. In addition, it enables the visualization of telemetry and on-board sensor information.

This service functions as a central hub for control and visualization of the approach in four layers, integrating information from ground sensors, on-board sensors on low- and medium- altitude drones, and high-altitude platforms (HAPs), such as hot air balloons equipped with multispectral cameras.

The system is capable of determining the communication protocols that enable the governance and monitoring of each available aerial vehicle. This makes it possible to obtain information on their payload and onboard sensors, receive position and telemetry data, send them orders to carry out the missions, and receive the data provided by the sensors at critical points of the mission, such as video and hyperspectral images.

The Spanish pilot

乌鸦传媒 has coordinated the activities of the Spanish pilot, one of eight that make up the TREEADS project, to field test the various technologies developed by the partners.

This validation has been carried out in the mountains of Avila in different stages and through different exercises that involved the participation of the project鈥檚 technological partners, local authorities, public bodies, homeowners鈥� associations, and emergency teams.

A total of 56 technologies have been tested throughout 13 exercises, which have also enabled the validation of support provided to firefighting teams. Meanwhile, these tests have captured, integrated, merged, and analyzed data from different sources to provide useful information for forest fire prevention activities and fire risk indicators supported by Geographic Information Systems (GIS).

The Spanish TREEADS pilot stands out for its comprehensive and advanced approach to forest fire management, demonstrating how technology and innovation can converge to address critical environmental challenges. Under 乌鸦传媒鈥檚 leadership, this pilot has not only improved immediate response capacity but also promoted the sustainable recovery of affected ecosystems.

鈥淭he open and extensible architecture of the Command and Control Center makes it possible to incorporate and control other autonomous systems in the future, such as terrestrial or underwater robotic platforms.鈥�

Noel Ruiz, Solution Architect & Presales at 乌鸦传媒 Engineering Spain

Anglian Water redefines customer payments through digital innovation

Anglian Water, the largest water and water recycling company in England and Wales by geographic area, serves nearly seven million customers. With an increasing number of customers preferring digital payment methods, the company recognized the need to modernize its payment system to meet customer expectations.

Based on research that showed digital wallet options improve customer satisfaction substantially, Anglian Water decided to enable the use of Apple Pay and Google Pay when making payments. By doing so, the company would make paying bills faster, easier, and more secure, allowing customers to complete the process in just two clicks. In this way, Anglian Water would make the payment process more customer-friendly and position itself as a leader in digital innovation within the utilities sector.

Launching a streamlined digital payment experience

To achieve this goal, Anglian Water partnered with 乌鸦传媒, forming a team that could carefully plan and implement the new digital wallet payment options. Operating as a single, unified team, the partners established an iterative delivery approach that ensured rigorous testing and feedback could guide development by quickly identifying technical issues to be fixed.

Over a six-month period, Anglian Water and 乌鸦传媒 used a combination of structured planning and adaptive methods to build a secure and flexible eCommerce Payment application. Recognizing a need for additional knowledge, the project team underwent additional training that would enable more effective end-to-end ownership of the project and engagement with third parties.

Throughout this project, the partners followed a microservices architecture hosted on the Azure Platform as a Service. This payment application is comprised of API Manager, Function Apps, MVC Web App, Orchestrator Function App, Event Grid, Logic App, and Azure SQL, all of which support Apple Pay and Google Pay. These new payment options were designed to work across all devices and were compatible with both Android and iOS platforms.

Reaping the benefits and setting future goals

Since the launch of the new payment options in October 2023, Anglian Water has seen a significant shift in customer behavior. Quicker, easier payment processes improved customer satisfaction, resulting in 35 percent of payments now being made through digital wallets instead of traditional debit and credit cards. The project not only improved the overall payment experience but also reinforced Anglian Water鈥檚 position as an industry digital innovation leader.

Looking ahead, Anglian Water is committed to continuing its digital transformation. The company plans to explore more digital services that can further enhance customer satisfaction, while its ongoing partnership with 乌鸦传媒 will remain central to driving future innovations. As Anglian Water expands its digital offerings and streamlines operations, the focus will remain on delivering the best possible service to its customers, ensuring that they stay at the heart of every decision.

A new property tax law for Baden-W眉rttemberg

The Ministry of Finance of Baden-W眉rttemberg is responsible for the state鈥檚 financial policy, budget, taxes, state holdings and real estate. When the state parliament passed the property tax law in 2020, the ministry faced a challenge: starting on 1 January 2025, a new legal basis for property tax was to come into effect in Baden-W眉rttemberg that would guarantee municipalities 12% of their tax revenue, or 1.8 billion euros annually.

The tax offices in Baden-W眉rttemberg are therefore obliged to revalue all local properties according to the land value model as of 1 January 2022. This required the development of a new IT property tax procedure 鈥� a project that the Ministry of Finance entrusted to the Regional Finance Office in Karlsruhe as the intermediate authority. 乌鸦传媒 was selected as the development partner for the 鈥楪rundsteuer-Neu鈥� (New Property Tax) software solution as part of a tendering process based on technical expertise, the ability to ensure a timely delivery within 18 months, and delivering user-centricity and quality assurance throughout the project.

Iteration and synchronization ensure efficient project management

In view of the tight schedule, the Ministry of Finance and 乌鸦传媒 agreed to adopt an iterative project approach with parallel processes. Among other things, this meant that individual project phases (e.g. conception or implementation) would be carried out multiple times and overlap during the project. This made it possible to easily and simply adjust the approach as needed, enabling the project partners to strategically react to unforeseen circumstances.

Other advantages of this approach included the visibility of progress for all project participants and stakeholders, early testing during development, and immediate feedback as part of the integration tests. From the outset of the project, the team recorded the requirements with a focus on the technical aspects and possible process optimizations. The interfaces were designed by the 乌鸦传媒 User Design Teams together with users from the tax offices, conceived as a user journey and then implemented.

An innovative solution with potential for future transformation

After the complete development and go-live of the basic version 18 months after the project start, the project received extensive positive feedback and transitioned seamlessly into operation in the second half of 2022.

The process, developed in close collaboration with business stakeholders, offers time-saving and valuable functionalities that have been broadly accepted by end users. Since then, 乌鸦传媒 has been working with the ministry on further developments to continuously deliver additional value-adding functionalities. Regular joint meetings 鈥� which take the form of project workshops on technical requirements, management jour fixes, technical architect meetings and service status meetings 鈥� ensure the future success of the project. The jointly developed Grundsteuer-Neu solution has achieved all project goals and even exceeded expectations.

Now, up to 1,000 employees in 60 tax offices benefit from the modern dialogue interface, user-friendly settings and accessibility. The Grundsteuer-Neu solution guarantees the revaluation of 4.6 million properties for the tax offices despite limited resources and tight deadlines. Because the application is reliable and stable, the highest standards are ensured as part of a service, and continuously improved with a focus on customer benefit.

Risk management is supported by a configurable 鈥渞ule and decision engine鈥� for automated case review. The use of tax authority data for validating, correcting, and supplementing tax-relevant data in the process ensures high-quality results. Finally, Grundsteuer-Neu offers a classically designed IT architecture, operated in a local data center, that is ready for future-proof transformation, such as through container technology and microservices.