Driving 8 years of digital transformation for a $2B industrial leader

  • Category: Enterprise
  • Industry: Industrials
  • Service: Tech modernization/Cloud migration
  • Client: Heavy industry leader

A global commercial explosives provider engaged Symphony to lead its cloud migration and digital transformation journey. Over the course of an 8-year partnership, we modernized legacy systems, cut blast simulation time by 93%, digitized 30% of the market, and reduced infrastructure costs by 60%—becoming the client's #1 tech partner in the process.

Problem

To remain the market leader in a highly regulated and safety-critical industry, a $2B explosives and blasting systems company with 3K+ employees needed to modernize legacy desktop systems, diversify digital offerings, and improve operational performance across 30+ global hubs.

Solution

Symphony delivered a full digital transformation program over several phases:

  • Legacy Modernization and Cloud Migration: Migrated desktop tools to unified, cloud-based platform
  • Re-architected the system using microservices, API gateways, and dedicated services
  • New Feature Development: Integrated blast design targets, IoT sensors, and blast prediction models
  • Developed 3D model visualization, advanced reporting, and multilingual/regulatory features
  • Scalable Architecture: Built out DevOps pipelines and scalable infrastructure

Technology: Delivered seamless migration interface for existing user data. Enabled regulatory compliance and rapid data centralization. Reduced blast simulation time from 70 minutes to under 5.

Under the hood

The technical foundation for long-term innovation included:

  • Migration from legacy desktop apps to cloud-based microservices
  • Centralized data warehouse for analytics and reporting
  • 3D modeling and visualization with IoT integration
  • Multi-language support and regulatory compliance features
  • DevOps automation with CI/CD pipelines and infrastructure as code

Impact

  • Became the client's #1 tech partner across all business units
  • Cut blast simulation time from 70 minutes to under 5 minutes
  • Digitized ~30% of the commercial explosives market through platform growth
  • 60% reduction in infrastructure costs via cloud migration and optimization
  • Enabled compliance with global safety regulations across 30+ countries
  • 93% - Reduction in blast simulation time
  • 30% - Market digitization through platform growth
  • 60% - Reduction in infrastructure costs
  • 8 years - Trusted partnership duration

https://symphony.is/our-impact/case-studies/heavy-industry-leader