Customer Solution Case Study
/ Printer Manufacturer’s BI Users Gain Self-Service Analysis and Reporting at Lower Cost
Overview
Country or Region: Japan
Industry: Manufacturing—High tech and electronics
Customer Profile
Konica Minolta Business Technologies develops information devices and digital printing systems such as printers, copiers, and fax machines. It also helps customers design document processing workflows.
Business Situation
Konica Minolta wanted to do a better job of analyzing customer service data so it could determine opportunities for additional sales and also improve its customer service delivery.
Solution
Konica Minolta deployed Microsoft SQL Server 2012 to take advantage of improved business intelligence (BI) capabilities that empower business users to service their own reporting needs.
Benefits
· Provides BI users with self-service reporting capabilities
· Reduces ICT staff’s report development workload
· Offers broader use of data at a lower cost / “By using Power View, our business users can immediately gain clear views of data. This increases the speed of decision making and dramatically reduces operational workloads and costs.”
Mr. Toshihiko Nakazawa, Customer Satisfaction (CS) Planning Director, CS Headquarters,
Konica Minolta Business Technologies
Konica Minolta Business Technologies wanted to expand its growth in the highly competitive office printing market and knew that analyzing current customer service for new opportunities data held the key. It upgraded to Microsoft SQL Server 2012 to improve its business intelligence (BI). With features such as Power View, business users could quickly view and analyze data on their own without having to rely on IT staff. The solution also made it easier to run reports. With less report development work, the IT staff is able to focus on other tasks. Ultimately, Konica Minolta hopes that better data analysis will lead to more efficient customer service operations and higher revenues from increased sales of new products and services.
Situation
Konica Minolta Business Technologies provides document solutions for office environments, with a focus on copiers, multifunction printers (MFPs), facsimile machines, microfilm systems, and related supplies. A division of the Konica Minolta Group, the company is headquartered in Tokyo and employs nearly 20,000 people.
Konica Minolta faced a challenging and competitive global market for MFPs. MFP market growth has slowed as companies do more online, reduce their paper and print usage, and increase their efforts to be environmentally responsible.
To meet these challenges, Konica Minolta has shifted its businesses from selling products to providing total customer solutions. However, the company needed better business intelligence (BI) to determine which of its products and services customers were using and which they might still need. The employees most in touch with how customers were using the company’s products were the 10,000 customer engineers working for the Konica Minolta Customer Satisfaction (CS) Headquarters. These individuals are responsible for maintaining Konica Minolta products being used by customers around the world. As a result, they know firsthand how customers are using the company’s products and what, if any, problems they are having.
The data that these engineers collect on how customers are using Konica Minolta products held enormous potential for improving customer satisfaction, increasing product and service sales, and enhancing operational efficiency. To realize these goals, the CS Division wanted to do a better job of analyzing this data and creating strategies based on better BI.
The CS Division tabulated this data manually using Microsoft Access database software and Microsoft Office Excel spreadsheet software. However, it realized that there were limits to this approach as the number of its customers and the amount of data continued to grow. Management realized that it needed a dedicated BI tool that employees could use to more easily, rapidly, and accurately analyze massive volumes of data.
Solution
Konica Minolta Business Technologies had long used Microsoft SQL Server data management software and its BI capabilities, beginning with SQL Server 2005 and moving to Microsoft SQL Server 2008.
When Microsoft introduced Microsoft SQL Server 2012, Konica Minolta was ready to upgrade. “The first reason we were eager to move to SQL Server 2012 was ease of development,” says Mr. Takahiko Akiyama, ICT Department Manager in the CS Planning Division, CS Headquarters, Konica Minolta Business Technologies. “Our company uses a wide range of Microsoft products, from Windows operating systems to Microsoft Office for administrative work. Since they are all unified by the Windows platform, databases using SQL Server are superior at linking with other software. The second reason for upgrading was the usability improvements in SQL Server 2012. In particular, the new Power View feature makes it possible for our business users to meet their BI needs on their own.”
By using Power View, a self-service BI tool, business users can create visually engaging reports. With previous versions of SQL Server, cube creation and report generation operations in SQL Server Reporting Services had to be done by the company’s Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Group. “We would hold a meeting for each report request and then create a data cube and report afterward,” says Ms. Naomi Numano, who works in the ICT Department of the CS Planning Division, CS Headquarters, Konica Minolta Business Technologies. “By using Power View, our users can freely extract, process, and analyze the data themselves. This is a great time savings for the ICT staff and our users.”
Benefits
By upgrading to SQL Server 2012, Konica Minolta Business Technologies has been able to help business users create their own reports and free the ICT staff from time-consuming report preparation work. Ultimately, the company envisions that better analysis of customer service data will increase sales and help it improve customer service.
Provides BI Users with Self-Service Reporting Capabilities
The biggest benefit of Konica Minolta moving to SQL Server 2012 has been increased user self-sufficiency in meeting reporting needs. “Current customer and business data are critical to have for business decisions,” says Mr. Toshihiko Nakazawa, CS Planning Director, CS Headquarters, Konica Minolta Business Technologies. “Top management and on-site managers want the most recent data as quickly as possible, but until now we often had to make them wait for data collection and gathering. By using Power View, our business users can immediately gain clear views of data. This increases the speed of decision making and dramatically reduces operational workloads and costs.”
Mr. Akira Kawai, Section Chief in the ICT Department, CS Planning Division, CS Headquarters, Konica Minolta Business Technologies adds, “Many vendors claim that their BI tools provide self-service capability, but with SQL Server 2012, the concept is working for us for the first time. Previously, when business users said that they wanted to analyze data, we would have to first create a reporting cube for them. Using the new Power View feature in SQL Server 2012, users can freely process any data they want in a format that fits their needs and then use it for analysis. This increases the speed of on-site decision making and mobility, and it helps promote service quality that better fits the needs of regional customers.”
In addition to being able to better visualize data, business users can also reuse data. “By using Power View, I can visualize the data I want to create in the desired format myself,” says Akiko Horiuchi of the Service Business Strategy Department, CS Planning Division, CS Headquarters, Konica Minolta Business Technologies. “I can also change the subject of analysis, eliminating the need to repeatedly create and send reports with similar content.”
The dynamic visualization power of Power View is very effective. Being freed from the routine work of repeatedly creating the same item, business users can pour their energy into more creative activities such as strategic planning.
“Power View combines the advantages of Microsoft Excel pivot tables and SQL Server Reporting Services and evolves them even further,” says Ms. Rumi Ikeda of the Service Business Strategy Department, CS Planning Division, CS Headquarters, Konica Minolta Business Technologies. “By reusing data, we are able to utilize it with a higher degree of freedom than before, such as using it as material that can be imported into Microsoft PowerPoint for all types of meetings.”
Reduces ICT Staff’s Report Development Workload
Ms. Numano adds that as a result of introducing the new SQL Server 2012 BI functions, the meetings between her team and business users have been abbreviated or eliminated. When it is necessary to have a discussion, a videoconference is sufficient. Ms. Horiuchi says, “When responding individually to report requests from locations around the world, we are able to support the quality of service for each region by being able to provide data in an optimized format for each of those requests.”
Mr. Kawai tested SQL Server 2012 and praised the ease of developing solutions with it. “Our development team can easily adapt the storage of the Microsoft .NET Framework, and BI report creation is possible with almost no coding,” he says. “For BI functionality in particular, almost all of the necessary functions are standard, meaning that we don’t have to add extra options. This contributes to both increased development efficiency and better return on our investment.”
Offers Broader Use of Data at a Lower Cost
Ideas for using SQL Server 2012 are popping up all over Konica Minolta Business Technologies. For example, the division currently runs an internal portal on Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 but is upgrading to Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010. The company plans to include a BI site within the new portal.
From management’s perspective, Mr. Akiyama sees the good balance between cost and performance bringing about new merits in the company’s BI initiatives. “When you start with the ease of development and the free utilization of data by users themselves, and then you add the fact that our company uses Microsoft volume licenses, we expect to realize a reduction in total costs and increased operational efficiency,” he says. “As a result of strengthening our BI infrastructure and connecting it to other Microsoft products we have, we feel that we have created an environment where users can better realize the value of our information tools at a reasonable cost.”
Ultimately, improved BI tools will bolster the company’s ability to improve worldwide customer support and expand sales to current customers.
Microsoft Server Product Portfolio
For more information about the Microsoft server product portfolio, go to:
www.microsoft.com/servers