case study examples for event management

Case Studies: Successful Events Using Event Software

Introduction.

In the evolving realm of event planning, success hinges on adapting to the target audience’s demands and creating memorable experiences. This compilation of case studies uncovers the success stories of prominent organizations such as GE Healthcare, leveraging modern platforms in the information technology sector. These stories illuminate the transformative power of event software in orchestrating successful product launches, virtual and hybrid events, and esports competitions across the United States and beyond. They highlight amplified customer satisfaction, enhanced security, significant cost savings, and insightful analytics, offering valuable lessons for event planners on the path to success. Delve into these customer stories to discover how the right platform can elevate your event planning strategies.

5 Event Case Studies

Case study 1: product launch by ge healthcare.

GE Healthcare leveraged a top-tier platform in the information technology sector to successfully launch a groundbreaking product. This case study emphasizes the crucial role of analytics in understanding the target audience, leading to a memorable experience and amplified customer satisfaction.

Case Study 2: Virtual Event In The United States

As the demand for virtual events surged, a prominent firm triumphed in hosting a large-scale virtual event using advanced event software. The event offered attendees an interactive experience and demonstrated impressive cost savings, making it a success story worth noting.

Case Study 3: Hybrid Event In The Information Technology Sector

In this customer story, an IT company adeptly bridged the gap between physical and digital spaces, setting up a hybrid event that attracted a broad audience. The event showcased the platform’s security features, underscoring the importance of safety in memorable experiences.

Case Study 4: Esports Competition

This case study recounts how a leading Esports organization used an event software platform to deliver an exceptional experience for attendees, from live streaming to real-time social media integration. This success story encapsulates the power of creating memorable experiences for a specific target audience.

Case Study 5: United Nations Conference

The United Nations harnessed event software to enhance the attendee experience at a crucial conference. With robust analytics, seamless security, and improved customer satisfaction, this case study is an example of how event planners can utilize technology for successful and impactful events.

The Skift Take: These case studies demonstrate the powerful role of event software platforms in facilitating successful events, from product launches to large-scale conferences. Leveraging technology, organizations like GE Healthcare and the United Nations have improved attendee experience, enhanced security, saved costs, and gained valuable insights. These success stories serve as a testament to the transformative potential of information technology in event planning.

Why Event Badges Will Never Be The Same Again [Case Study]

The digital revolution has forever changed the face of event badges. In our case study, we delve into how technology-driven badges have enhanced the event experience, providing not just identity verification, but also serving as a tool for networking, data collection, and improving overall attendee engagement.

How To Increase Engagement With Your Event App By 350% [Case Study]

In this case study, we unravel the strategy behind a staggering 350% increase in event app engagement. Through a blend of user-friendly design, interactive features, and personalized content, the case underlines the power of a well-implemented event app in boosting attendee interaction and enhancing the overall event experience.

How To Meet Green [Case Study]

This case study explores the concept of sustainable event planning. It illustrates how a platform’s features can facilitate ‘green’ events, thereby reducing environmental impact while ensuring a memorable attendee experience. Such initiatives highlight the potential for event software to contribute meaningfully towards global sustainability goals.

How To Increase Attendance By 100+% [Case Study]

This case study explores the tactics employed by an organization which led to a remarkable doubling of event attendance. The successful campaign, powered by a robust event software platform, offered personalized communication, early bird incentives, and an appealing event agenda, demonstrating the potential of effective marketing strategies in boosting event turnout.

How This Event Boosted Their Success [Case Study]

This case study unravels the success journey of an event that significantly boosted their success using a comprehensive event software platform. The strategic use of interactive features, data insights, and exceptional planning led to a remarkable rise in attendee satisfaction and engagement, underlining the game-changing potential of technology in event management.

In the dynamic field of event planning. The power of leveraging advanced platforms in information technology, as demonstrated in the case studies, is clear. Success stories from esteemed organizations such as GE Healthcare. Underscore the invaluable role of event software in facilitating triumphant product launches, virtual and hybrid events, and even esports competitions. The benefits are manifold, including enhanced customer satisfaction, improved security, substantial cost savings, and the generation of valuable analytics to guide future strategies. These case studies serve as tangible proof that the right technology can significantly elevate the success of your event.

If these success stories inspire you to embrace the transformative power of event software. We invite you to experience the difference firsthand. Orderific is ready to demonstrate how our platform can elevate your event planning process. Book a demo with us today and begin your journey towards unprecedented event success.

What role do event case studies play in the event planning and management process?

Event case studies offer real-world examples of successful planning and management strategies, providing valuable insights and lessons.

How can event professionals benefit from studying real-world success stories in the industry?

They can gain practical knowledge, tactics, and inspiration to implement successful strategies in their own events.

What types of insights can event case studies provide for improving future events?

Event case studies provide actionable insights into effective planning strategies, attendee engagement, and ROI optimization.

Are there specific industries or event types that are commonly featured in case studies?

Yes, industries often featured include tech, healthcare, and entertainment, and event types range from corporate events to music festivals.

How can event planners effectively apply lessons learned from case studies to their own projects?

They can apply these lessons by tailoring the strategies highlighted in case studies. Which aligns with their event’s unique needs and goals.

Introduction Enhancing a new employee's onboarding experience is crucial in an increasingly digital world. Through our advanced onboarding software, we Read more

Introduction Artificial intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing the event planning industry, offering event planners innovative tools to craft immersive, personalized experiences. Read more

Introduction Event technology is rapidly evolving, presenting opportunities and challenges for event planners. The adoption of event tech can significantly Read more

Introduction The era of big data has ushered in an unprecedented opportunity for event organizers. The wealth of event data Read more

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Event Management

5 Event Case Studies

Skift Meetings Studio Team

January 13th, 2017 at 10:00 AM EST

Event planners are creating effective and successful events every single day, but on the whole we could do better with sharing event data and best practice. Here are 5 event case studies we can all learn from.

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Whether it is down to time, client confidentiality or protecting our ideas and ways of working eventprofs seem to struggle with shouting about our achievements and letting others benefit from our successes (or failures).

When a project is over we brainstorm and analyze internally within our team and with our clients but very few of us publish meaningful data and outcomes from our events for others to learn from and be inspired by. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why some executives struggle to appreciate the results and return that events can bring and why we still battle to protect event budgets in times of austerity?

As an industry we should work harder to crystallize the Return on Investment and Return on Objectives so there can be no doubt about the importance and relevance of events to the marketing mix. We need to demonstrate more clearly exactly how we added or created value through our events to prove that they are essential.

These 5 case studies from 2016 focus on events that achieved their objectives and share top tips on their learnings and data.

Why Event Badges Will Never Be the Same Again [Case Study]

The 2016 Seattle GeekWire Startup Day used technology to help attendees get more from networking opportunities at the event and improve the experience. Through smart event badges they were able to create a total of 9,459 positive matches between participants with shared interests and analyze more closely the supply and demand.

How to Increase Engagement with your Event App by 350% [Case Study]

If you invest in a mobile app for your event you want to be sure that people will download and use it. This case study outlines how the MAISON&OBJET exhibition increased engagement with their event app by 350%

How To Meet Green [Case Study]

One of the objectives of the Canadian Medical Association Annual Meeting was to create the greenest event going. Focusing on three main areas, this is how they did it and the difference they made.

How to Increase Attendance by 100+% [Case Study]

Streamlining the registration process can have a big impact on workload and numbers. This case study shares how the Colorado Judicial Branch doubled the number of attendees for their largest conference and saved countless hours of administration time.

How This Event Boosted Their Success [Case Study]

Running regional events as part of a country-wide tour has plenty of challenges. This case study looks at how The Get Fit and Thick tour streamlined their processes for event success across the US.

In Conclusion

As these 5 case studies demonstrate, events can make a difference at a micro and macro level. As an industry let’s make a pledge to share our learnings, both positive and negative. By taking this bold step we can educate and support each other to run more effective events and further professionalize the event industry and spend event budget where they will yield the greatest results. We know the importance of events, and event technology , we need to do more to prove it to those that still need convincing.  

New FTC Rule Addresses Common Event Scams

A new ruling by the Federal Trade Commission targets scammers seeking to rip off the business events industry, paving the way for direct monetary compensation from bad actors.

The New Age of Data-Driven Event Strategies

In the quest to navigate the event data deluge, the real challenge lies in separating insightful narratives from mere numbers. It's the human touch—crafting memorable experiences and compelling stories—that will ultimately define the success of events in the data-driven age.

Why Pipeline Is the Ultimate Goal of Building Communities

Sales pipeline and community engagement aren't inherently at odds. When the balance is right, companies can successfully foster, support and monetize communities that positively affect their profits.

How to Plan for Attendees with Dietary Requirements

Vegan, gluten-free, paleo, and nut allergies are just some of the dietary requirements that event professionals should be aware of.

When Tragedy Strikes at Events

The CEO of the software company Vistex died after falling 20 feet to the stage with approximately 700 audience members watching. Accidents happen. Do you have contingency plans in place?

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Top 40 Most Popular Case Studies of 2021

Two cases about Hertz claimed top spots in 2021's Top 40 Most Popular Case Studies

Two cases on the uses of debt and equity at Hertz claimed top spots in the CRDT’s (Case Research and Development Team) 2021 top 40 review of cases.

Hertz (A) took the top spot. The case details the financial structure of the rental car company through the end of 2019. Hertz (B), which ranked third in CRDT’s list, describes the company’s struggles during the early part of the COVID pandemic and its eventual need to enter Chapter 11 bankruptcy. 

The success of the Hertz cases was unprecedented for the top 40 list. Usually, cases take a number of years to gain popularity, but the Hertz cases claimed top spots in their first year of release. Hertz (A) also became the first ‘cooked’ case to top the annual review, as all of the other winners had been web-based ‘raw’ cases.

Besides introducing students to the complicated financing required to maintain an enormous fleet of cars, the Hertz cases also expanded the diversity of case protagonists. Kathyrn Marinello was the CEO of Hertz during this period and the CFO, Jamere Jackson is black.

Sandwiched between the two Hertz cases, Coffee 2016, a perennial best seller, finished second. “Glory, Glory, Man United!” a case about an English football team’s IPO made a surprise move to number four.  Cases on search fund boards, the future of malls,  Norway’s Sovereign Wealth fund, Prodigy Finance, the Mayo Clinic, and Cadbury rounded out the top ten.

Other year-end data for 2021 showed:

• Online “raw” case usage remained steady as compared to 2020 with over 35K users from 170 countries and all 50 U.S. states interacting with 196 cases.
• Fifty four percent of raw case users came from outside the U.S..
• The Yale School of Management (SOM) case study directory pages received over 160K page views from 177 countries with approximately a third originating in India followed by the U.S. and the Philippines.
• Twenty-six of the cases in the list are raw cases.
• A third of the cases feature a woman protagonist.
• Orders for Yale SOM case studies increased by almost 50% compared to 2020.
• The top 40 cases were supervised by 19 different Yale SOM faculty members, several supervising multiple cases.

CRDT compiled the Top 40 list by combining data from its case store, Google Analytics, and other measures of interest and adoption.

All of this year’s Top 40 cases are available for purchase from the Yale Management Media store .

And the Top 40 cases studies of 2021 are:

1.   Hertz Global Holdings (A): Uses of Debt and Equity

2.   Coffee 2016

3.   Hertz Global Holdings (B): Uses of Debt and Equity 2020

4.   Glory, Glory Man United!

5.   Search Fund Company Boards: How CEOs Can Build Boards to Help Them Thrive

6.   The Future of Malls: Was Decline Inevitable?

7.   Strategy for Norway's Pension Fund Global

8.   Prodigy Finance

9.   Design at Mayo

10. Cadbury

11. City Hospital Emergency Room

13. Volkswagen

14. Marina Bay Sands

15. Shake Shack IPO

16. Mastercard

17. Netflix

18. Ant Financial

19. AXA: Creating the New CR Metrics

20. IBM Corporate Service Corps

21. Business Leadership in South Africa's 1994 Reforms

22. Alternative Meat Industry

23. Children's Premier

24. Khalil Tawil and Umi (A)

25. Palm Oil 2016

26. Teach For All: Designing a Global Network

27. What's Next? Search Fund Entrepreneurs Reflect on Life After Exit

28. Searching for a Search Fund Structure: A Student Takes a Tour of Various Options

30. Project Sammaan

31. Commonfund ESG

32. Polaroid

33. Connecticut Green Bank 2018: After the Raid

34. FieldFresh Foods

35. The Alibaba Group

36. 360 State Street: Real Options

37. Herman Miller

38. AgBiome

39. Nathan Cummings Foundation

40. Toyota 2010

G2 produces 2X more global events with Asana

Expanding events program.

Events program has grown 2X year over year

Reduced planning time

Cut down event planning time by 80%

40+ hours saved per quarter on event check-in meetings

G2 is a B2B software and services review platform that millions of buyers and vendors rely on around the world. Events are a key channel the marketing team uses to engage these two audiences. Led by Adam Goyette, Vice President of Demand Generation, the events team produces 150+ events every year, from paid review booths for their clients to major conference sponsorships and demand generation dinners to build pipeline for their sales team.

To ensure all of these events go off without a hitch, Adam has a team of four full-time employees, 30+ contractors, and countless cross-functional partners to coordinate logistics, creative production, sales materials, and promotion. To support G2’s growing event needs, Adam knew he had to put processes and tools in place that would allow the team to scale.

As he looked to scale the team, Adam faced some common operational challenges:

Event plans were scattered across spreadsheets, emails, and meeting notes so there was no way to organize and track everything in one place or hold people accountable for tasks and deadlines.

Past event plans and vendor information were siloed in separate tools, making knowledge sharing a struggle when onboarding new teammates.

Event plans and processes weren’t standardized, so the team had to plan from scratch every time, resulting in missed steps and no way to continually optimize their processes.

The team struggled to delegate and assign work to others because they were used to managing every detail themselves. And since processes weren’t documented, it was difficult for cross-functional partners to jump into projects when needed.

Adam realized they needed to develop standard event processes to scale the program successfully. Additionally, their event plans needed to be accessible by everyone so they could coordinate with contractors, cross-functional partners, and vendors.

We’ve created templates for events we do often, which cuts down our planning time by 80%. Now the time we do spend on each event is used to customize it and improve it. ”

Centralizing event work and processes in one view

While the G2 marketing team had tried other work management tools in the past, none of them stuck. Then Ryan Bonnici joined the company as its Chief Marketing Officer and introduced the team to Asana, which he’d used with his teams at previous companies. Compared to other tools, Adam found Asana to be the most intuitive, flexible, and powerful solution for managing different event workflows and collaborating with cross-functional teammates.

As our team expanded, we needed a tool that allowed us to coordinate complex events and provide visibility into how plans were progressing without having to rely on email and meetings. Asana has made it easy to track every task and deadline in one place, which saves us 40+ hours a quarter in meetings. ”

To ensure adoption, the marketing team developed conventions and best practices to create event management processes at G2—all of which are standardized. The team then began planning, assigning, and tracking event work only in Asana. With a centralized system of record, work is no longer scattered across email, spreadsheets, and meetings notes. This ensures that event plans are trackable and accessible to the entire team for easier knowledge sharing and collaboration. Adam also invited contractors into Asana and then to relevant events they were supporting so they could coordinate logistics with the internal team in one place.

Successfully scaling the event program with Asana

Adam’s team has now centralized all of their event plans—vendor contracts, day-of checklists, creative production, and more—in Asana so everyone has visibility, and they’ve also created project templates with detailed workback schedules to reduce planning time. Additionally, the team has integrated Asana with Slack so they can turn messages into tasks—or take action on tasks right from Slack—when they’re on site at events. This helps them keep everything connected and allows them to work seamlessly, whether they’re in the office or on site.

Now that we’re managing events in Asana, we’ve been able to double the number of events we host, which has helped us generate more customer reviews for our vendors and create new sales pipeline for the company. ”

By centralizing and standardizing their event plans in Asana, the team has been able to scale successfully, reduce their planning time by 80%, and produce twice as many events across three continents to generate software reviews, drive sales pipeline, and hit revenue targets. They continue to optimize their event processes based on new learnings, and with ambitious plans to accelerate their growth, they’re ready to manage even more events with the help of Asana.

Read related customer stories

Appen improves operating efficiency with Asana

Coupa scales to support customers with Asana

iCHEF supercharge productivity and collaboration with Asana

Spotify teams drive programs forward with Asana

Get connected and scale your work

Empower your entire organization to do their best work with Asana.

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Discover our Corporate Event Case Studies

Welcome to our captivating collection of corporate event case studies, where our multi-skilled expert team of event planners combine innovative ideas, excellent planning, technical expertise, creativity, and knowledge. Discover the magic as we deliver incredible, stress-free corporate events through seamless execution and unforgettable experiences.

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A futuristic corporate event connecting teams and celebrating success

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Heroes and villains – an epic party for 500 in Chippenham

Virtual global company conference

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Celebrating success with a festival-themed party

Digital conference for a luxury fashion brand

How to Craft a Post-Event Case Study

People say there’s no better teacher than experience, but the lesson can’t fully be understood without first putting the story into context.

Reports contain a wealth of valuable information but understanding the big picture is the job of a comprehensive after-event case study. The self-examination a case study provides helps identify the subtler trends, queues and missteps that occurred during the planning and execution of an event, allowing you to address them long before they can become problems at future events. It also provides you with the opportunity to capitalize on areas of your plan with the potential to increase your success rate and prove your success.

Of course, you want to create a case study that details the event, but you also want to create a document that engages its readers. If you are unsure how to get started telling your event’s story, don’t stress, just concentrate on these five important writing rules and you’ll create a complete accounting of your event, as well a great story.

Tell a Good Story

It’s important to identify any fault lines running through your event’s plan, but no one wants to be inundated with negativity. Create a story that allows people to get excited about the high points as they learn about any issues that arose.

Thoughtful use of phrasing is your weapon here—after all, it’s your chance to make your work look its best—but you don’t want to lie or slant the information unfairly. Always tell the tale from a place of neutral acceptance, rather than adding unnecessary dramatic flair or overenthusiastic compliments. If you load up your narrative with too much emotion it diminishes the validity of your reporting.

Three Plot Structure

Every story has a beginning, a middle and an end. Case studies are plotted the exact same way, with an overview of the event at the beginning, a step-by-step accounting of the entire process filling in the middle, and the results of your work as your conclusion.

TIP: Greater Giving Event Software will help you easily track all the details related to an event, making the creating of a great case study easier than ever before! With Greater Giving Event Software you can:

• Manage and track event sponsors
• Track registration, bidders, donors, and procurement
• Create, send and store promotional and thank-you emails
• Capture, centralize, track and manage benefit event or auction details
• Build professional-looking reports
• Track success year-to-year for improved planning over time

Begin by with an explanation of your mission statement, describe your target audience and state your goals. Next, list the strategies and tactics you based on to decide on a theme and program and provide specific information about the reason you chose your vendors. Detail the happenings at the event, with specifics on what was experienced throughout the evening, leading the reader through to the night’s conclusion, then conclude with the results, whether it be in donations, attendance or something else of importance to your organization. If you’ve proven the event was a success; declare it. If the event failed to meet your expectations, provide suggested solutions to the problems you’ve identified in your case study.

Details, Details, Details

You’ve got the basics covered, now it’s time to fill in your case study with interesting details that reveal how the whole event came together. Throughout the case study pull out specific details that aided or hindered the success of the night. Record the highs and lows experienced from set up, to tear down. Call out stand-out team players and service providers that either aided or hampered the activities. Adding as much detail as possible to your case study archives the secrets of your success for future planning.

Deepening the Sensory Experience

Incorporating audio/visual experiences into case studies saved online offers yet another view with new perspectives for future readers. Let readers experience the event through photos, recordings and videos so they can see and hear for themselves what you witnessed. This provides another layer of connection for the readers of your case study and acts as a third leg to prop up your arguments when you want to redirect your efforts or ask for a larger budget.

Instruct your team to use their mobile phones throughout the night to record everything they find interesting, difficult or exciting about the evening. When putting your case study together search for additional footage from attendees through the hashtag you generated for event night to get your attendees perspective, as well.

Seek Out Testimonials from Attendees and Sponsors

Nothing speaks louder than the accolades of your community. Ask for quotes from your sponsors and guests and add them into breakout boxes to increase visual interest in your case study. Look for quotes that back up the information you’ve gleaned from your reporting and place it in the document next to that specific information. Focus your questions on different portions of the night’s program. Ask your guests and sponsors questions such as whether the theme reflect the mission of the organization? Did the sponsors feel as though they were represented properly? Was the entertainment a compliment to the organization’s mission?

Dathan Montes

Dathan is the Digital Marketing Associate at Greater Giving where he is focused on marketing initiatives benefiting the sales and customer support departments. Prior to his current role, he spent several years working in the online search marketing industry. Outside of Greater Giving, Dathan enjoys spending time with his family, collecting and restoring vintage BMX bicycles.

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Blog Graphic Design

15+ Professional Case Study Examples [Design Tips + Templates]

By Alice Corner , Jan 12, 2023

Have you ever bought something — within the last 10 years or so — without reading its reviews or without a recommendation or prior experience of using it?

If the answer is no — or at least, rarely — you get my point.

Positive reviews matter for selling to regular customers, and for B2B or SaaS businesses, detailed case studies are important too.

Wondering how to craft a compelling case study ? No worries—I’ve got you covered with 15 marketing case study templates , helpful tips, and examples to ensure your case study converts effectively.

Click to jump ahead:

• What is a Case Study?

Business Case Study Examples

Simple case study examples.

• Marketing Case Study Examples

Sales Case Study Examples

• Case Study FAQs

What is a case study?

A case study is an in-depth, detailed analysis of a specific real-world situation. For example, a case study can be about an individual, group, event, organization, or phenomenon. The purpose of a case study is to understand its complexities and gain insights into a particular instance or situation.

In the context of a business, however, case studies take customer success stories and explore how they use your product to help them achieve their business goals.

As well as being valuable marketing tools , case studies are a good way to evaluate your product as it allows you to objectively examine how others are using it.

It’s also a good way to interview your customers about why they work with you.

Related: What is a Case Study? [+6 Types of Case Studies]

Marketing Case Study Template

A marketing case study showcases how your product or services helped potential clients achieve their business goals. You can also create case studies of internal, successful marketing projects. A marketing case study typically includes:

• Company background and history
• The challenge
• How you helped
• Specific actions taken
• Visuals or Data
• Client testimonials

Here’s an example of a marketing case study template:

Whether you’re a B2B or B2C company, business case studies can be a powerful resource to help with your sales, marketing, and even internal departmental awareness.

Business and business management case studies should encompass strategic insights alongside anecdotal and qualitative findings, like in the business case study examples below.

Conduct a B2B case study by researching the company holistically

When it comes to writing a case study, make sure you approach the company holistically and analyze everything from their social media to their sales.

Think about every avenue your product or service has been of use to your case study company, and ask them about the impact this has had on their wider company goals.

In business case study examples like the one above, we can see that the company has been thought about holistically simply by the use of icons.

By combining social media icons with icons that show in-person communication we know that this is a well-researched and thorough case study.

This case study report example could also be used within an annual or end-of-year report.

Highlight the key takeaway from your marketing case study

To create a compelling case study, identify the key takeaways from your research. Use catchy language to sum up this information in a sentence, and present this sentence at the top of your page.

This is “at a glance” information and it allows people to gain a top-level understanding of the content immediately. 

You can use a large, bold, contrasting font to help this information stand out from the page and provide interest.

Learn  how to choose fonts  effectively with our Venngage guide and once you’ve done that.

Upload your fonts and  brand colors  to Venngage using the  My Brand Kit  tool and see them automatically applied to your designs.

The heading is the ideal place to put the most impactful information, as this is the first thing that people will read.

In this example, the stat of “Increase[d] lead quality by 90%” is used as the header. It makes customers want to read more to find out how exactly lead quality was increased by such a massive amount.

If you’re conducting an in-person interview, you could highlight a direct quote or insight provided by your interview subject.

Pick out a catchy sentence or phrase, or the key piece of information your interview subject provided and use that as a way to draw a potential customer in.

Use charts to visualize data in your business case studies

Charts are an excellent way to visualize data and to bring statistics and information to life. Charts make information easier to understand and to illustrate trends or patterns.

Making charts is even easier with Venngage.

In this consulting case study example, we can see that a chart has been used to demonstrate the difference in lead value within the Lead Elves case study.

Adding a chart here helps break up the information and add visual value to the case study. 

Using charts in your case study can also be useful if you’re creating a project management case study.

You could use a Gantt chart or a project timeline to show how you have managed the project successfully.

Use direct quotes to build trust in your marketing case study

To add an extra layer of authenticity you can include a direct quote from your customer within your case study.

According to research from Nielsen , 92% of people will trust a recommendation from a peer and 70% trust recommendations even if they’re from somebody they don’t know.

So if you have a customer or client who can’t stop singing your praises, make sure you get a direct quote from them and include it in your case study.

You can either lift part of the conversation or interview, or you can specifically request a quote. Make sure to ask for permission before using the quote.

This design uses a bright contrasting speech bubble to show that it includes a direct quote, and helps the quote stand out from the rest of the text.

This will help draw the customer’s attention directly to the quote, in turn influencing them to use your product or service.

Less is often more, and this is especially true when it comes to creating designs. Whilst you want to create a professional-looking, well-written and design case study – there’s no need to overcomplicate things.

These simple case study examples show that smart clean designs and informative content can be an effective way to showcase your successes.

Use colors and fonts to create a professional-looking case study

Business case studies shouldn’t be boring. In fact, they should be beautifully and professionally designed.

This means the normal rules of design apply. Use fonts, colors, and icons to create an interesting and visually appealing case study.

In this case study example, we can see how multiple fonts have been used to help differentiate between the headers and content, as well as complementary colors and eye-catching icons.

Marketing case study examples

Marketing case studies are incredibly useful for showing your marketing successes. Every successful marketing campaign relies on influencing a consumer’s behavior, and a great case study can be a great way to spotlight your biggest wins.

In the marketing case study examples below, a variety of designs and techniques to create impactful and effective case studies.

Show off impressive results with a bold marketing case study

Case studies are meant to show off your successes, so make sure you feature your positive results prominently. Using bold and bright colors as well as contrasting shapes, large bold fonts, and simple icons is a great way to highlight your wins.

In well-written case study examples like the one below, the big wins are highlighted on the second page with a bright orange color and are highlighted in circles.

Making the important data stand out is especially important when attracting a prospective customer with marketing case studies.

Use a simple but clear layout in your case study

Using a simple layout in your case study can be incredibly effective, like in the example of a case study below.

Keeping a clean white background, and using slim lines to help separate the sections is an easy way to format your case study.

Making the information clear helps draw attention to the important results, and it helps improve the  accessibility of the design .

Business case study examples like this would sit nicely within a larger report, with a consistent layout throughout.

Use visuals and icons to create an engaging and branded business case study

Nobody wants to read pages and pages of text — and that’s why Venngage wants to help you communicate your ideas visually.

Using icons, graphics, photos, or patterns helps create a much more engaging design. 

With this Blue Cap case study icons, colors, and impactful pattern designs have been used to create an engaging design that catches your eye.

Use a monochromatic color palette to create a professional and clean case study

Let your research shine by using a monochromatic and minimalistic color palette.

By sticking to one color, and leaving lots of blank space you can ensure your design doesn’t distract a potential customer from your case study content.

In this case study on Polygon Media, the design is simple and professional, and the layout allows the prospective customer to follow the flow of information.

The gradient effect on the left-hand column helps break up the white background and adds an interesting visual effect.

Did you know you can generate an accessible color palette with Venngage? Try our free accessible color palette generator today and create a case study that delivers and looks pleasant to the eye:

Add long term goals in your case study

When creating a case study it’s a great idea to look at both the short term and the long term goals of the company to gain the best understanding possible of the insights they provide.

Short-term goals will be what the company or person hopes to achieve in the next few months, and long-term goals are what the company hopes to achieve in the next few years.

Check out this modern pattern design example of a case study below:

In this case study example, the short and long-term goals are clearly distinguished by light blue boxes and placed side by side so that they are easy to compare.

Use a strong introductory paragraph to outline the overall strategy and goals before outlining the specific short-term and long-term goals to help with clarity.

This strategy can also be handy when creating a consulting case study.

Use data to make concrete points about your sales and successes

When conducting any sort of research stats, facts, and figures are like gold dust (aka, really valuable).

Being able to quantify your findings is important to help understand the information fully. Saying sales increased 10% is much more effective than saying sales increased.

While sales dashboards generally tend it make it all about the numbers and charts, in sales case study examples, like this one, the key data and findings can be presented with icons. This contributes to the potential customer’s better understanding of the report.

They can clearly comprehend the information and it shows that the case study has been well researched.

Use emotive, persuasive, or action based language in your marketing case study

Create a compelling case study by using emotive, persuasive and action-based language when customizing your case study template.

In this well-written case study example, we can see that phrases such as “Results that Speak Volumes” and “Drive Sales” have been used.

Using persuasive language like you would in a blog post. It helps inspire potential customers to take action now.

Keep your potential customers in mind when creating a customer case study for marketing

82% of marketers use case studies in their marketing  because it’s such an effective tool to help quickly gain customers’ trust and to showcase the potential of your product.

Why are case studies such an important tool in content marketing?

By writing a case study you’re telling potential customers that they can trust you because you’re showing them that other people do.

Not only that, but if you have a SaaS product, business case studies are a great way to show how other people are effectively using your product in their company.

In this case study, Network is demonstrating how their product has been used by Vortex Co. with great success; instantly showing other potential customers that their tool works and is worth using.

Related: 10+ Case Study Infographic Templates That Convert

Case studies are particularly effective as a sales technique.

A sales case study is like an extended customer testimonial, not only sharing opinions of your product – but showcasing the results you helped your customer achieve.

Make impactful statistics pop in your sales case study

Writing a case study doesn’t mean using text as the only medium for sharing results.

You should use icons to highlight areas of your research that are particularly interesting or relevant, like in this example of a case study:

Icons are a great way to help summarize information quickly and can act as visual cues to help draw the customer’s attention to certain areas of the page.

In some of the business case study examples above, icons are used to represent the impressive areas of growth and are presented in a way that grabs your attention.

Use high contrast shapes and colors to draw attention to key information in your sales case study

Help the key information stand out within your case study by using high contrast shapes and colors.

Use a complementary or contrasting color, or use a shape such as a rectangle or a circle for maximum impact.

This design has used dark blue rectangles to help separate the information and make it easier to read.

Coupled with icons and strong statistics, this information stands out on the page and is easily digestible and retainable for a potential customer.

Case Study Examples Summary

Once you have created your case study, it’s best practice to update your examples on a regular basis to include up-to-date statistics, data, and information.

You should update your business case study examples often if you are sharing them on your website .

It’s also important that your case study sits within your brand guidelines – find out how Venngage’s My Brand Kit tool can help you create consistently branded case study templates.

Case studies are important marketing tools – but they shouldn’t be the only tool in your toolbox. Content marketing is also a valuable way to earn consumer trust.

Case Study FAQ

Why should you write a case study.

Case studies are an effective marketing technique to engage potential customers and help build trust.

By producing case studies featuring your current clients or customers, you are showcasing how your tool or product can be used. You’re also showing that other people endorse your product.

In addition to being a good way to gather positive testimonials from existing customers , business case studies are good educational resources and can be shared amongst your company or team, and used as a reference for future projects.

How should you write a case study?

To create a great case study, you should think strategically. The first step, before starting your case study research, is to think about what you aim to learn or what you aim to prove.

You might be aiming to learn how a company makes sales or develops a new product. If this is the case, base your questions around this.

You can learn more about writing a case study  from our extensive guide.

Related: How to Present a Case Study like a Pro (With Examples)

Some good questions you could ask would be:

• Why do you use our tool or service?
• How often do you use our tool or service?
• What does the process of using our product look like to you?
• If our product didn’t exist, what would you be doing instead?
• What is the number one benefit you’ve found from using our tool?

You might also enjoy:

• 12 Essential Consulting Templates For Marketing, Planning and Branding
• Best Marketing Strategies for Consultants and Freelancers in 2019 [Study + Infographic]

Integrating Business Processes to Improve Travel Time Reliability (2011)

Chapter: chapter 5 - case studies: special-event management.

Below is the uncorrected machine-read text of this chapter, intended to provide our own search engines and external engines with highly rich, chapter-representative searchable text of each book. Because it is UNCORRECTED material, please consider the following text as a useful but insufficient proxy for the authoritative book pages.

C H A P T E R 5 Case Studies: Special-Event ManagementSpecial events present a unique case of demand fluctuation that causes traffic flow in the vicinity of the event to be radically dif- ferent from typical patterns. Special events can severely affect reliability of the transportation network, but because the events are often scheduled months or even years in advance, they offer an opportunity for planning to mitigate the impacts. Because large-scale events are recurring at event venues, it gives an opportunity for agencies to continually evaluate and refine strategies, impacts, and overall process improvements over time. In this section, case studies are presented that examine the processes developed for special-event management at the Kansas Speedway in Kansas City, Kans., and the Palace of Auburn Hills near Detroit, Mich. Kansas: Kansas Speedway In 2001, the Kansas Speedway opened for its first major NASCAR race. With attendance exceeding 110,000 people, it set a record as the largest single-day sporting event in the his- tory of Kansas. Attendance has continued to grow and now exceeds 135,000 for most major races. The traffic control strategies that were put into place to handle these major events were the result of years of planning between the Kansas Speed- way, Kansas Highway Patrol (KHP), Kansas Department of Transportation (KDOT), and the Kansas City Police Depart- ment. The process was successful in part because of the clear lines of responsibility that were defined for each agency and the strong spirit of cooperation and trust that was established before the first race was held. In preparation for this case study, representatives from KHP and KDOT were interviewed. Lt. Brian Basore and Lt. Paul Behm represented the KHP Troop A and were able to share their experience from many years of actively managing special events at the Kansas Speedway. The primary responsibilities of KHP are to operate the KHP Command Center that was estab- lished for the Kansas Speedway race events and to manage 45traffic on the freeways around the event. Representatives of KDOT who were interviewed included Leslie Spencer Fowler, ITS program manager, and Mick Halter, PE, who was formerly with KDOT as the District One metro engineer during the design and implementation of the Kansas Speedway. Fowler and Halter provided an excellent history of the development of the project, as well as a description of KDOT’s current opera- tional procedures used during races at the Kansas Speedway. KDOT maintains the CCTV cameras and portable DMS around the Speedway and assists KHP with traffic control on the freeways. Description This case study examines the development of the special-event management procedures for races at the Kansas Speedway. Par- ticular focus is given to the roles and responsibilities of the KHP and KDOT in developing the initial infrastructure and strate- gies that led to a successful special-event management process that has been used and refined for 8 years. One of the strongest recurring themes in development of this case study was the out- standing cooperation and partnerships that were developed between the agencies involved. Each agency has clearly defined responsibilities before and on race day, though no agency is considered in charge. They cooperate to safely and efficiently move vehicles from the freeways to city streets to the Kansas Speedway parking lots and then do the same process in reverse. Background of Agency The Kansas Speedway is a 1.5-mi oval race track suitable for many types of races, including Indy and NASCAR. Seating capacity is currently being expanded to 150,000 people, and parking capacity allows for 65,000 vehicles. The Speedway is located approximately 15 mi west of downtown Kansas City, near the intersection of I-70 and I-435, which serve as the pri- mary routes used by spectators attending the races. Events are

46held throughout the year, and there are typically two major race events each year when crowds reach capacity. The major- ity of parking is on Kansas Speedway property and is free for spectators. The Kansas Speedway provides attendants and directs vehicles into the parking areas. The primary agencies involved in traffic management for the Kansas Speedway include KHP Troop A in Kansas City, KDOT District One, and the Kansas City Police Department. KHP is responsible for traffic management on the freeways and for operation of the KHP Command Center, which is activated several days before major events and serves as the central com- munications center for all public agencies on race day. The full resources of Troop A (over 40 troopers) are used on race day, along with over 20 other troopers from around the state. KHP also deploys a helicopter to monitor traffic from the air and roving motorcycle units on race day. KDOT District One is responsible for maintaining five CCTV cameras and deploy- ing 12 portable DMSs on roads used to access the Speedway. The Kansas City Police Department provides officers for the city street network that links the freeways to the Kansas Speedway (1). Other participants in the process include Wyandotte County and the Kansas Turnpike Authority (KTA). Wyandotte County currently owns the WebEOC software used by all participat- ing agencies to share information and request assistance on race day (2). The KTA maintains I-70 near the Speedway. It is responsible for such maintenance tasks on this section of I-70 as snow and ice removal, guardrail, and signing and striping, although the section is not tolled. Process Development The Kansas Speedway opened for its first major event in sum- mer 2001. However, development of the process for special- event traffic management began long before Kansas City was even selected as the site for the racetrack. In the early 1990s the International Speedway Corpora- tion was searching for a new location for a race track in the Midwest. The track was expected to host several large events per year, including at least one to two major races that were expected to attract more than 100,000 people. Given the poten- tial positive economic benefit that such a facility could bring to an area, the International Speedway Corporation solicited pro- posal packages from several sites under consideration. Propos- als needed to address criteria established by the International Speedway Corporation for site selection, including accessibil- ity of the site to attendees. The effort to bring the race track to Kansas was led by Kansas City, with strong support from the governor and lieutenant governor of Kansas. Understanding the importance of accessibility, the governor directed KDOT to develop a plan and provide funding to make the necessary infrastructure improvements to handle race traffic for theSpeedway. The priority placed on this project by the governor’s office served as the first enabler to implementing the traffic management process. KDOT developed an extensive plan to accommodate the large number of vehicles expected to attend events at the Kansas Speedway. I-70 needed to be widened and a new inter- change was needed at 110th Street. US-24, which went through the proposed site of the track, needed to be completely realigned. Although not part of the original planning, CCTV cameras and portable DMS were also required to assist with traffic management. KDOT identified funding for each of their proposed infrastructure projects, and these projects were included in the package that was submitted to the International Speedway Corporation. More than a year before the first race event at the Kansas Speedway, all the agencies involved in traffic management began planning for the event. Agencies that participated in the planning included KHP, KDOT, KTA, Kansas City Police, Wyandotte County, and the Kansas Speedway. The Missouri DOT and Missouri Highway Patrol were also initially involved because there was concern that traffic could be affected east of the track into Missouri. (Once the Speedway opened, it turned out that this concern was unfounded as race traffic had only minor impacts on I-70 near the Speedway and did not affect traffic on I-70 in Missouri.) To facilitate traffic management planning, a consultant also was brought on-board early in the process. The success of the planning for traffic management was attributed to two primary factors. The first was the importance that the governor and Kansas City placed on the success of hosting major races at the Kansas Speedway. Millions of dol- lars were invested by the state and city to bring the race track to Kansas, and to recoup their investment they needed to suc- cessfully host large races. The visibility and importance of the first successful event was a great motivator for every agency involved. The second factor to which success was attributed was the personalities involved. Several of those interviewed for this case study noted that there were no egos in the room that got in the way. A sense of mutual respect among the agencies and for their work was a consistent factor in planning for traffic management. No single agency was designated as “in charge”; rather, each agency took responsibility for its piece and worked well with the other agencies to ensure overall success. The result of the planning efforts was a multilayered traffic plan with different agencies leading the layers. The first layer dealt with interstate traffic, which was KHP’s responsibility. The second layer dealt with traffic on local streets traveling between the interstates and the Kansas Speedway, this layer was the responsibility of the Kansas City Police Department. The third layer handled traffic entering or leaving the track property, which was the responsibility of the Kansas Speed- way. KDOT provided support to all three layers through

47deployment of CCTV cameras, DMS, and cones. Each layer was critical to successfully manage traffic for events. Detailed Process and Integration Points Figure 5.1 shows the detailed process that was developed for special-event traffic management at the Kansas Speedway. Before a major event, all four agencies that are involved in man- aging traffic on race day come together for a meeting to discuss the upcoming event and changes or special circumstances that need to be considered in their planning. These agencies have worked closely together since the first event in 2001, and there is a clear understanding of the roles and responsibilities of each agency.Figure 5.1. Detailed business process diagram of Kansas Speedway special event.are sent and portable DMS are controlled. On the day before race day, KHP conducts a briefing to review the setup and pro- cedures for race day. During the race event, KHP, Kansas City Police Department, and the Kansas Speedway manage traffic on freeways, local streets, and in the parking lots. KHP deploys a helicopter to monitor traffic from the air and roving officers on monocycles to patrol the heavily congested areas around the Speedway that cannot be easily accessed by troopers in cruisers. All agencies continue to communicate primarily through WebEOC, a system owned by Wyandotte County that lets each agency monitor messages and communicate on a web-based system. Once the race is completed, a follow-up meeting to review race day events may be held. This meeting was originally held after every event during the first few years the Kansas Speed- way was in operation, but as traffic management has become more efficient, it is now only held as warranted.In the week before race day, KHP will activate the KHP Command Center. The KHP Command Center is the commu- nications hub for the event and is where CCTV camera feeds

48Several key integration points were identified in the Kansas Speedway special-event traffic management process, including the following: • Integration between KHP and KDOT for deployment and operation of CCTV cameras and portable DMS; • Integration between KHP, KDOT, Kansas City Police Department, and Kansas Speedway to develop traffic man- agement plans for upcoming events and to discuss traffic management performance after operations; and • Integration between KHP, KDOT, Kansas City Police Department, Kansas Speedway, and Wyandotte County for sharing of information through WebEOC during the special event. Types of Agencies Involved The primary agencies that are involved in the special-event traffic management are KHP, KDOT, Kansas City Police, and the Kansas Speedway. As described earlier, a three-layered approach is set up, with KHP responsible for traffic on the free- ways, Kansas City Police responsible for traffic on local streets, and Kansas Speedway responsible for traffic in the parking areas. Numerous special teams have been established to facili- tate the special-event traffic management on race day. These include the KHP Post Commanders Team, Logistics Team, and KDOT Team. The KHP Post Commanders Team is made up of the commanders from each traffic post where KHP will be directing traffic. The post commanders attend the post com- manders briefing the evening before the race begins, direct the other troopers at their post, and communicate with the KHP Command Center. The Logistics Team is responsible for set- ting up the event, including staging and setting up of tempo- rary traffic control, providing water and tents for troopers at traffic posts, and running errands during the event. The KDOT Team is responsible for maintaining the CCTV cameras, put- ting the portable DMS boards in place and changing messages on the board if the wireless communications fail, and assisting with temporary traffic control placement. Types of Nonrecurring Congestion Addressed The process for managing the Kansas Speedway traffic deals with nonrecurring congestion due to a special event. When the Kansas Speedway first opened in 2001, KHP set up 14 inbound posts and 11 outbound posts, with troopers stationed at each post to direct traffic. Since then, KHP has increased the effi- ciency of traffic management and has been able to reduce the number of posts down to seven inbound and seven outbound. Traffic is monitored from the KHP Command Center using CCTV cameras and a helicopter that provides updates on traf- fic conditions; portable DMSs with wireless communication can assist in directing traffic. The roving motorcycle units areused around the Kansas Speedway and can assist with manag- ing any incident that blocks roadways. Over time, KHP and KDOT have refined temporary traffic control patterns and gen- eral traffic control to increase efficiency of the system as much as possible. One of the primary concerns on race day is getting traffic off I-70 without significantly affecting through traffic. Because major races are held on weekends, the overall level of traffic on I-70 is generally lighter than what is experienced on a weekday. As part of the initial package that was proposed by Kansas City to bring the Speedway to Kansas, KDOT agreed to add one more lane to I-70 to accommodate overflow traffic for major races. KHP has been able to quickly move traffic off I-70 with only minor impacts on through traffic on the interstate. KDOT has not done a study of travel times for through traffic on race day, but they estimate that at peak periods before or after a race, motorists on I-70 will only experience minor slowdowns with perhaps 5 min of delay to their total trip. Performance Measures The Kansas Speedway tracks the time it takes to clear parking lots after races and has seen improvements in clearance times since the initial race in 2001. After races, if something went wrong or clearance times exceeded normal ranges, this infor- mation is shared with KHP and an evaluation meeting with all agencies involved in the traffic management may be held to review the traffic management. However, these instances are rare and in most events the parking lot clearance times can be accurately estimated based on race attendance. KHP initially used troopers stationed at 14 inbound posts and 11 outbound posts to direct traffic. Although not a per- formance measure, the shift to seven inbound and seven outbound posts is seen by KHP as an indication of the improvement of their traffic management efficiency. Benefits The planning and cooperation between KHP, KDOT, Kansas City Police, and the Kansas Speedway allowed for efficient traf- fic management of more than 100,000 spectators from day one. The agencies involved in traffic management have been able to improve their efficiency and reduce the manpower needed to manage traffic over time and consider their traffic management effort a success from the start. The popularity of racing in the United States and the effi- cient use of the Kansas Speedway have prompted an expansion of the seating capacity of the Speedway. Current expansion work will bring the total seating capacity of the Kansas Speed- way to 150,000. Without an efficient plan to move spectators in and out of the Speedway, this expansion would not be possible.

49The traffic management process developed for the Kansas Speedway goes beyond simple convenience to spectators. By minimizing the impacts to through traffic on I-70 and I-435, KHP can reduce freeway backups and minimize the chances of secondary incidents on freeways. Efficient and effective move- ment of vehicles off the race track is also critical for evacuation. On April 25, 2009, a tornado touched down in Kansas only a few miles from the Kansas Speedway. About 30 min earlier, a race that was in progress was suspended for the day due to rain, and many of the spectators were in the process of leaving the event. The tornado did not touch down close enough to the Kansas Speedway to cause any damage, but it was an important reminder of the need to be able to efficiently move traffic out of an area, especially in Kansas, which is particularly prone to tornadoes. Lessons Learned Each agency interviewed identified the single most important factor to the success of the special-event traffic management as the cooperation among all agencies in the planning and execu- tion of traffic management. The importance placed on success- fully bringing the Speedway to Kansas by the governor and Kansas City certainly contributed to that cooperation and coordination, but the personalities of the leaders from each agency and the existing relationships that had been established were identified as even more important factors. KHP has learned that the development of a race-day proto- col is particularly important, so that procedures for handling incidents or other unexpected events are well understood. KHP has worked with their partners to develop a tow policy to address abandoned vehicles, a traffic crash policy to quickly clear incidents, and a no-patrol zone to keep troopers and police officers in cruisers from adding to the congestion around the race track by limiting patrols to troopers on motorcycles. Receiving information from the CCTV cameras and the ability to control the portable DMSs from the KHP Command Center have been valuable. However, CCTV cameras have failed in the past and communications to the portable DMSs are not always reliable, which sometimes necessitates the need for KDOT to manually change messages in the field. KHP and other agencies involved in traffic management have learned that technology is useful, but they need to be careful that they are not totally dependent on technology. Analysis and Research Observations Planning for the traffic management at the Kansas Speedway essentially began when Kansas was still being considered by the International Speedway Corporation and continued up until the first event. Political support for the Kansas Speedway gave those involved in traffic management a sense that they mustsucceed. Each agency took responsibility for their part of the plan, executed it well, and supported their partners. The sense of cooperation that started during the initial planning for traf- fic management of the race track has been carried into the con- tinued operations. It is clear that each agency felt they had an important stake in the success of the Kansas Speedway and contributed the resources and staff required for that success. One interesting note is that there are no formal agreements in place with any of the agencies regarding operations. When agencies were asked about this, they said they did not see a need to formalize what has worked well so far. There is confidence that they can continue to count on their partners, and that the strong relationships and years of experience working together will continue to add to that confidence. Michigan: The Palace of Auburn Hills The Palace of Auburn Hills (the Palace) is an arena located northwest of Detroit that hosts events such as concerts, basket- ball games, circuses, and graduations for eight months of the year. Because of the volume of traffic generated by these types of events, an increase in traffic congestion is typical in the vicin- ity of the Palace. Focused traffic management plans at these locations can help mitigate the effects of the increased conges- tion before and after the event. The Palace is located in Auburn Hills, a suburb of the greater Detroit, Michigan, area, in the north-central section of Oakland County. The Auburn Hills Police Department (AHPD) has been involved with traffic management strategies at the Palace since it opened in 1988 and has played an integral part in the development of the traf- fic management plan currently in place. To acquire details regarding the traffic management plans implemented for events hosted at the Palace, an initial inter- view was conducted with Danielle Deneau, PE, of the Road Commission for Oakland County (RCOC). After that conver- sation, a more in-depth interview was conducted with Capt. Jim Mynesberge of the Auburn Hills Police Department. Description In terms of traffic operations and management, a special event can be categorized as a scheduled interruption to normal traf- fic flow. The Palace special event case study provides an analy- sis for a multiagency, public–private partnership focused on managing traffic for planned events of varying sizes. The traf- fic management plan includes traffic control strategies man- aged through the RCOC FAST-TRAC signal system, which is programmable and detects actual traffic counts (the original timing was based on recording traffic flow as officers manually directed traffic); traffic monitoring capabilities through the MDOT CCTV cameras; and traveler information using the

50MDOT DMS and MiDrive website. The current traffic man- agement plan includes a partnership between the Palace, the Police, RCOC, and MDOT and has resulted in memoranda of understanding (MOUs) and formal agreements between some of these agencies. The plan provides a direct connection between the Police dispatch and the RCOC TOC. The effec- tiveness of the traffic management plan allows fewer officers to be used for managing traffic at special events and reduces the time required to load-in and load-out for each Palace event. Load-in and load-out are two performance measures that have been defined to measure the success of traffic control before and after events. Background of Agency The Palace is located within Auburn Hills, adjacent to I-75, and is within the jurisdiction of the AHPD. The Palace is a multipurpose arena used for concerts, sporting events, and other events such as wrestling, circuses, or graduations. The arena has been operational for over 20 years and is the perma- nent home of the Detroit Pistons (NBA) and the Detroit Shock (WNBA). The arena is recognized for its large capacity for the NBA and can accommodate over 22,000 fans for bas- ketball games and over 25,000 for concerts at center stage. The Palace also is the only arena that can hold the entire host city’s population. The AHPD provides security and traffic enforcement for the Palace during events. The Pistons typically attract a large attendance for their games, which has resulted in the arena expanding the parking capacity to keep pace with the atten- dance demands. AHPD manages the traffic before, during, and after each event, with a focus on providing efficient and safe access for motorists. Process Development The Palace partnered with AHPD and RCOC to develop a per- sonalized traffic management plan for events at the Palace. The original traffic management plan used several police officers and manual traffic control to move vehicles through several intersections in the vicinity of the Palace. The original site plan included only three driveways, which created some capacity issues for event traffic ingress and egress. The traffic manage- ment plan recommended improvements to the site that included additional lanes, modified use of the existing drive- ways, and the construction of two additional access drives. One new access drive was constructed on the north side of the site, and one on the south side. The access drive located on the south side is called Direct Drive, and when clearing the park- ing lot, only allows right turns, providing drivers with direct access to I-75. The Palace also established a MOU with MDOT to temporarily close the access road just east of Direct Driveafter events to provide exclusive use for Palace traffic when events commence. The Palace had several motivations for an improved traffic management plan. The first was happier patrons attending events. The second was monetary. Since the Palace pays for the use of AHPD officers to manage traffic at events, there was vested interest in streamlining the personnel and the time required. The larger events would require a total of 15 officers to work an event and effectively manage traffic. Each inter- section required two to three officers to safely direct traffic to and from the facility (15 officers total). With the revised plan, the larger events can be managed effectively by only one or two officers. Initially, AHPD and the Palace met regularly to discuss improvements, issues, and traffic management strategies. AHPD now has the ability to implement the Event Manager (developed by RCOC) and activate predetermined signal tim- ing plans through the RCOC TOC. With this closely integrated coordination, the issues have decreased and the coordination meetings have been reduced to only twice a year. AHPD and the Palace used two specific measures of effec- tiveness initially to determine if pre-event traffic was being managed properly. These measures allowed the two agencies to assess operations and determine the appropriate area of con- cern, namely: • If traffic was queuing on the public roadway but the Palace driveways had additional capacity, then traffic was not being managed effectively by the police. • If traffic was stopped at the driveways and vehicles were queuing on the public roads, then the Palace personnel were not effectively managing the parking operations. These observations were used to support the need to increase the access lanes and construct the additional driveway. The Palace parking process also was modified to establish longer stacking lanes approximately an hour and half before the event start time. This was necessary to accommodate the process for collecting parking fees from each vehicle. For postevent traffic, the effectiveness measure was based on all the access drives clearing at the same time. The bal- ance of exiting traffic was accomplished by sectioning the lots and directing all traffic to the specific exits. Since most events ended after 10:00 p.m., the Palace traffic could receive a higher preference in green time. It was determined that shorter cycle lengths resulted in extended clearance times for the Palace. Shorter cycle lengths create longer delays because of lost startup time and more clearance intervals per hour. In other words, the longer traffic was stopped, the longer it took to empty vehicles from the lot. The passing traf- fic was only inconvenienced by waiting through a single cycle length to accommodate the exiting Palace traffic. This impact

51was measured both visually and by using the FAST-TRAC system. Detailed Process and Integration Points Figure 5.2 shows the process used by the Palace for special-event traffic management. The traffic management plan involves revised signal timing at 19 intersections in the vicinity of the Palace. Signal timing plans were developed for small, medium, and large events. The number of intersections included in the signal timing plan provides a larger footprint than AHPD was able to manage with only police officers. The plan allows a senior AHPD officer to select the appropriate timing plan based on input from the Palace concerning the size of an event. The senior officer also has the authority to instruct the dispatcher to activate the appropriate timing plans. The dispatcher then has the ability to activate the timing plans via the Event Man- ager from the AHPD facility.Figure 5.2. Detailed business process diagram for a special event at the Palace of Auburn Hills.The Palace has access to its own CCTV cameras around the facility and to MDOT-owned CCTV cameras on the trunk routes. The MDOT cameras provide information about traf- fic conditions on the roadways approaching the Palace. The Palace personnel also use radios to communicate continuously with AHPD. The Palace documents the load-in and load-out times for each event that occurs, and has observed that the load-out time has decreased from approximately 1 h to less than 25 min with the current traffic management plan. Figure 5.3 displays the Palace and the surrounding trans- portation network for reference. I-75 runs north-south on the west side of the Palace, and M24 (Lapeer Road) runs north- south on the east side. The small connector on the south side of the Palace is the Direct Drive that is used exclusively for postevent traffic. AHPD responds to incidents in the vicinity of the Palace, including those that occur on I-75. During events, AHPD will coordinate for these incidents because they can affect traffic management at the Palace. Coordination is

52Source: © 2010 Google. Map data © 2010 Google. Source: © 2010 Google. Imagery © 2010 DigitalGlobe, USDA Farm Service Agency, Cnes/Spot Image, GeoEye, U.S. Geological Survey. Map data © 2010 Google. Figure 5.3. The Palace of Auburn Hills and surrounding transportation network.initiated by AHPD with MDOT and the Michigan Intelligent Transportation System Center (MITSC) to verify the incident, and MDOT will activate DMSs in the area to inform motorists of the incident if needed. In some cases, traffic is diverted to Opdyke Road through media and DMS communication. During an incident, the Palace monitors the CCTV cameras and communicates traffic conditions with the AHPD officers. AHPD also coordinates with RCOC to determine possible adjustments to the signal timing. After the incident has cleared, AHPD will coordinate with MDOT and RCOC to clear DMS messages and reset signal timing, respectively. Several key integration points were identified in the Palace of Auburn Hills special-event traffic management process, including the following: • Coordination between the Palace and AHPD: Based on guidelines established in the traffic management plan, the Palace determines the size of an event (small, medium, or large) and informs AHPD. • The AHPD Dispatcher has the ability to activate the pre- determined signal timing plans within FAST-TRAC. The AHPD Sergeant has the authority to select the appropriatetiming plan based on the size of the event and directs the Dispatcher as to which plan to activate. The AHPD dispatch has a direct connection with FAST-TRAC so RCOC person- nel are not required during most events. • The Palace has access to MDOT CCTV cameras so they can monitor traffic in the vicinity of the arena during an event. MDOT also monitors traffic, but the Palace’s access to sur- veillance provides the ability to focus specifically on inci- dents that can affect typical traffic during an event. • Coordination occurs via radio between Palace personnel and AHPD personnel to adjust the predetermined traffic management plan and mitigate potential impacts on traffic. The response to incidents during an event is coordinated among MDOT, the Palace, AHPD, and RCOC. Based on the impact of the incident, DMSs are activated with appropriate messages, timing plans can be adjusted, and additional resources can be implemented for modified traffic control solutions. The Palace maintains records of all events, including the load-in and load-out times. Based on this documentation, the stakeholders have identified consistent results in the current

53traffic management plan. RCOC maintains the event signal timing plans respective to each event size. These timing plans can be revisited if issues or changing traffic patterns are identi- fied. The MDOT MITS Center maintains incident records that can be referenced to determine impacts on the traffic during events. There is no central location for data related to events at the Palace, but it can be obtained from the individual partners. Types of Agencies Involved There are four main partners involved in the coordination of events at the Palace of Auburn Hills. The public–private part- nership includes AHPD, the Palace, RCOC, and MDOT. The Palace is responsible for traffic on arena property, maintaining an arena-specific traffic management plan, and coordinating with AHPD for implementation. The Palace also has access to MDOT CCTV cameras so they can monitor traffic conditions on approaching routes. AHPD is the local police department responsible for traffic control within the city, including the local interstate routes. RCOC is responsible for county road maintenance and operations of the countywide signal system. RCOC has developed and programmed event-specific timing plans relative to the three categories of event sizes and allows AHPD to activate appropriate timing plans remotely. The MDOT MITS Center is responsible for monitoring the south- eastern Michigan roadway network and uses CCTV cameras and detection for surveillance and DMS and the MiDrive web- site for sharing traveler information. Types of Nonrecurring Congestion Addressed The Palace’s traffic management plan addresses nonrecurring traffic impacts classified as special events and crashes. When the Palace opened in 1988, AHPD manually controlled traffic in and around the arena. AHPD used approximately three to four traffic control police officers per intersection at several intersections (15 officers in all). In addition, the larger events required at least an hour to move traffic in and out of the park- ing facilities. The signal timing plans available through FAST-TRAC and the agreement between RCOC and AHPD to activate signal timing plans remotely via the Event Manager make it possible to improve efficiency. The signal timing plans are predeter- mined based on the estimated level of traffic for scheduled events. The signal timing plans also incorporate additional intersections that were previously not managed during events. The revised signal timing plans allow AHPD to decrease the total number of officers required at any event to no more than two and reduced the time for emptying the lot to approxi- mately 25 min. Improved incident management is the result of an agreement between MDOT and the Palace to share camera images. The Palace personnel can access views of several cameras located onapproaching roadways. When incidents occur in Auburn Hills, even on the interstate, AHPD typically are the first responders on scene. They will respond and coordinate with the Michi- gan State Police (MSP) and MDOT on the traffic management needs at the incident. They also coordinate with the Palace on any impacts to event-related traffic. MDOT will activate mes- sage signs to warn motorists and AHPD can modify the traffic management strategy to accommodate the changes in traffic patterns. Performance Measures Because the Palace tracks the load-in and load-out times dur- ing each event, those times can be compared to ensure the traf- fic management plan is working effectively. They meet with AHPD to discuss new issues and develop strategies that can mitigate these issues at the next scheduled event. The Palace maintains constant communication with AHPD to ensure that there is efficient and safe access for motorists. AHPD also com- municates with RCOC on potential issues with the signal tim- ing plans. The improved signal timing plans have allowed AHPD to reduce the number of required traffic control police officers from 15 to no more than two officers for each event. Emptying the parking lots of the Palace can now be achieved in less than 25 min. In addition, crash rates have remained con- sistent with the implementation of the Event Manager. Benefits The traffic management program at the Palace of Auburn Hills has proven to be successful. Benefits include improved traffic control efficiency; improved travel time; higher efficiency of motorist movement; and streamlined use of police resources. These benefits are achieved through strong relationships and trust between the stakeholders. With the reduction in load-in and load-out times, the impact on motorists traveling in the vicinity of the arena also is reduced. In addition, spectators are able to reach the arena more quickly and spend more time at the event. This improved mobility translates into cost savings for the motorists by reduc- ing fuel consumption and travel. The Palace also experiences a fiscal benefit by having spectators arrive earlier at events. The improved signal timing plans allow for more intersec- tions to be managed during an event with fewer officers, which frees up more officers for responding to emergencies, inci- dents, and other situations. Fewer officers for manual traffic control also has increased safety for personnel. Directing traf- fic in the dark and during poor weather conditions often cre- ated unsafe conditions for AHPD officers. The Palace’s cost for police personnel also is reduced. The Palace indicated that the savings from the fewer officers required to control traffic can be redirected to other expenses, such as an extension of park- ing facilities or a reduction in ticket costs for events.

54Lessons Learned All the agencies involved with the special-event traffic man- agement plan have acknowledged benefits, but there are still some elements that can be improved. Some simple modifica- tions could be achieved more quickly, while others are more extensive and would require several years. The partners stated that the traffic management plan should be developed as the site is designed. This approach would identify deficiencies in driveway access and potential capacity issues related to mov- ing the maximum capacity of the parking lots. The site devel- opment also should limit the amount of traffic movement occurring closer to the buildings to minimize conflicts between vehicles and pedestrians. This additional conflict can gener- ate congestion within the parking lot. Lastly, sufficient light- ing throughout the parking lot should be implemented. Better lighting increases safety by improving visibility for drivers navigating among pedestrians, especially during inclement weather. Analysis and Research Observations The Palace traffic management plan has been developed through input from the Palace of Auburn Hills, AHPD, and RCOC and has improved the efficiency, reliability, and safety of traffic management during special events hosted by the Palace. During arena events, such as games and concerts, thetraffic flow in and out of the Palace has improved considerably while limiting the resource needs of AHPD. Coordination between the Palace and AHPD also has increased the reliabil- ity of loading and unloading the Palace parking lots. The Palace records and evaluates the load-in and load-out times to determine possible signal timing adjustments. The Palace personnel discuss improvements to the traffic manage- ment plan with AHPD on a continuous basis. The continued communication between the Palace, AHPD, and RCOC has improved operations and resulted in improved mobility for the motorists going to the Palace, as well as for motorists within the area. Agreements have been established between AHPD, the Palace, and MDOT to share CCTV camera video images for improved incident management. The police can coordinate and respond to incidents more quickly. Based on monitoring an incident, real-time information is provided and coordi- nated between all stakeholders to improve traffic coordination during and after each event. References 1. Basore, B., and P. Behm. Kansas Speedway Traffic Management. Kansas Highway Patrol, 2007. 2. TriCon Environmental, Inc. ESi WebEOC Professional Version 7. www.tricon-env.com/Product_software.php?id=webeoc. Accessed July 20, 2011.

TRB’s second Strategic Highway Research Program (SHRP 2) Report: S2-L01-RR-1: Integrating Business Processes to Improve Travel Time Reliability addresses various ways that transportation agencies can reengineer their day-to-day business practices to help improve traffic operations, address nonrecurring traffic congestion, and improve the reliability of travel times delivered to roadway system users.

The project that produced this report also produced SHRP 2 Report S2-L01-RR-2 : Guide to Integrating Business Processes to Improve Travel Time Reliability.

An e-book version of this report is available for purchase at Google , Amazon , and iTunes .

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16 case study examples (+ 3 templates to make your own)

I like to think of case studies as a business's version of a resume. It highlights what the business can do, lends credibility to its offer, and contains only the positive bullet points that paint it in the best light possible.

Imagine if the guy running your favorite taco truck followed you home so that he could "really dig into how that burrito changed your life." I see the value in the practice. People naturally prefer a tried-and-true burrito just as they prefer tried-and-true products or services.

To help you showcase your success and flesh out your burrito questionnaire, I've put together some case study examples and key takeaways.

What is a case study?

A case study is an in-depth analysis of how your business, product, or service has helped past clients. It can be a document, a webpage, or a slide deck that showcases measurable, real-life results.

For example, if you're a SaaS company, you can analyze your customers' results after a few months of using your product to measure its effectiveness. You can then turn this analysis into a case study that further proves to potential customers what your product can do and how it can help them overcome their challenges.

It changes the narrative from "I promise that we can do X and Y for you" to "Here's what we've done for businesses like yours, and we can do it for you, too."

16 case study examples 

While most case studies follow the same structure, quite a few try to break the mold and create something unique. Some businesses lean heavily on design and presentation, while others pursue a detailed, stat-oriented approach. Some businesses try to mix both.

There's no set formula to follow, but I've found that the best case studies utilize impactful design to engage readers and leverage statistics and case details to drive the point home. A case study typically highlights the companies, the challenges, the solution, and the results. The examples below will help inspire you to do it, too.

1. .css-1l9i3yq-Link[class][class][class][class][class]{all:unset;box-sizing:border-box;-webkit-text-fill-color:currentColor;cursor:pointer;}.css-1l9i3yq-Link[class][class][class][class][class]{all:unset;box-sizing:border-box;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;cursor:pointer;-webkit-transition:all 300ms ease-in-out;transition:all 300ms ease-in-out;outline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-fill-color:currentColor;outline:1px solid transparent;}.css-1l9i3yq-Link[class][class][class][class][class][data-color='ocean']{color:#3d4592;}.css-1l9i3yq-Link[class][class][class][class][class][data-color='ocean']:hover{color:#2b2358;}.css-1l9i3yq-Link[class][class][class][class][class][data-color='ocean']:focus{color:#3d4592;outline-color:#3d4592;}.css-1l9i3yq-Link[class][class][class][class][class][data-color='white']{color:#fffdf9;}.css-1l9i3yq-Link[class][class][class][class][class][data-color='white']:hover{color:#a8a5a0;}.css-1l9i3yq-Link[class][class][class][class][class][data-color='white']:focus{color:#fffdf9;outline-color:#fffdf9;}.css-1l9i3yq-Link[class][class][class][class][class][data-color='primary']{color:#3d4592;}.css-1l9i3yq-Link[class][class][class][class][class][data-color='primary']:hover{color:#2b2358;}.css-1l9i3yq-Link[class][class][class][class][class][data-color='primary']:focus{color:#3d4592;outline-color:#3d4592;}.css-1l9i3yq-Link[class][class][class][class][class][data-color='secondary']{color:#fffdf9;}.css-1l9i3yq-Link[class][class][class][class][class][data-color='secondary']:hover{color:#a8a5a0;}.css-1l9i3yq-Link[class][class][class][class][class][data-color='secondary']:focus{color:#fffdf9;outline-color:#fffdf9;}.css-1l9i3yq-Link[class][class][class][class][class][data-weight='inherit']{font-weight:inherit;}.css-1l9i3yq-Link[class][class][class][class][class][data-weight='normal']{font-weight:400;}.css-1l9i3yq-Link[class][class][class][class][class][data-weight='bold']{font-weight:700;} Volcanica Coffee and AdRoll

People love a good farm-to-table coffee story, and boy am I one of them. But I've shared this case study with you for more reasons than my love of coffee. I enjoyed this study because it was written as though it was a letter.

In this case study, the founder of Volcanica Coffee talks about the journey from founding the company to personally struggling with learning and applying digital marketing to finding and enlisting AdRoll's services.

It felt more authentic, less about AdRoll showcasing their worth and more like a testimonial from a grateful and appreciative client. After the story, the case study wraps up with successes, milestones, and achievements. Note that quite a few percentages are prominently displayed at the top, providing supporting evidence that backs up an inspiring story.

Takeaway: Highlight your goals and measurable results to draw the reader in and provide concise, easily digestible information.

2. Taylor Guitars and Airtable

This Airtable case study on Taylor Guitars comes as close as one can to an optimal structure. It features a video that represents the artistic nature of the client, highlighting key achievements and dissecting each element of Airtable's influence.

It also supplements each section with a testimonial or quote from the client, using their insights as a catalyst for the case study's narrative. For example, the case study quotes the social media manager and project manager's insights regarding team-wide communication and access before explaining in greater detail.

Takeaway: Highlight pain points your business solves for its client, and explore that influence in greater detail.

3. EndeavourX and Figma

My favorite part of Figma's case study is highlighting why EndeavourX chose its solution. You'll notice an entire section on what Figma does for teams and then specifically for EndeavourX.

It also places a heavy emphasis on numbers and stats. The study, as brief as it is, still manages to pack in a lot of compelling statistics about what's possible with Figma.

Takeaway: Showcase the "how" and "why" of your product's differentiators and how they benefit your customers.

4. ActiveCampaign and Zapier

Zapier's case study leans heavily on design, using graphics to present statistics and goals in a manner that not only remains consistent with the branding but also actively pushes it forward, drawing users' eyes to the information most important to them. 

The graphics, emphasis on branding elements, and cause/effect style tell the story without requiring long, drawn-out copy that risks boring readers. Instead, the cause and effect are concisely portrayed alongside the client company's information for a brief and easily scannable case study.

Takeaway: Lean on design to call attention to the most important elements of your case study, and make sure it stays consistent with your branding.

5. Ironclad and OpenAI

In true OpenAI fashion, this case study is a block of text. There's a distinct lack of imagery, but the study features a narrated video walking readers through the product.

The lack of imagery and color may not be the most inviting, but utilizing video format is commendable. It helps thoroughly communicate how OpenAI supported Ironclad in a way that allows the user to sit back, relax, listen, and be impressed. 

Takeaway: Get creative with the media you implement in your case study. Videos can be a very powerful addition when a case study requires more detailed storytelling.

6. Shopify and GitHub

GitHub's case study on Shopify is a light read. It addresses client pain points and discusses the different aspects its product considers and improves for clients. It touches on workflow issues, internal systems, automation, and security. It does a great job of representing what one company can do with GitHub.

To drive the point home, the case study features colorful quote callouts from the Shopify team, sharing their insights and perspectives on the partnership, the key issues, and how they were addressed.

Takeaway: Leverage quotes to boost the authoritativeness and trustworthiness of your case study. 

7 . Audible and Contentful

Contentful's case study on Audible features almost every element a case study should. It includes not one but two videos and clearly outlines the challenge, solution, and outcome before diving deeper into what Contentful did for Audible. The language is simple, and the writing is heavy with quotes and personal insights.

This case study is a uniquely original experience. The fact that the companies in question are perhaps two of the most creative brands out there may be the reason. I expected nothing short of a detailed analysis, a compelling story, and video content. 

Takeaway: Inject some brand voice into the case study, and create assets that tell the story for you.

8 . Zoom and Asana

Asana's case study on Zoom is longer than the average piece and features detailed data on Zoom's growth since 2020. Instead of relying on imagery and graphics, it features several quotes and testimonials. 

It's designed to be direct, informative, and promotional. At some point, the case study reads more like a feature list. There were a few sections that felt a tad too promotional for my liking, but to each their own burrito.

Takeaway: Maintain a balance between promotional and informative. You want to showcase the high-level goals your product helped achieve without losing the reader.

9 . Hickies and Mailchimp

I've always been a fan of Mailchimp's comic-like branding, and this case study does an excellent job of sticking to their tradition of making information easy to understand, casual, and inviting.

It features a short video that briefly covers Hickies as a company and Mailchimp's efforts to serve its needs for customer relationships and education processes. Overall, this case study is a concise overview of the partnership that manages to convey success data and tell a story at the same time. What sets it apart is that it does so in a uniquely colorful and brand-consistent manner.

Takeaway: Be concise to provide as much value in as little text as possible.

10. NVIDIA and Workday

The gaming industry is notoriously difficult to recruit for, as it requires a very specific set of skills and experience. This case study focuses on how Workday was able to help fill that recruitment gap for NVIDIA, one of the biggest names in the gaming world.

Though it doesn't feature videos or graphics, this case study stood out to me in how it structures information like "key products used" to give readers insight into which tools helped achieve these results.

Takeaway: If your company offers multiple products or services, outline exactly which ones were involved in your case study, so readers can assess each tool.

11. KFC and Contentful

I'm personally not a big KFC fan, but that's only because I refuse to eat out of a bucket. My aversion to the bucket format aside, Contentful follows its consistent case study format in this one, outlining challenges, solutions, and outcomes before diving into the nitty-gritty details of the project.

Say what you will about KFC, but their primary product (chicken) does present a unique opportunity for wordplay like "Continuing to march to the beat of a digital-first drum(stick)" or "Delivering deep-fried goodness to every channel."

Takeaway: Inject humor into your case study if there's room for it and if it fits your brand. 

12. Intuit and Twilio

Twilio does an excellent job of delivering achievements at the very beginning of the case study and going into detail in this two-minute read. While there aren't many graphics, the way quotes from the Intuit team are implemented adds a certain flair to the study and breaks up the sections nicely.

It's simple, concise, and manages to fit a lot of information in easily digestible sections.

Takeaway: Make sure each section is long enough to inform but brief enough to avoid boring readers. Break down information for each section, and don't go into so much detail that you lose the reader halfway through.

13. Spotify and Salesforce

Salesforce created a video that accurately summarizes the key points of the case study. Beyond that, the page itself is very light on content, and sections are as short as one paragraph.

I especially like how information is broken down into "What you need to know," "Why it matters," and "What the difference looks like." I'm not ashamed of being spoon-fed information. When it's structured so well and so simply, it makes for an entertaining read.

Takeaway: Invest in videos that capture and promote your partnership with your case study subject. Video content plays a promotional role that extends beyond the case study in social media and marketing initiatives .

14. Benchling and Airtable

Benchling is an impressive entity in its own right. Biotech R&D and health care nuances go right over my head. But the research and digging I've been doing in the name of these burritos (case studies) revealed that these products are immensely complex. 

And that's precisely why this case study deserves a read—it succeeds at explaining a complex project that readers outside the industry wouldn't know much about.

Takeaway: Simplify complex information, and walk readers through the company's operations and how your business helped streamline them.

15. Chipotle and Hubble

The concision of this case study is refreshing. It features two sections—the challenge and the solution—all in 316 words. This goes to show that your case study doesn't necessarily need to be a four-figure investment with video shoots and studio time. 

Sometimes, the message is simple and short enough to convey in a handful of paragraphs.

Takeaway: Consider what you should include instead of what you can include. Assess the time, resources, and effort you're able and willing to invest in a case study, and choose which elements you want to include from there.

16. Hudl and Zapier

I may be biased, but I'm a big fan of seeing metrics and achievements represented in branded graphics. It can be a jarring experience to navigate a website, then visit a case study page and feel as though you've gone to a completely different website.

The Zapier format provides nuggets of high-level insights, milestones, and achievements, as well as the challenge, solution, and results. My favorite part of this case study is how it's supplemented with a blog post detailing how Hudl uses Zapier automation to build a seamless user experience.

The case study is essentially the summary, and the blog article is the detailed analysis that provides context beyond X achievement or Y goal.

Takeaway: Keep your case study concise and informative. Create other resources to provide context under your blog, media or press, and product pages.

3 case study templates

Now that you've had your fill of case studies (if that's possible), I've got just what you need: an infinite number of case studies, which you can create yourself with these case study templates.

Case study template 1

If you've got a quick hit of stats you want to show off, try this template. The opening section gives space for a short summary and three visually appealing stats you can highlight, followed by a headline and body where you can break the case study down more thoroughly. This one's pretty simple, with only sections for solutions and results, but you can easily continue the formatting to add more sections as needed.

Case study template 2

For a case study template with a little more detail, use this one. Opening with a striking cover page for a quick overview, this one goes on to include context, stakeholders, challenges, multiple quote callouts, and quick-hit stats. 

Case study template 3

Whether you want a little structural variation or just like a nice dark green, this template has similar components to the last template but is designed to help tell a story. Move from the client overview through a description of your company before getting to the details of how you fixed said company's problems.

Tips for writing a case study

Examples are all well and good, but you don't learn how to make a burrito just by watching tutorials on YouTube without knowing what any of the ingredients are. You could , but it probably wouldn't be all that good.

Writing a good case study comes down to a mix of creativity, branding, and the capacity to invest in the project. With those details in mind, here are some case study tips to follow:

Have an objective: Define your objective by identifying the challenge, solution, and results. Assess your work with the client and focus on the most prominent wins. You're speaking to multiple businesses and industries through the case study, so make sure you know what you want to say to them.

Focus on persuasive data: Growth percentages and measurable results are your best friends. Extract your most compelling data and highlight it in your case study.

Use eye-grabbing graphics: Branded design goes a long way in accurately representing your brand and retaining readers as they review the study. Leverage unique and eye-catching graphics to keep readers engaged. 

Simplify data presentation: Some industries are more complex than others, and sometimes, data can be difficult to understand at a glance. Make sure you present your data in the simplest way possible. Make it concise, informative, and easy to understand.

Use automation to drive results for your case study

A case study example is a source of inspiration you can leverage to determine how to best position your brand's work. Find your unique angle, and refine it over time to help your business stand out. Ask anyone: the best burrito in town doesn't just appear at the number one spot. They find their angle (usually the house sauce) and leverage it to stand out.

In fact, with the right technology, it can be refined to work better . Explore how Zapier's automation features can help drive results for your case study by making your case study a part of a developed workflow that creates a user journey through your website, your case studies, and into the pipeline.

Case study FAQ

Got your case study template? Great—it's time to gather the team for an awkward semi-vague data collection task. While you do that, here are some case study quick answers for you to skim through while you contemplate what to call your team meeting.

What is an example of a case study?

An example of a case study is when a software company analyzes its results from a client project and creates a webpage, presentation, or document that focuses on high-level results, challenges, and solutions in an attempt to showcase effectiveness and promote the software.

How do you write a case study?

To write a good case study, you should have an objective, identify persuasive and compelling data, leverage graphics, and simplify data. Case studies typically include an analysis of the challenge, solution, and results of the partnership.

What is the format of a case study?

While case studies don't have a set format, they're often portrayed as reports or essays that inform readers about the partnership and its results. 

Related reading:

How Hudl uses automation to create a seamless user experience

How to make your case studies high-stakes—and why it matters

How experts write case studies that convert, not bore

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Hachem Ramki

Hachem is a writer and digital marketer from Montreal. After graduating with a degree in English, Hachem spent seven years traveling around the world before moving to Canada. When he's not writing, he enjoys Basketball, Dungeons and Dragons, and playing music for friends and family.

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• Knowledge Base

Methodology

• What Is a Case Study? | Definition, Examples & Methods

What Is a Case Study? | Definition, Examples & Methods

Published on May 8, 2019 by Shona McCombes . Revised on November 20, 2023.

A case study is a detailed study of a specific subject, such as a person, group, place, event, organization, or phenomenon. Case studies are commonly used in social, educational, clinical, and business research.

A case study research design usually involves qualitative methods , but quantitative methods are sometimes also used. Case studies are good for describing , comparing, evaluating and understanding different aspects of a research problem .

Table of contents

When to do a case study, step 1: select a case, step 2: build a theoretical framework, step 3: collect your data, step 4: describe and analyze the case, other interesting articles.

A case study is an appropriate research design when you want to gain concrete, contextual, in-depth knowledge about a specific real-world subject. It allows you to explore the key characteristics, meanings, and implications of the case.

Case studies are often a good choice in a thesis or dissertation . They keep your project focused and manageable when you don’t have the time or resources to do large-scale research.

You might use just one complex case study where you explore a single subject in depth, or conduct multiple case studies to compare and illuminate different aspects of your research problem.

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Once you have developed your problem statement and research questions , you should be ready to choose the specific case that you want to focus on. A good case study should have the potential to:

• Provide new or unexpected insights into the subject
• Challenge or complicate existing assumptions and theories
• Propose practical courses of action to resolve a problem
• Open up new directions for future research

TipIf your research is more practical in nature and aims to simultaneously investigate an issue as you solve it, consider conducting action research instead.

Unlike quantitative or experimental research , a strong case study does not require a random or representative sample. In fact, case studies often deliberately focus on unusual, neglected, or outlying cases which may shed new light on the research problem.

Example of an outlying case studyIn the 1960s the town of Roseto, Pennsylvania was discovered to have extremely low rates of heart disease compared to the US average. It became an important case study for understanding previously neglected causes of heart disease.

However, you can also choose a more common or representative case to exemplify a particular category, experience or phenomenon.

Example of a representative case studyIn the 1920s, two sociologists used Muncie, Indiana as a case study of a typical American city that supposedly exemplified the changing culture of the US at the time.

While case studies focus more on concrete details than general theories, they should usually have some connection with theory in the field. This way the case study is not just an isolated description, but is integrated into existing knowledge about the topic. It might aim to:

• Exemplify a theory by showing how it explains the case under investigation
• Expand on a theory by uncovering new concepts and ideas that need to be incorporated
• Challenge a theory by exploring an outlier case that doesn’t fit with established assumptions

To ensure that your analysis of the case has a solid academic grounding, you should conduct a literature review of sources related to the topic and develop a theoretical framework . This means identifying key concepts and theories to guide your analysis and interpretation.

There are many different research methods you can use to collect data on your subject. Case studies tend to focus on qualitative data using methods such as interviews , observations , and analysis of primary and secondary sources (e.g., newspaper articles, photographs, official records). Sometimes a case study will also collect quantitative data.

Example of a mixed methods case studyFor a case study of a wind farm development in a rural area, you could collect quantitative data on employment rates and business revenue, collect qualitative data on local people’s perceptions and experiences, and analyze local and national media coverage of the development.

The aim is to gain as thorough an understanding as possible of the case and its context.

In writing up the case study, you need to bring together all the relevant aspects to give as complete a picture as possible of the subject.

How you report your findings depends on the type of research you are doing. Some case studies are structured like a standard scientific paper or thesis , with separate sections or chapters for the methods , results and discussion .

Others are written in a more narrative style, aiming to explore the case from various angles and analyze its meanings and implications (for example, by using textual analysis or discourse analysis ).

In all cases, though, make sure to give contextual details about the case, connect it back to the literature and theory, and discuss how it fits into wider patterns or debates.

If you want to know more about statistics , methodology , or research bias , make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples.

• Normal distribution
• Degrees of freedom
• Null hypothesis
• Discourse analysis
• Control groups
• Mixed methods research
• Non-probability sampling
• Quantitative research
• Ecological validity

Research bias

• Rosenthal effect
• Implicit bias
• Cognitive bias
• Selection bias
• Negativity bias
• Status quo bias

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28 Case Study Examples Every Marketer Should See

Published: March 08, 2023

Putting together a compelling case study is one of the most powerful strategies for showcasing your product and attracting future customers. But it's not easy to create case studies that your audience can’t wait to read.

In this post, we’ll go over the definition of a case study and the best examples to inspire you.

What is a case study?

A case study is a detailed story of something your company did. It includes a beginning — often discussing a conflict, an explanation of what happened next, and a resolution that explains how the company solved or improved on something.

A case study proves how your product has helped other companies by demonstrating real-life results. Not only that, but marketing case studies with solutions typically contain quotes from the customer. This means that they’re not just ads where you praise your own product. Rather, other companies are praising your company — and there’s no stronger marketing material than a verbal recommendation or testimonial. A great case study is also filled with research and stats to back up points made about a project's results.

There are myriad ways to use case studies in your marketing strategy . From featuring them on your website to including them in a sales presentation, a case study is a strong, persuasive tool that shows customers why they should work with you — straight from another customer. Writing one from scratch is hard, though, which is why we’ve created a collection of case study templates for you to get started.

Fill out the form below to access the free case study templates.

Free Case Study Templates

Showcase your company's success using these three free case study templates.

• Data-Driven Case Study Template
• Product-Specific Case Study Template
• General Case Study Template

You're all set!

Click this link to access this resource at any time.

There’s no better way to generate more leads than by writing case studies . But without case study examples to draw inspiration from, it can be difficult to write impactful studies that convince visitors to submit a form.

Marketing Case Study Examples

To help you create an attractive and high-converting case study, we've put together a list of some of our favorites. This list includes famous case studies in marketing, technology, and business.

These studies can show you how to frame your company offers in a way that is both meaningful and useful to your audience. So, take a look, and let these examples inspire your next brilliant case study design.

These marketing case studies with solutions show the value proposition of each product. They also show how each company benefited in both the short and long term using quantitative data. In other words, you don’t get just nice statements, like "This company helped us a lot." You see actual change within the firm through numbers and figures.

You can put your learnings into action with HubSpot's Free Case Study Templates . Available as custom designs and text-based documents, you can upload these templates to your CMS or send them to prospects as you see fit.

1. " How Handled Scaled from Zero to 121 Locations with the Help of HubSpot ," by HubSpot

What's interesting about this case study is the way it leads with the customer. That reflects a major HubSpot cornerstone, which is to always solve for the customer first. The copy leads with a brief description of why the CEO of Handled founded the company and why he thought Handled could benefit from adopting a CRM. The case study also opens up with one key data point about Handled’s success using HubSpot, namely that it grew to 121 locations.

Notice that this case study uses mixed media. Yes, there is a short video, but it's elaborated upon in the other text on the page. So while your case studies can use one or the other, don't be afraid to combine written copy with visuals to emphasize the project's success.

Key Learnings from the HubSpot Case Study Example

• Give the case study a personal touch by focusing on the CEO rather than the company itself.
• Use multimedia to engage website visitors as they read the case study.

2. " The Whole Package ," by IDEO

Here's a design company that knows how to lead with simplicity in its case studies. As soon as the visitor arrives at the page, they’re greeted with a big, bold photo and the title of the case study — which just so happens to summarize how IDEO helped its client. It summarizes the case study in three snippets: The challenge, the impact, and the outcome.

Immediately, IDEO communicates its impact — the company partnered with H&M to remove plastic from its packaging — but it doesn't stop there. As the user scrolls down, the challenge, impact, and progress are elaborated upon with comprehensive (but not overwhelming) copy that outlines what that process looked like, replete with quotes and intriguing visuals.

Key Learnings from the IDEO Case Study Example

• Split up the takeaways of your case studies into bite-sized sections.
• Always use visuals and images to enrich the case study experience, especially if it’s a comprehensive case study.

3. " Rozum Robotics intensifies its PR game with Awario ," by Awario

In this case study, Awario greets the user with a summary straight away — so if you’re feeling up to reading the entire case study, you can scan the snapshot and understand how the company serves its customers. The case study then includes jump links to several sections, such as "Company Profile," "Rozum Robotics' Pains," "Challenge," "Solution," and "Results and Improvements."

The sparse copy and prominent headings show that you don’t need a lot of elaborate information to show the value of your products and services. Like the other case study examples on this list, it includes visuals and quotes to demonstrate the effectiveness of the company’s efforts. The case study ends with a bulleted list that shows the results.

Key Learnings from the Awario Robotics Case Study Example

• Create a table of contents to make your case study easier to navigate.
• Include a bulleted list of the results you achieved for your client.

4. " Chevrolet DTU ," by Carol H. Williams

If you’ve worked with a company that’s well-known, use only the name in the title — like Carol H. Williams, one of the nation’s top advertising agencies, does here. The "DTU," stands for "Discover the Unexpected." It generates interest because you want to find out what the initials mean.

They keep your interest in this case study by using a mixture of headings, images, and videos to describe the challenges, objectives, and solutions of the project. The case study closes with a summary of the key achievements that Chevrolet’s DTU Journalism Fellows reached during the project.

Key Learnings from the Carol H. Williams Case Study Example

• If you’ve worked with a big brand before, consider only using the name in the title — just enough to pique interest.
• Use a mixture of headings and subheadings to guide users through the case study.

5. " How Fractl Earned Links from 931 Unique Domains for Porch.com in a Single Year ," by Fractl

Fractl uses both text and graphic design in their Porch.com case study to immerse the viewer in a more interesting user experience. For instance, as you scroll, you'll see the results are illustrated in an infographic-design form as well as the text itself.

Further down the page, they use icons like a heart and a circle to illustrate their pitch angles, and graphs to showcase their results. Rather than writing which publications have mentioned Porch.com during Fractl’s campaign, they incorporated the media outlets’ icons for further visual diversity.

Key Learnings from the Fractl Case Study Example

• Let pictures speak for you by incorporating graphs, logos, and icons all throughout the case study.
• Start the case study by right away stating the key results, like Fractl does, instead of putting the results all the way at the bottom.

6. " The Met ," by Fantasy

What's the best way to showcase the responsiveness and user interface of a website? Probably by diving right into it with a series of simple showcases— which is exactly what Fantasy does on their case study page for the Metropolitan Museum of Art. They keep the page simple and clean, inviting you to review their redesign of the Met’s website feature-by-feature.

Each section is simple, showing a single piece of the new website's interface so that users aren’t overwhelmed with information and can focus on what matters most.

If you're more interested in text, you can read the objective for each feature. Fantasy understands that, as a potential customer, this is all you need to know. Scrolling further, you're greeted with a simple "Contact Us" CTA.

Key Learnings from the Fantasy Case Study Example

• You don’t have to write a ton of text to create a great case study. Focus on the solution you delivered itself.
• Include a CTA at the bottom inviting visitors to contact you.

7. " Rovio: How Rovio Grew Into a Gaming Superpower ," by App Annie

If your client had a lot of positive things to say about you, take a note from App Annie’s Rovio case study and open up with a quote from your client. The case study also closes with a quote, so that the case study doesn’t seem like a promotion written by your marketing team but a story that’s taken straight from your client’s mouth. It includes a photo of a Rovio employee, too.

Another thing this example does well? It immediately includes a link to the product that Rovio used (namely, App Annie Intelligence) at the top of the case study. The case study closes with a call-to-action button prompting users to book a demo.

Key Learnings from the App Annie Case Study Example

• Feature quotes from your client at the beginning and end of the case study.
• Include a mention of the product right at the beginning and prompt users to learn more about the product.

8. " Embracing first-party data: 3 success stories from HubSpot ," by Think with Google

Google takes a different approach to text-focused case studies by choosing three different companies to highlight.

The case study is clean and easily scannable. It has sections for each company, with quotes and headers that clarify the way these three distinct stories connect. The simple format also uses colors and text that align with the Google brand.

Another differentiator is the focus on data. This case study is less than a thousand words, but it's packed with useful data points. Data-driven insights quickly and clearly show how the value of leveraging first-party data while prioritizing consumer privacy.

Key Learnings from the Think with Google Case Study Example

• A case study doesn’t need to be long or complex to be powerful.
• Clear data points are a quick and effective way to prove value.

9. " In-Depth Performance Marketing Case Study ," by Switch

Switch is an international marketing agency based in Malta that knocks it out of the park with this case study. Its biggest challenge is effectively communicating what it did for its client without ever revealing the client’s name. It also effectively keeps non-marketers in the loop by including a glossary of terms on page 4.

The PDF case study reads like a compelling research article, including titles like "In-Depth Performance Marketing Case Study," "Scenario," and "Approach," so that readers get a high-level overview of what the client needed and why they approached Switch. It also includes a different page for each strategy. For instance, if you’d only be interested in hiring Switch for optimizing your Facebook ads, you can skip to page 10 to see how they did it.

The PDF is fourteen pages long but features big fonts and plenty of white space, so viewers can easily skim it in only a few minutes.

Key Learnings from the Switch Case Study Example

• If you want to go into specialized information, include a glossary of terms so that non-specialists can easily understand.
• Close with a CTA page in your case study PDF and include contact information for prospective clients.

10. " Gila River ," by OH Partners

Let pictures speak for you, like OH Partners did in this case study. While you’ll quickly come across a heading and some text when you land on this case study page, you’ll get the bulk of the case study through examples of actual work OH Partners did for its client. You will see OH Partners’ work in a billboard, magazine, and video. This communicates to website visitors that if they work with OH Partners, their business will be visible everywhere.

And like the other case studies here, it closes with a summary of what the firm achieved for its client in an eye-catching way.

Key Learnings from the OH Partners Case Study Example

• Let the visuals speak by including examples of the actual work you did for your client — which is especially useful for branding and marketing agencies.
• Always close out with your achievements and how they impacted your client.

11. " Facing a Hater ," by Digitas

Digitas' case study page for Sprite’s #ILOVEYOUHATER campaign keeps it brief while communicating the key facts of Digitas’ work for the popular soda brand. The page opens with an impactful image of a hundred people facing a single man. It turns out, that man is the biggest "bully" in Argentina, and the people facing him are those whom he’s bullied before.

Scrolling down, it's obvious that Digitas kept Sprite at the forefront of their strategy, but more than that, they used real people as their focal point. They leveraged the Twitter API to pull data from Tweets that people had actually tweeted to find the identity of the biggest "hater" in the country. That turned out to be @AguanteElCofler, a Twitter user who has since been suspended.

Key Learnings from the Digitas Case Study Example

• If a video was part of your work for your client, be sure to include the most impactful screenshot as the heading.
• Don’t be afraid to provide details on how you helped your client achieve their goals, including the tools you leveraged.

12. " Better Experiences for All ," by HermanMiller

HermanMiller sells sleek, utilitarian furniture with no frills and extreme functionality, and that ethos extends to its case study page for a hospital in Dubai.

What first attracted me to this case study was the beautiful video at the top and the clean user experience. User experience matters a lot in a case study. It determines whether users will keep reading or leave. Another notable aspect of this case study is that the video includes closed-captioning for greater accessibility, and users have the option of expanding the CC and searching through the text.

HermanMiller’s case study also offers an impressive amount of information packed in just a few short paragraphs for those wanting to understand the nuances of their strategy. It closes out with a quote from their client and, most importantly, the list of furniture products that the hospital purchased from the brand.

Key Learnings from the HermanMiller Case Study Example

• Close out with a list of products that users can buy after reading the case study.
• Include accessibility features such as closed captioning and night mode to make your case study more user-friendly.

13. " Capital One on AWS ," by Amazon

Do you work continuously with your clients? Consider structuring your case study page like Amazon did in this stellar case study example. Instead of just featuring one article about Capital One and how it benefited from using AWS, Amazon features a series of articles that you can then access if you’re interested in reading more. It goes all the way back to 2016, all with different stories that feature Capital One’s achievements using AWS.

This may look unattainable for a small firm, but you don’t have to go to extreme measures and do it for every single one of your clients. You could choose the one you most wish to focus on and establish a contact both on your side and your client’s for coming up with the content. Check in every year and write a new piece. These don’t have to be long, either — five hundred to eight hundred words will do.

Key Learnings from the Amazon AWS Case Study Example

• Write a new article each year featuring one of your clients, then include links to those articles in one big case study page.
• Consider including external articles as well that emphasize your client’s success in their industry.

14. " HackReactor teaches the world to code #withAsana ," by Asana

While Asana's case study design looks text-heavy, there's a good reason. It reads like a creative story, told entirely from the customer's perspective.

For instance, Asana knows you won't trust its word alone on why this product is useful. So, they let Tony Phillips, HackReactor CEO, tell you instead: "We take in a lot of information. Our brains are awful at storage but very good at thinking; you really start to want some third party to store your information so you can do something with it."

Asana features frequent quotes from Phillips to break up the wall of text and humanize the case study. It reads like an in-depth interview and captivates the reader through creative storytelling. Even more, Asana includes in-depth detail about how HackReactor uses Asana. This includes how they build templates and workflows:

"There's a huge differentiator between Asana and other tools, and that’s the very easy API access. Even if Asana isn’t the perfect fit for a workflow, someone like me— a relatively mediocre software engineer—can add functionality via the API to build a custom solution that helps a team get more done."

Key Learnings from the Asana Example

• Include quotes from your client throughout the case study.
• Provide extensive detail on how your client worked with you or used your product.

15. " Rips Sewed, Brand Love Reaped ," by Amp Agency

Amp Agency's Patagonia marketing strategy aimed to appeal to a new audience through guerrilla marketing efforts and a coast-to-coast road trip. Their case study page effectively conveys a voyager theme, complete with real photos of Patagonia customers from across the U.S., and a map of the expedition. I liked Amp Agency's storytelling approach best. It captures viewers' attention from start to finish simply because it's an intriguing and unique approach to marketing.

Key Learnings from the Amp Agency Example

• Open up with a summary that communicates who your client is and why they reached out to you.
• Like in the other case study examples, you’ll want to close out with a quantitative list of your achievements.

16. " NetApp ," by Evisort

Evisort opens up its NetApp case study with an at-a-glance overview of the client. It’s imperative to always focus on the client in your case study — not on your amazing product and equally amazing team. By opening up with a snapshot of the client’s company, Evisort places the focus on the client.

This case study example checks all the boxes for a great case study that’s informative, thorough, and compelling. It includes quotes from the client and details about the challenges NetApp faced during the COVID pandemic. It closes out with a quote from the client and with a link to download the case study in PDF format, which is incredibly important if you want your case study to be accessible in a wider variety of formats.

Key Learnings from the Evisort Example

• Place the focus immediately on your client by including a snapshot of their company.
• Mention challenging eras, such as a pandemic or recession, to show how your company can help your client succeed even during difficult times.

17. " Copernicus Land Monitoring – CLC+ Core ," by Cloudflight

Including highly specialized information in your case study is an effective way to show prospects that you’re not just trying to get their business. You’re deep within their industry, too, and willing to learn everything you need to learn to create a solution that works specifically for them.

Cloudflight does a splendid job at that in its Copernicus Land Monitoring case study. While the information may be difficult to read at first glance, it will capture the interest of prospects who are in the environmental industry. It thus shows Cloudflight’s value as a partner much more effectively than a general case study would.

The page is comprehensive and ends with a compelling call-to-action — "Looking for a solution that automates, and enhances your Big Data system? Are you struggling with large datasets and accessibility? We would be happy to advise and support you!" The clean, whitespace-heavy page is an effective example of using a case study to capture future leads.

Key Learnings from the Cloudflight Case Study Example

• Don’t be afraid to get technical in your explanation of what you did for your client.
• Include a snapshot of the sales representative prospects should contact, especially if you have different sales reps for different industries, like Cloudflight does.

18. " Valvoline Increases Coupon Send Rate by 76% with Textel’s MMS Picture Texting ," by Textel

If you’re targeting large enterprises with a long purchasing cycle, you’ll want to include a wealth of information in an easily transferable format. That’s what Textel does here in its PDF case study for Valvoline. It greets the user with an eye-catching headline that shows the value of using Textel. Valvoline saw a significant return on investment from using the platform.

Another smart decision in this case study is highlighting the client’s quote by putting it in green font and doing the same thing for the client’s results because it helps the reader quickly connect the two pieces of information. If you’re in a hurry, you can also take a look at the "At a Glance" column to get the key facts of the case study, starting with information about Valvoline.

Key Learnings from the Textel Case Study Example

• Include your client’s ROI right in the title of the case study.
• Add an "At a Glance" column to your case study PDF to make it easy to get insights without needing to read all the text.

19. " Hunt Club and Happeo — a tech-enabled love story ," by Happeo

In this blog-post-like case study, Happeo opens with a quote from the client, then dives into a compelling heading: "Technology at the forefront of Hunt Club's strategy." Say you’re investigating Happeo as a solution and consider your firm to be technology-driven. This approach would spark your curiosity about why the client chose to work with Happeo. It also effectively communicates the software’s value proposition without sounding like it’s coming from an in-house marketing team.

Every paragraph is a quote written from the customer’s perspective. Later down the page, the case study also dives into "the features that changed the game for Hunt Club," giving Happeo a chance to highlight some of the platform’s most salient features.

Key Learnings from the Happeo Case Study Example

• Consider writing the entirety of the case study from the perspective of the customer.
• Include a list of the features that convinced your client to go with you.

20. " Red Sox Season Campaign ," by CTP Boston

What's great about CTP's case study page for their Red Sox Season Campaign is their combination of video, images, and text. A video automatically begins playing when you visit the page, and as you scroll, you'll see more embedded videos of Red Sox players, a compilation of print ads, and social media images you can click to enlarge.

At the bottom, it says "Find out how we can do something similar for your brand." The page is clean, cohesive, and aesthetically pleasing. It invites viewers to appreciate the well-roundedness of CTP's campaign for Boston's beloved baseball team.

Key Learnings from the CTP Case Study Example

• Include a video in the heading of the case study.
• Close with a call-to-action that makes leads want to turn into prospects.

21. " Acoustic ," by Genuine

Sometimes, simple is key. Genuine's case study for Acoustic is straightforward and minimal, with just a few short paragraphs, including "Reimagining the B2B website experience," "Speaking to marketers 1:1," and "Inventing Together." After the core of the case study, we then see a quote from Acoustic’s CMO and the results Genuine achieved for the company.

The simplicity of the page allows the reader to focus on both the visual aspects and the copy. The page displays Genuine's brand personality while offering the viewer all the necessary information they need.

• You don’t need to write a lot to create a great case study. Keep it simple.
• Always include quantifiable data to illustrate the results you achieved for your client.

22. " Using Apptio Targetprocess Automated Rules in Wargaming ," by Apptio

Apptio’s case study for Wargaming summarizes three key pieces of information right at the beginning: The goals, the obstacles, and the results.

Readers then have the opportunity to continue reading — or they can walk away right then with the information they need. This case study also excels in keeping the human interest factor by formatting the information like an interview.

The piece is well-organized and uses compelling headers to keep the reader engaged. Despite its length, Apptio's case study is appealing enough to keep the viewer's attention. Every Apptio case study ends with a "recommendation for other companies" section, where the client can give advice for other companies that are looking for a similar solution but aren’t sure how to get started.

Key Learnings from the Apptio Case Study Example

• Put your client in an advisory role by giving them the opportunity to give recommendations to other companies that are reading the case study.
• Include the takeaways from the case study right at the beginning so prospects quickly get what they need.

23. " Airbnb + Zendesk: building a powerful solution together ," by Zendesk

Zendesk's Airbnb case study reads like a blog post, and focuses equally on Zendesk and Airbnb, highlighting a true partnership between the companies. To captivate readers, it begins like this: "Halfway around the globe is a place to stay with your name on it. At least for a weekend."

The piece focuses on telling a good story and provides photographs of beautiful Airbnb locations. In a case study meant to highlight Zendesk's helpfulness, nothing could be more authentic than their decision to focus on Airbnb's service in such great detail.

Key Learnings from the Zendesk Case Study Example

• Include images of your client’s offerings — not necessarily of the service or product you provided. Notice how Zendesk doesn’t include screenshots of its product.
• Include a call-to-action right at the beginning of the case study. Zendesk gives you two options: to find a solution or start a trial.

24. " Biobot Customer Success Story: Rollins College, Winter Park, Florida ," by Biobot

Like some of the other top examples in this list, Biobot opens its case study with a quote from its client, which captures the value proposition of working with Biobot. It mentions the COVID pandemic and goes into detail about the challenges the client faced during this time.

This case study is structured more like a news article than a traditional case study. This format can work in more formal industries where decision-makers need to see in-depth information about the case. Be sure to test different methods and measure engagement .

Key Learnings from the Biobot Case Study Example

• Mention environmental, public health, or economic emergencies and how you helped your client get past such difficult times.
• Feel free to write the case study like a normal blog post, but be sure to test different methods to find the one that best works for you.

25. " Discovering Cost Savings With Efficient Decision Making ," by Gartner

You don't always need a ton of text or a video to convey your message — sometimes, you just need a few paragraphs and bullet points. Gartner does a fantastic job of quickly providing the fundamental statistics a potential customer would need to know, without boggling down their readers with dense paragraphs. The case study closes with a shaded box that summarizes the impact that Gartner had on its client. It includes a quote and a call-to-action to "Learn More."

Key Learnings from the Gartner Case Study Example

• Feel free to keep the case study short.
• Include a call-to-action at the bottom that takes the reader to a page that most relates to them.

26. " Bringing an Operator to the Game ," by Redapt

This case study example by Redapt is another great demonstration of the power of summarizing your case study’s takeaways right at the start of the study. Redapt includes three easy-to-scan columns: "The problem," "the solution," and "the outcome." But its most notable feature is a section titled "Moment of clarity," which shows why this particular project was difficult or challenging.

The section is shaded in green, making it impossible to miss. Redapt does the same thing for each case study. In the same way, you should highlight the "turning point" for both you and your client when you were working toward a solution.

Key Learnings from the Redapt Case Study Example

• Highlight the turning point for both you and your client during the solution-seeking process.
• Use the same structure (including the same headings) for your case studies to make them easy to scan and read.

27. " Virtual Call Center Sees 300% Boost In Contact Rate ," by Convoso

Convoso’s PDF case study for Digital Market Media immediately mentions the results that the client achieved and takes advantage of white space. On the second page, the case study presents more influential results. It’s colorful and engaging and closes with a spread that prompts readers to request a demo.

Key Learnings from the Convoso Case Study Example

• List the results of your work right at the beginning of the case study.
• Use color to differentiate your case study from others. Convoso’s example is one of the most colorful ones on this list.

28. " Ensuring quality of service during a pandemic ," by Ericsson

Ericsson’s case study page for Orange Spain is an excellent example of using diverse written and visual media — such as videos, graphs, and quotes — to showcase the success a client experienced. Throughout the case study, Ericsson provides links to product and service pages users might find relevant as they’re reading the study.

For instance, under the heading "Preloaded with the power of automation," Ericsson mentions its Ericsson Operations Engine product, then links to that product page. It closes the case study with a link to another product page.

Key Learnings from the Ericsson Case Study Example

• Link to product pages throughout the case study so that readers can learn more about the solution you offer.
• Use multimedia to engage users as they read the case study.

Start creating your case study.

Now that you've got a great list of examples of case studies, think about a topic you'd like to write about that highlights your company or work you did with a customer.

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A generative AI reset: Rewiring to turn potential into value in 2024

It’s time for a generative AI (gen AI) reset. The initial enthusiasm and flurry of activity in 2023 is giving way to second thoughts and recalibrations as companies realize that capturing gen AI’s enormous potential value is harder than expected .

With 2024 shaping up to be the year for gen AI to prove its value, companies should keep in mind the hard lessons learned with digital and AI transformations: competitive advantage comes from building organizational and technological capabilities to broadly innovate, deploy, and improve solutions at scale—in effect, rewiring the business  for distributed digital and AI innovation.

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QuantumBlack, McKinsey’s AI arm, helps companies transform using the power of technology, technical expertise, and industry experts. With thousands of practitioners at QuantumBlack (data engineers, data scientists, product managers, designers, and software engineers) and McKinsey (industry and domain experts), we are working to solve the world’s most important AI challenges. QuantumBlack Labs is our center of technology development and client innovation, which has been driving cutting-edge advancements and developments in AI through locations across the globe.

Companies looking to score early wins with gen AI should move quickly. But those hoping that gen AI offers a shortcut past the tough—and necessary—organizational surgery are likely to meet with disappointing results. Launching pilots is (relatively) easy; getting pilots to scale and create meaningful value is hard because they require a broad set of changes to the way work actually gets done.

Let’s briefly look at what this has meant for one Pacific region telecommunications company. The company hired a chief data and AI officer with a mandate to “enable the organization to create value with data and AI.” The chief data and AI officer worked with the business to develop the strategic vision and implement the road map for the use cases. After a scan of domains (that is, customer journeys or functions) and use case opportunities across the enterprise, leadership prioritized the home-servicing/maintenance domain to pilot and then scale as part of a larger sequencing of initiatives. They targeted, in particular, the development of a gen AI tool to help dispatchers and service operators better predict the types of calls and parts needed when servicing homes.

Leadership put in place cross-functional product teams with shared objectives and incentives to build the gen AI tool. As part of an effort to upskill the entire enterprise to better work with data and gen AI tools, they also set up a data and AI academy, which the dispatchers and service operators enrolled in as part of their training. To provide the technology and data underpinnings for gen AI, the chief data and AI officer also selected a large language model (LLM) and cloud provider that could meet the needs of the domain as well as serve other parts of the enterprise. The chief data and AI officer also oversaw the implementation of a data architecture so that the clean and reliable data (including service histories and inventory databases) needed to build the gen AI tool could be delivered quickly and responsibly.

Our book Rewired: The McKinsey Guide to Outcompeting in the Age of Digital and AI (Wiley, June 2023) provides a detailed manual on the six capabilities needed to deliver the kind of broad change that harnesses digital and AI technology. In this article, we will explore how to extend each of those capabilities to implement a successful gen AI program at scale. While recognizing that these are still early days and that there is much more to learn, our experience has shown that breaking open the gen AI opportunity requires companies to rewire how they work in the following ways.

Figure out where gen AI copilots can give you a real competitive advantage

The broad excitement around gen AI and its relative ease of use has led to a burst of experimentation across organizations. Most of these initiatives, however, won’t generate a competitive advantage. One bank, for example, bought tens of thousands of GitHub Copilot licenses, but since it didn’t have a clear sense of how to work with the technology, progress was slow. Another unfocused effort we often see is when companies move to incorporate gen AI into their customer service capabilities. Customer service is a commodity capability, not part of the core business, for most companies. While gen AI might help with productivity in such cases, it won’t create a competitive advantage.

To create competitive advantage, companies should first understand the difference between being a “taker” (a user of available tools, often via APIs and subscription services), a “shaper” (an integrator of available models with proprietary data), and a “maker” (a builder of LLMs). For now, the maker approach is too expensive for most companies, so the sweet spot for businesses is implementing a taker model for productivity improvements while building shaper applications for competitive advantage.

Much of gen AI’s near-term value is closely tied to its ability to help people do their current jobs better. In this way, gen AI tools act as copilots that work side by side with an employee, creating an initial block of code that a developer can adapt, for example, or drafting a requisition order for a new part that a maintenance worker in the field can review and submit (see sidebar “Copilot examples across three generative AI archetypes”). This means companies should be focusing on where copilot technology can have the biggest impact on their priority programs.

Copilot examples across three generative AI archetypes

• “Taker” copilots help real estate customers sift through property options and find the most promising one, write code for a developer, and summarize investor transcripts.
• “Shaper” copilots provide recommendations to sales reps for upselling customers by connecting generative AI tools to customer relationship management systems, financial systems, and customer behavior histories; create virtual assistants to personalize treatments for patients; and recommend solutions for maintenance workers based on historical data.
• “Maker” copilots are foundation models that lab scientists at pharmaceutical companies can use to find and test new and better drugs more quickly.

Some industrial companies, for example, have identified maintenance as a critical domain for their business. Reviewing maintenance reports and spending time with workers on the front lines can help determine where a gen AI copilot could make a big difference, such as in identifying issues with equipment failures quickly and early on. A gen AI copilot can also help identify root causes of truck breakdowns and recommend resolutions much more quickly than usual, as well as act as an ongoing source for best practices or standard operating procedures.

The challenge with copilots is figuring out how to generate revenue from increased productivity. In the case of customer service centers, for example, companies can stop recruiting new agents and use attrition to potentially achieve real financial gains. Defining the plans for how to generate revenue from the increased productivity up front, therefore, is crucial to capturing the value.

Upskill the talent you have but be clear about the gen-AI-specific skills you need

By now, most companies have a decent understanding of the technical gen AI skills they need, such as model fine-tuning, vector database administration, prompt engineering, and context engineering. In many cases, these are skills that you can train your existing workforce to develop. Those with existing AI and machine learning (ML) capabilities have a strong head start. Data engineers, for example, can learn multimodal processing and vector database management, MLOps (ML operations) engineers can extend their skills to LLMOps (LLM operations), and data scientists can develop prompt engineering, bias detection, and fine-tuning skills.

A sample of new generative AI skills needed

The following are examples of new skills needed for the successful deployment of generative AI tools:

• data scientist:
• prompt engineering
• in-context learning
• bias detection
• pattern identification
• reinforcement learning from human feedback
• hyperparameter/large language model fine-tuning; transfer learning
• data engineer:
• data wrangling and data warehousing
• data pipeline construction
• multimodal processing
• vector database management

The learning process can take two to three months to get to a decent level of competence because of the complexities in learning what various LLMs can and can’t do and how best to use them. The coders need to gain experience building software, testing, and validating answers, for example. It took one financial-services company three months to train its best data scientists to a high level of competence. While courses and documentation are available—many LLM providers have boot camps for developers—we have found that the most effective way to build capabilities at scale is through apprenticeship, training people to then train others, and building communities of practitioners. Rotating experts through teams to train others, scheduling regular sessions for people to share learnings, and hosting biweekly documentation review sessions are practices that have proven successful in building communities of practitioners (see sidebar “A sample of new generative AI skills needed”).

It’s important to bear in mind that successful gen AI skills are about more than coding proficiency. Our experience in developing our own gen AI platform, Lilli , showed us that the best gen AI technical talent has design skills to uncover where to focus solutions, contextual understanding to ensure the most relevant and high-quality answers are generated, collaboration skills to work well with knowledge experts (to test and validate answers and develop an appropriate curation approach), strong forensic skills to figure out causes of breakdowns (is the issue the data, the interpretation of the user’s intent, the quality of metadata on embeddings, or something else?), and anticipation skills to conceive of and plan for possible outcomes and to put the right kind of tracking into their code. A pure coder who doesn’t intrinsically have these skills may not be as useful a team member.

While current upskilling is largely based on a “learn on the job” approach, we see a rapid market emerging for people who have learned these skills over the past year. That skill growth is moving quickly. GitHub reported that developers were working on gen AI projects “in big numbers,” and that 65,000 public gen AI projects were created on its platform in 2023—a jump of almost 250 percent over the previous year. If your company is just starting its gen AI journey, you could consider hiring two or three senior engineers who have built a gen AI shaper product for their companies. This could greatly accelerate your efforts.

Form a centralized team to establish standards that enable responsible scaling

To ensure that all parts of the business can scale gen AI capabilities, centralizing competencies is a natural first move. The critical focus for this central team will be to develop and put in place protocols and standards to support scale, ensuring that teams can access models while also minimizing risk and containing costs. The team’s work could include, for example, procuring models and prescribing ways to access them, developing standards for data readiness, setting up approved prompt libraries, and allocating resources.

While developing Lilli, our team had its mind on scale when it created an open plug-in architecture and setting standards for how APIs should function and be built.  They developed standardized tooling and infrastructure where teams could securely experiment and access a GPT LLM , a gateway with preapproved APIs that teams could access, and a self-serve developer portal. Our goal is that this approach, over time, can help shift “Lilli as a product” (that a handful of teams use to build specific solutions) to “Lilli as a platform” (that teams across the enterprise can access to build other products).

For teams developing gen AI solutions, squad composition will be similar to AI teams but with data engineers and data scientists with gen AI experience and more contributors from risk management, compliance, and legal functions. The general idea of staffing squads with resources that are federated from the different expertise areas will not change, but the skill composition of a gen-AI-intensive squad will.

Set up the technology architecture to scale

Building a gen AI model is often relatively straightforward, but making it fully operational at scale is a different matter entirely. We’ve seen engineers build a basic chatbot in a week, but releasing a stable, accurate, and compliant version that scales can take four months. That’s why, our experience shows, the actual model costs may be less than 10 to 15 percent of the total costs of the solution.

Building for scale doesn’t mean building a new technology architecture. But it does mean focusing on a few core decisions that simplify and speed up processes without breaking the bank. Three such decisions stand out:

• Focus on reusing your technology. Reusing code can increase the development speed of gen AI use cases by 30 to 50 percent. One good approach is simply creating a source for approved tools, code, and components. A financial-services company, for example, created a library of production-grade tools, which had been approved by both the security and legal teams, and made them available in a library for teams to use. More important is taking the time to identify and build those capabilities that are common across the most priority use cases. The same financial-services company, for example, identified three components that could be reused for more than 100 identified use cases. By building those first, they were able to generate a significant portion of the code base for all the identified use cases—essentially giving every application a big head start.
• Focus the architecture on enabling efficient connections between gen AI models and internal systems. For gen AI models to work effectively in the shaper archetype, they need access to a business’s data and applications. Advances in integration and orchestration frameworks have significantly reduced the effort required to make those connections. But laying out what those integrations are and how to enable them is critical to ensure these models work efficiently and to avoid the complexity that creates technical debt  (the “tax” a company pays in terms of time and resources needed to redress existing technology issues). Chief information officers and chief technology officers can define reference architectures and integration standards for their organizations. Key elements should include a model hub, which contains trained and approved models that can be provisioned on demand; standard APIs that act as bridges connecting gen AI models to applications or data; and context management and caching, which speed up processing by providing models with relevant information from enterprise data sources.
• Build up your testing and quality assurance capabilities. Our own experience building Lilli taught us to prioritize testing over development. Our team invested in not only developing testing protocols for each stage of development but also aligning the entire team so that, for example, it was clear who specifically needed to sign off on each stage of the process. This slowed down initial development but sped up the overall delivery pace and quality by cutting back on errors and the time needed to fix mistakes.

Ensure data quality and focus on unstructured data to fuel your models

The ability of a business to generate and scale value from gen AI models will depend on how well it takes advantage of its own data. As with technology, targeted upgrades to existing data architecture  are needed to maximize the future strategic benefits of gen AI:

• Be targeted in ramping up your data quality and data augmentation efforts. While data quality has always been an important issue, the scale and scope of data that gen AI models can use—especially unstructured data—has made this issue much more consequential. For this reason, it’s critical to get the data foundations right, from clarifying decision rights to defining clear data processes to establishing taxonomies so models can access the data they need. The companies that do this well tie their data quality and augmentation efforts to the specific AI/gen AI application and use case—you don’t need this data foundation to extend to every corner of the enterprise. This could mean, for example, developing a new data repository for all equipment specifications and reported issues to better support maintenance copilot applications.
• Understand what value is locked into your unstructured data. Most organizations have traditionally focused their data efforts on structured data (values that can be organized in tables, such as prices and features). But the real value from LLMs comes from their ability to work with unstructured data (for example, PowerPoint slides, videos, and text). Companies can map out which unstructured data sources are most valuable and establish metadata tagging standards so models can process the data and teams can find what they need (tagging is particularly important to help companies remove data from models as well, if necessary). Be creative in thinking about data opportunities. Some companies, for example, are interviewing senior employees as they retire and feeding that captured institutional knowledge into an LLM to help improve their copilot performance.
• Optimize to lower costs at scale. There is often as much as a tenfold difference between what companies pay for data and what they could be paying if they optimized their data infrastructure and underlying costs. This issue often stems from companies scaling their proofs of concept without optimizing their data approach. Two costs generally stand out. One is storage costs arising from companies uploading terabytes of data into the cloud and wanting that data available 24/7. In practice, companies rarely need more than 10 percent of their data to have that level of availability, and accessing the rest over a 24- or 48-hour period is a much cheaper option. The other costs relate to computation with models that require on-call access to thousands of processors to run. This is especially the case when companies are building their own models (the maker archetype) but also when they are using pretrained models and running them with their own data and use cases (the shaper archetype). Companies could take a close look at how they can optimize computation costs on cloud platforms—for instance, putting some models in a queue to run when processors aren’t being used (such as when Americans go to bed and consumption of computing services like Netflix decreases) is a much cheaper option.

Build trust and reusability to drive adoption and scale

Because many people have concerns about gen AI, the bar on explaining how these tools work is much higher than for most solutions. People who use the tools want to know how they work, not just what they do. So it’s important to invest extra time and money to build trust by ensuring model accuracy and making it easy to check answers.

One insurance company, for example, created a gen AI tool to help manage claims. As part of the tool, it listed all the guardrails that had been put in place, and for each answer provided a link to the sentence or page of the relevant policy documents. The company also used an LLM to generate many variations of the same question to ensure answer consistency. These steps, among others, were critical to helping end users build trust in the tool.

Part of the training for maintenance teams using a gen AI tool should be to help them understand the limitations of models and how best to get the right answers. That includes teaching workers strategies to get to the best answer as fast as possible by starting with broad questions then narrowing them down. This provides the model with more context, and it also helps remove any bias of the people who might think they know the answer already. Having model interfaces that look and feel the same as existing tools also helps users feel less pressured to learn something new each time a new application is introduced.

Getting to scale means that businesses will need to stop building one-off solutions that are hard to use for other similar use cases. One global energy and materials company, for example, has established ease of reuse as a key requirement for all gen AI models, and has found in early iterations that 50 to 60 percent of its components can be reused. This means setting standards for developing gen AI assets (for example, prompts and context) that can be easily reused for other cases.

While many of the risk issues relating to gen AI are evolutions of discussions that were already brewing—for instance, data privacy, security, bias risk, job displacement, and intellectual property protection—gen AI has greatly expanded that risk landscape. Just 21 percent of companies reporting AI adoption say they have established policies governing employees’ use of gen AI technologies.

Similarly, a set of tests for AI/gen AI solutions should be established to demonstrate that data privacy, debiasing, and intellectual property protection are respected. Some organizations, in fact, are proposing to release models accompanied with documentation that details their performance characteristics. Documenting your decisions and rationales can be particularly helpful in conversations with regulators.

In some ways, this article is premature—so much is changing that we’ll likely have a profoundly different understanding of gen AI and its capabilities in a year’s time. But the core truths of finding value and driving change will still apply. How well companies have learned those lessons may largely determine how successful they’ll be in capturing that value.

The authors wish to thank Michael Chui, Juan Couto, Ben Ellencweig, Josh Gartner, Bryce Hall, Holger Harreis, Phil Hudelson, Suzana Iacob, Sid Kamath, Neerav Kingsland, Kitti Lakner, Robert Levin, Matej Macak, Lapo Mori, Alex Peluffo, Aldo Rosales, Erik Roth, Abdul Wahab Shaikh, and Stephen Xu for their contributions to this article.

This article was edited by Barr Seitz, an editorial director in the New York office.

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