Immunex (later Amgen)

Their own systems had locked them out.

Immunex was a serious biotech, later acquired by Amgen. The aging systems that delivered its own documents had become a black box — nobody left could say exactly how they worked, and that gets more expensive the longer it's ignored.

Why line-for-line was the whole job.

In most conversions, close is fine. Here it was not. A converted document had to say exactly what the original said, in exactly the place it said it, because the people reading it were making decisions that depended on it.

Old systems don't have to be dead ends.

A system nobody understands anymore feels like something to throw away and rebuild from zero. Usually it is not. Taken apart carefully, it gives up how it works — and once you know that, you can carry it forward instead of starting over.