03052012 RetailTech Japan John Boladian
RetailTech Japan
John Boladian, Group Marketing Manager, Asia, Microsoft
Razorfish, NEC, Toshiba TEC, Fujitsu
March 5, 2012
JOHN BOLADIAN: Thank you, Masato-san . Good morning, everybody. I'm very,
very pleased to be here today to talk with you all. On behalf of Microsoft and all of our
partners, I really welcome you to join us here today at the Intercontinental for a
presentation.
The agenda that we have -- well, let me do a little introduction. I think Masato gave me a
quick one, but just let me introduce myself. I look after the Windows Embedded
Business for Asia Pacific and Japan based in Singapore, but I travel around the region
quite extensively. One of the things that that allows me to do is work very closely with
our customers and partners to see what are the kinds of technologies that they're
developing, together with us, and addressing the needs in the marketplace.
And specifically today we're going to talk about retail systems, and the technology that's
evolving in those -- in that area.
The agenda for today, firstly, I'm going to talk a little bit about intelligent systems, and
I'll go into a little bit of detail later on about what that actually means. Secondly, we're
going to go through a demonstration. You'll see the demonstration here on my left-hand
side. We have some great partners that are here with us today that will help to walk you
through, and help you understand a little bit better about what intelligent systems really
means in the retail environment. Lastly, we'll be working with some of our partners here
in Japan to help show you what they've been working on from a much more local
perspective here, and in terms of how they're rolling out intelligent systems together with
their devices, and their solutions into the marketplace.
So, many of you are probably asking what are intelligent systems? I think it's a very
good question. If we look at the evolution of the embedded industry over the last 30 or
40 years, where we've come from having very small and customized pieces of hardware
and software that generally worked very independently, we've really seen that progress
over time.
Microsoft has been addressing that marketplace for the last almost 15 years. In fact, we
started developing our first embedded operating system in 1996, and that was called
Windows CE 1.0. And over time we've seen many things happen in the industry. We've
seen greater intelligence in the operating system platform. We've seen hardware evolve
over time to become more and more powerful. And, thirdly, we've seen network
connectivity, the ability to network devices so that they communicate with each other,
and also with other back-end systems, storage systems start to become very common.
And what has happened is, embedded devices have evolved along with that, and so we've
seen that when we combine all of these things together that we're starting to see now endto-end systems start to develop, which not only capture data and store it, which is where
we really came from in the past, but to be able to transmit that data and use intelligent
software to help to make business decisions on what data is coming from the
environment.
So, imagine now we have the ability to capture information, store it, transmit it into
various different formats, into forms, and then take that and really start to drive some
business decisions. And I'll talk in a little bit of detail about how that fits into a retail
environment later on during the presentation.
But, you can really see that when we start drawing insights, and take actions from the
information that we start to gather, that that really will start to drive additional value for
owners, operators, and managers of those businesses, and especially in retail
environments start to provide increased customer experiences. Again, we'll see what
that's going to look like.
If we talk a little bit about intelligent systems and what is the opportunity in this
marketplace, we'll see that today we're seeing around 800 million units being deployed
around the world of devices that are making up the different devices that go into
intelligent systems. We'll see that according to IDC this is going to go through a
fundamental growth phase over the next three to four years, and we will start to see these
type of devices that can capture, transmit and communicate data. Intelligent systems, as
we call it, start to become a significant share of the market for embedded devices.
And so this will grow into a $500 billion industry by 2015. And if we look at that as a
global number, and compare that to how that's going to evolve for Asia Pacific as a
region, together with IDC and Intel, our studies have shown us that this will be one-third
of the opportunity right here in Asia. And so, not only are we going to see great growth
around the world, but we'll also see an increased share of this start to happen right here in
our home territory.
Now, if we look at the Asian market, and look at the number of devices that we're going
to see in the intelligent systems area, one thing you'll see is that although only 25 percent
of these devices will be in this intelligent systems category, if you look at the opportunity
for device makers, system integrators, solution providers, software developers, 70 percent
of this revenue opportunity for them is going to come from this category.
So, what that essentially means is that the value that businesses place on being able to get
data and drive decisions based on that data is going to drive a lion's share, a majority
share of the investment and the opportunity for our device partners, and other partners in
the industry. And so that's really why they're going after this as a primary opportunity.
And so, today, if we look at the retail environment and say, around the world if we have
15 million units this year being shipped in this category, this will grow at a fairly
substantial rate over the next few years into 28 million units by 2015, which is going to
grow substantially compared to many of the other segments, or the other product
categories in this particular segment. So, this provides an immense opportunity for
Microsoft, our partners to be able to capitalize on this and address the need that's
appearing in the marketplace.
So, let's look now at some of the challenges in retail, and talk a little bit about how
together we're going to go and solve some of those. We think today, although technology
has really progressed significantly in the retail marketplace, if you look around here in
Japan and go into some retailers, you see some very advanced technologies being used in
the hands of shop assistants, sales guides, and also in the hands of the management that's
deploying the technology.
One thing fundamentally that still remains is, there's a significant amount of
fragmentation between the systems. And so what you see is areas of technology which,
although they benefit the business, do not really seamlessly interoperate end to end. They
don't work together on an end-to-end basis.
And this causes challenges in a couple of areas. The first one is, how do you manage and
look after different systems. You've got to train your IT staff to be able to support the
different systems. Also, you know, they're looking after infrastructure, POS terminals
that might be in the shop front, hand-held terminals in the hands of shop assistants, and
shop clerks. And so they have a challenge of actually managing such a diverse
technology infrastructure.
The second part of it is really a gap in terms of being able to give business intelligence to
the business owner, to gather that intelligence and allow them to really take action based
on the information that they're getting. And so you might be able to capture information
about a customer when they come into your store. You might be able to get their loyalty
information from the database. But not being able to really drive decisions around where
to put product placement based on the demographics of the customers that are coming in,
or looking at performance, real-time performance of sale data, especially as promotions
are being pushed out, and being able to make adjustments in stock levels, pricing, things
like that, those are really the gaps that we're starting to see.
So, if we look at the three, two or three areas that really suffer because of this, it's really
around the opportunity cost of not being able to drive additional cost savings and
profitability, and also the possibility of not optimizing a customer experience. Because,
as we know, and we're going to see in the demonstrations later on, consumers will go for
the cheapest prices, they'll price shop, they'll go to different locations. And being able to
drive a great customer experience with somebody is very crucial, and being able to retain
them as a customer. And in today's competitive environment, this is something that our
retail customers absolutely must do.
So, one of the questions you might be asking is, why Microsoft in retail? I think there's
three or four very good reasons why we have such a strength in this segment. The first
one is that many of the systems that are used in retail today are based on building blocks
that Microsoft has been providing to enterprises for many years, everything from our
server software through to databases, and all the way down to client software, from
portable handhelds all the way through to client devices, other types of client devices.
The second part is, Microsoft is driving a lot of innovation in the cloud, both in the
private cloud with which we've been an industry leader for many years, and now also into
the public cloud, which with Windows Azure is an asset that Microsoft is investing
heavily in and will continue to work with our partners to provide additional technologies
from a cloud basis.
The third part is that we provide end-to-end seamless connectivity between the different
platforms. So, by utilizing Microsoft technology across that enterprise environment
you're assured that the devices are going to talk to one another. This is very critical as
mentioned before in intelligent systems, because seamless connectivity being able to get
data from one part of the network to the other quickly and easily is going to be very, very
critical to drive those business decisions.
Lastly, something that a lot of people don't realize is that Microsoft is also building out
our own retail experiences, everything from the retail experience centers, and retail
experience zones that we've built around the world in all of our offices that we've been
inviting retail customers to come in and see the latest in technology for many years all the
way through to the retail stores we've started building in the US. And so we understand
what it's like to attract and retain customers, and the challenges involved with that, right
down to the actual retail experiences of selling products in the store.
And so, if we summarized about what intelligent systems mean to the retail environment,
I think you'll see that with the many different assets we talked about already we have
market leadership in many of these devices categories working together with our
partners, everything from portable data acquisition devices, through the ruggedized
handheld terminals, through the POS terminals. And some of the more cutting-edge
technology that you're about to see demonstrated to here today, I think we're in a very
good position to provide the platforms for devices, have assets from the cloud to be able
to connect those, both from private and public cloud, and the connectivity to bring the
intelligence into intelligent systems.
So, what I'd like to do now, we've talked a lot in theory around what intelligent systems
are and how they work, and the business value that they provide, what I'm going to now
is call one of our partners Razorfish up to actually walk us through this demonstration
and while they're doing this have a think about the experiences and the way that we're
taking data and truly driving decisions for data through this customer experience.
I want to invite Jonathan Hull and his team to come and run us through the
demonstrations.
Thanks, Jonathan.
JONATHAN HULL: Thank you.
I'm Jonathan Hull, the vice president of Razorfish Emerging Experiences. We founded
the Razorfish Emerging Experiences team about four years ago. Our first project work
that we did for a client was the first commercial version of Microsoft Surface we
implemented for a retail communications company in the United States called AT&T.
What we did as part of that project is not only did we realize that digital was changing for
consumers and retailers, we also realized that how you go about designing and
implementing those technologies also had to change. So, what we did is we assembled a
team of both artists and designers, as well as technologists, to kind of pull together what
those experiences are and execute them for our clients.
So, in addition to just designing and building these experiences and these great digital
technologies, we also do research before we go down very far with the client. And some
of the research that we've done in the last few years has really proved out how the
fundamental changes and how consumers are actually interfacing and interacting with the
retailers. And what we found is that prior to about 2008 a lot of the consumers would use
the online channel and the Internet to do research on products. They would then carry
that research into stores to actually feel and see the product and then actually buy in the
store.
With the advent of the smartphone and the adoption of the smartphone what we've now
seen is that's actually reversed. So, consumers now have the ability to actually do the
research in the store itself. So, retailers with these big brick and mortar stores now are
actually part of the research that consumers are doing, but yet they're not executing as
many sales as they did in the past, because what consumers do is when they're in a store
they use these great smartphone devices to price compare and price shop and then they
take that home and then they buy online through the lowest cost retailer.
So, what we've done to help retailers get customers in the door, keep them in the stores,
but also execute sales in store is we brought to market a platform that we call 5D. 5D
stands for the five fundamental things that it does. The first thing that it does is it
provides a seamless experience across channels. So, from retail in store to online, to
mobile and tablets, that's what 5D can deliver in experience across all those different
channels.
What it also does is it supports multiple devices. Consumers are the ones choosing the
devices in which they interact with brands today. Now, in a consumer's case they're
interacting using mobile. They're interacting using Web, sometimes tablets. But, also the
retailers need to enable their devices in store, as well, such as kiosks, point of sale
system, video walls. So, this 5D platform enables that as well. And with that I'm
actually going to hand you off to Luke to explain the 5D platform, how it works, and then
Steve Dawson is my technology lead, he's going to talk about the underlying technology
that enables the platform.
LUKE HAMILTON: I'm Luke Hamilton, I'm the group creative director for the
Emerging Experiences team for Razorfish. I work side by side with Steve and a
technology team to concept and prototype out these ideas as well as bring them to market.
Today we're going to be demonstrating how that platform comes to life and we thought
the best way to do that was to provide that demonstration, to execute it through a
customer journey and at a retail location.
Let’s pretend this is an interactive storefront to more engagement and exploration, using
this surface SUR 40 in store, and then other opportunities to allow us to connect with that
customer and extend that relationship with them, we'll be bringing you back over to the
monitor to show you an up-sell sort of magic and dressing room experience using
augmented reality. We start with the demonstration here of an attraction and awareness
experience. What we're looking at is, essentially an interactive storefront. The customer
can walk up and start to explore different scenes that inspire them. And then they can
take a dive into some of the content that is within that scene to discover what is being
offered to them.
Very interactive, we're using gesture-based technology to do that. And once the customer
finds something that they like they can simply snap a tag using Microsoft technology
down to their mobile device to continue to explore the content. Before we do that,
though, Steve is going to talk a little bit about the technology that enables what you're
seeing here.
STEVE DAWSON: So, this entire platform is actually powered by Windows
Embedded. So, each one of the devices that we go through today are all Windows
Embedded devices. In addition we're utilizing the Kinect for Windows platform. This
newly announced platform, it's the commercialized version of Xbox Kinect. So, basically
you're going to see that hardware deployed in digital out of home-type environments over
the course of the next few years.
In addition, we're using NEC display technology here, so this is a narrow bezel display
technology and we're also using NEC field analyst, video analytics technology, as well,
so basically you could see there is a Microsoft web cam, and this webcam is feeding into
the NEC software. So, what the NEC video analytics software does is it actually
analyzes the age and gender of the audience and you could see that information
aggregated right here.
That information we can actually tailor the interactive experience based on the
demographics of the audience. So, for instance, if it was primarily a male audience, you
would see male content that's age appropriate based on the demographics of who is
actually interacting with the device. So, we encourage you after the show to actually
come take a closer look at the NEC software as well.
In addition, we can actually take the NEC information, the NEC analytics, and input that
into a cloud-based analytics solution using Azure, and actually run reports on who is
actually interacting with this display. So, that's very powerful information.
In addition, I have a store associate tablet here as well. And we can actually bring that
information down to this tablet, things like average impression time, the average user age,
and the gender interaction rates as well.
So, we're going to use the store associate tablet throughout this demonstration to really
show how you can actually enable your sales force with a tool like this, and create a
much richer experience for the customer.
LUKE HAMILTON: Great. So, as we explained, there could be, as part of this
experience, an incentive to obviously interact with the content, whether it be a coupon, or
some sort tied into your reward system at the retailer. But I can simply, just with any QR
reader, I can use Microsoft Tag as well to snap a picture, and the content that's now up
here is now down on my mobile device, and the things that you would expect to be able
to do, searching content, finding out reviews and related items are all here. That's great
for pricing. But I really want to take the opportunity to go and maybe try on the clothes,
or do some comparison shopping, which is a little hard to do on a smartphone. So, I take
this device into my store, and I can simply drop it on the Surface table, and it will spill
out all of the content that I was interacting with at the storefront.
From here, I can actually go through the experience, and do some deeper exploration of
the content itself. So, the same content that was on the phone is now available over here,
again, all enabled through the cloud. Maybe there's a different shirt that I would like to
check out, so I can pull that out as well. And now I can do some quick visual comparison
between the two items.
Once I find an item I like, I can then save that item by simply dragging it over to my
mobile device. So, you'll see that I can now interact with the digital content on both
screens, but I'm saving the content to my mobile device. The reason we're doing this is
because you can't take the table, as wonderful as it is to interact with, you can't walk
around the store with it, but we want to be able to give the customer the ability to have
that content that they've saved, that wish list they've created, available for the rest of their
journey through the store.
All the time that I'm interacting with this content, my interactions and my profile are now
made available to the store associate. And Steve is going to demonstrate how we enable
a better interaction between the associate and the customer with these digital tools using
our platform.
STEVE DAWSON: So, as soon as Luke placed his phone device on the table, I was
actually notified on my store associate tablet that he's in the store. So, what I can actually
look at here is, I can take a look at recent purchases, his last visit, other order summaries,
recommended items. In addition, Luke's already started the process of collecting some
items in a shopping cart, and I can actually see those items that he's interested in. So,
anything he adds to his cart is immediately visualized here as well.
So, what I can do is, I can actually approach him and engage in a meaningful
conversation because I know the types of clothes that he's interested in. I could also
begin making recommendations based on his shopping cart.
So, what I'm going to do, I'm going to go ahead and browse a product catalogue. So,
there may be a specific shirt that I want to recommend for Luke. So, what I can do with
my tablet device is, I can select that shirt, and simply flick it towards the Surface, and
that's immediately visualized on the Surface device.
LUKE HAMILTON: And, again, all of the same content that I had before is still
available for me. I can continue to do some additional comparison shopping with even
those items. Maybe there are some pants that I'm interested in. And once I find, again,
once I find something that I like, I simply drag that from the table and save it to my
device. So, now we have the seamless integration from the tablet to the table to the
device.
STEVE DAWSON: Yes. So, this platform is all built on Windows Presentation
Foundation. So, all these experiences that you see today, the Microsoft Surface
experience here running on Samsung SUR-40, to the Kinect for Windows experience, is
built on WPF, which is Windows Presentation Foundation. In addition, we used Visual
Studio 2010 to actually develop this platform.
JONATHAN HULL: Steve, can you tell us how this actually works? What are the
different software components that make this experience work?
STEVE DAWSON: Right. So, this is very unique hardware. So, this is the Samsung
SUR-40 powered by Microsoft Surface. So, what this device can do is it actually can see
objects that are placed on the device. So, as soon as Luke places his phone on the device,
we can actually see that there's a phone on the table, and begin interaction between the
phone and the device itself.
So, the phone is running an application as well. So, basically, when you saw Luke scan
the QR code, he would download an application and then be able to place the device on
Surface, and that device would seamlessly work with the Surface table at that point.
LUKE HAMILTON: So, there's a couple of more items that we discussed, one of them
being the shirt that he recommended. So, I'm going to add that to my cart. And now I
just simply pick up my device, and all of that content is now available to me in my cart.
But I definitely want to try on the shirt to make sure I like it. So, Steve is going to invite
me to -- he'll pull based on the cart information he has on his tablet, he will have those
items pulled from the racks, and I can go try those on.
And the idea here is that we have sort of a virtual dressing room scenario, or fitting room
scenario, where I've gone and tried on the shirt that he recommended, and can simply step
in front of this experience so that he can make some recommendations that he's going to
walk you through.
STEVE DAWSON: Right, exactly. So, I have the store associate tablet, and based on
the items in the cart, so he has the shirt in the cart, it's actually making a recommendation
here for ties. So, I have a few different tie options. What I can do is, I can select one of
these ties, and simply flick it towards the display, and that's immediately visualized on
Luke.
LUKE HAMILTON: That's a great one.
STEVE DAWSON: Okay, let's try a different color here. So, this not just works for
ties. This would work for really any type of accessories. We're really trying to up-sell a
customer on specific products, so purses, sunglasses, other types of clothes would be
excellent for this platform. And obviously Luke, having to try on all these ties, it would
be very time consuming. So, this really helps streamline that process.
LUKE HAMILTON: You can do the gray striped one, and we can -- oh, no.
JONATHAN HULL: And our research has shown that when you can personalize a
product to a consumer you have a much higher conversion rate. And this is something
that a consumer can only get within like a retail setting. So, it's another reason for a
consumer to actually go into a brick and mortar store and make a purchase there.
STEVE DAWSON: So, from here what I can actually do is, on my store associate
tablet, I can actually take a snapshot. So, you can see I actually have a snapshot of Luke.
What I can do with this is, I can share this with Luke, and he can share this on Facebook
and Twitter to solicit feedback from his friends on the specific tie before he actually
makes that purchase decision.
LUKE HAMILTON: And if you just kind of notice now, a recap of what we've seen of
the content, all this content lives in the cloud. Everything that he has available over there
now becomes available to me, the customer, so that I can use it at my discretion.
Obviously, as we go through the customer journey, part of that is to check out. So, I can
either check out on my device now, or I can choose to use NFC and do a bump to pay
with the tablet itself, and go through the checkout process, or go to the point of sale in the
store and choose which channel that I would like to check out at.
JONATHAN HULL: Thank you, Luke and Steve.
So, just to summarize what we've seen there is the 5D platform. We've shown you a
seamless experience across these different digital touch points. We've also shown you
how the experience itself works across multiple devices. So, just about any device that
consumers are using, just about any device that retailers are using, is supported by this
platform. Thank you very much for letting us demonstrate this to you and with that I'm
going to turn it back over to John.
JOHN BOLADIAN: Thanks, Jonathan, and Luke, and Steve. I really appreciate that,
the demonstration. I think what that does is it truly underlines the importance of user
experience in retaining customers and engaging customers in a retail environment. If you
think about the different technologies there really used to capture and engage, and really
draw in a consumer into an experience is really going to make them want to come back
and return and engage with this particular retailer. All of those technologies that you saw
there are utilizing software from Windows Embedded, working together with our
hardware partners. In this case, Samsung also, with NEC for the display wall and the
video recognition system, all working seamlessly together.
Remember what I said about the definition of intelligent systems, capturing information,
transmitting that information, taking the data and driving business decisions with that
data, the demonstration that you just saw really highlights all of that, and truly is a great
example of an intelligent system.
Now, if we think about Microsoft and how Microsoft has formed its business model over
the years, one of the things that we have always done is worked with partners, because
partners create the value on top of the operating system platforms that innovate together
with our software to drive great applications into the hands of the customer. And on top
of the demo that you just saw from Razorfish we also have there partners with us here
today, Fujitsu Frontech, Toshiba Tech, and NEC Corporation, that have been working
together with us over the years to drive great devices and great systems and develop
solutions for their customers together with us, building them on Microsoft technology.
So, what I'm going to do now is invite them up here and allow them to talk to you about
some of the ways that they've been using Windows Embedded and developing their
hardware and software technology to address this opportunity for intelligent systems.
The first partner I'm going to invite up on stage is Kana-san (ph) from Fujitsu Frontech.
And he will be speaking to you for the next few minutes. Thank you.
RYUJI KANNO: Thank you very much for your introduction. My name is Ryuji
Kanno from Fujitsu Frontech. As was explained, I would like to talk about what we do in
terms of intelligent systems, and approach to the retail customers. Today I would like to
use just one single chart to explain what we do. This chart here is the overall picture of
our next-generation store and merchandising solutions. So, this is the overall picture. So,
this is in a way a solution for the mass -- but however we can also provide a very similar
solution to the retail customers, as well. I'm sorry that chart is quite difficult to see, with
small components, but I would like to talk mainly about five important points.
Firstly, which is really the basic point, is the following: Because of the economic
situation, the retail customers are facing much difficulties recently, and because of that
use of data and information is becoming increasingly important. So, therefore the one
important keyword and basic principle of intelligent systems is the unified management
of information. You can perhaps see the related parts on the bottom part of this chart.
You can see the various data that are generated in stores and that are used by store clerks.
For example, there are various kinds of information, for example, coming from the
partner companies, et cetera. These different informations are all gathered together and
managed together, this is really the basics and moving on into the middle part you can see
the purple area that says portal and alert. These are the two concepts, two important
concepts.
So, portal, first of all, is about the information that is necessary to the users of the
information. Portal is access to such information. Portal is an access of the information
to the managers, to the store clerks, et cetera. There are different ways the information is
acquired, but because the information is unified and managed in a unified manner, it is
possible to manage the information in a real-time basis, and also possible to provide the
necessary information in a real-time and timely manner.
So, next, moving on to alert. Alert is about encouraging certain actions. For example, in
making an order, this alert can serve to notify of the timing when the shop needs to
request the delivery of additional stock. So, this is not just about looking at the
information, it's using the information to make some determination, or promoting or
encouraging certain actions. That's what alert is.
And now, I would like to kind of change the perspective and talk from the perspective of
the stores. Teamsters series is what we provide in terms of the retail solutions to the
store. So, from the same perspective of unified management of information, what we
tried to do is to place the servers within the stores, the actual stores. This allows realtime management and real-time use of the data.
It has been one year since the March 11 earthquake last year, but in terms of the data
security, there is higher recognition of the importance of data security, and the data
warehouse security. So, the importance of securing the data, and this is exactly that kind
of solution that can ensure security of the data. That was the fourth point.
And, finally, the fifth point I would like to make is the following: There are various
devices that are used within the shops, different platforms. But we aim to provide a
unified platform as well, so provide PC-like platforms. Because there is the alert
function, we aim not only to gather the information but utilize the information to give
orders to the store clerks, and those who are working in the stores. So, in that
sense -- and we also use very trustworthy platforms. So, this increases the portability of
the solution as well.
There are self-checkout systems, self-payment systems that are being heard recently, as
well as mobile POS, and POS systems that are portable or mobile. These all increase the
portability and usability of the application, which increases the usability.
Therefore, in January this year, we have introduced a new POS team, POS 7000. We
made a joint announcement in the United States and Japan about this new product. This
is POS Ready for Windows 7.
Thank you very much for your attention. Mr. Kanno, thank you very much.
PARTICIPANT: Now, I would like to ask Mr. Ohtani from Toshiba TEC Corporation.
HIROHIDE OHTANI: Thank you very much for the kind introduction. My name is
Ohtani from Toshiba TEC.
Microsoft has established a concept of intelligent system, and looking back, we
understand intelligent systems in this way, and it has already been explained today.
There are various ideas from the management, like streamlining the business, or
enhancing the management business, or reducing the cost for the operation. So, these are
the management's ideas.
In order to realize these ideas, we used to have the sales data coming up from the
storefront, and do the analysis on that data, but we can also leverage that data so that we
can instruct the operation to the storefront in a more interactive manner. I think this is
what the intelligent system is about.
We at Toshiba TEC provide these solutions and I'd like to introduce the one for
restaurants, the POS system for restaurants today. So, this is a total service solution for
restaurants, and we call it hospitality service integration. We have the storefront POS
terminal.
Among the restaurants there are some that have the mechanism for the customers, and
other mechanisms used in restaurants or in the kitchen, so whatever that is ordered is
printed out in the kitchen or displayed in the kitchen. So, there is this back-end system
that receives that order information. So, there are various devices up and running in the
restaurants.
So, the information needs to be communicated between these devices. So, we realized
that. And at the same time, we have these on-premise type so-called mission-critical
systems like cost management or the work hour management or management accounting
data to be handled in these systems. On the other hand, we have the cloud-based
systems. So, we provide this total solution.
In this time we are introducing FS Compass to you today, and Microsoft has a real
platform called Silverlight, and we are mainly building this FS Compass based on that
Silverlight.
The functionality that works in POS also works in cloud or that work in clients, and that
is how we enable an application to be run anywhere. And it may look very small, but this
is an unprecedented service that we offer.
For the customer-facing we provide additional training. New employees access training
videos on their home PCs to simulate customer interactions. And by building this
solution we have a common enabler with the Microsoft embedded system.
I think that it's absolutely indispensable, and sometimes we hustle between Fujitsu,
Toshiba, and NEC, but whenever service integration is necessary we can serve as a
foundation to seamlessly integrate the service. So, we would like to build an even
stronger partnership and contribute to a Microsoft solution down the road.
Thank you very much for attention.
PARTICIPANT: Mr. Ohtani, thank you very much.
Now I would like to ask Mr. Fujioka from NEC Corporation.
TADAAKI FUJIOKA: Thank you very much for that kind introduction. My name is
Fujioka from NEC.
Microsoft has just announced the intelligent system, and back in last October I heard this
announcement, and we have a very similar solution that we launched mainly for overseas,
and my discussion will be mainly about that for today, and I would also like to talk about
the alliance with Microsoft.
I am in charge of the global business and also the alliance with Microsoft. We have a
digital media solution, and we provide this type of solution for retail business since last
year. As you can see, the basis is the various technologies of NEC or the IT network
technology that have been converged, and we provided as a digital media solution.
Earlier on, Razorfish introduced the face recognition technology, which also constitutes
this. The configuration is like this, that, for example, you have the in-store and the back
office in-store, and you have the headquarters system on the corporate side.
And as a building block we have the digital communication, and it is quite similar to
Razorfish's demonstration, so intelligent and interactive digital signage, and the nextgeneration digital signage. And in terms of the digital marketing we have the smartphone
and tablet and digital panel or conventional POS system. These are integrated through
the system including cameras
In terms of back office we provide security and safety through the face- or imagerecognition technology. So, we have this conventional POS or terminal, and we can get
some purchase data. And we have the unified management system; that's what we
provide.
But furthermore we need to think about how we can take in the information of those
customers who come into the storefront but do not purchase. So, this conventional
payment data and other data that has been captured through various devices is analyzed
and leveraged for marketing. And as part of the lifecycle management we integrate that
data in both ways.
Microsoft announced the various devices capturing the information and doing the
analytics, and the decision-making. So, I think the concept is totally saying the same as
the Microsoft intelligent systems.
And I would also like to touch upon the collaboration between our company and
Microsoft. We have a very deep relationship with Microsoft for over three decades,
especially in the retail and embedded market.
We made a joint press release globally two years ago for digital signage, and we have had
various exhibitions. The Razorfish exhibition was there as well. And this is a demo that
we launched back in New York, and also there is a new headquarters of Microsoft last
year, and the multitouch digital signage, which is the largest, of course, for Google, is
also exhibited there.
And just the past February in Seattle we joined the Retail Experience Center. This is a
big showroom for retail. And we have our digital media solution and other demos that
are exhibited permanently. So, I would like that all the customers around the globe to
have a look at it.
And in terms of the embedded devices and technologies we deal with the ATM and kiosk
and the POS system and terminals, and we realize that through the embedded systems,
and last year we were awarded, and this year we got the partner excellence award. So,
the concept of the intelligent systems, and our digital business solution, can be converged
effectively so that we can serve well with the future solutions for our customers.
By the way, RetailTech Japan is starting from tomorrow, and we have our own booth,
and in the Microsoft booth part of the digital media solution will be exhibited. So, please
come and have a look.
Thank you very much for your attention.
PARTICIPANT: Thank you very much, Mr. Ohtani and Mr. Fujioka, thank you very
much.
JOHN BOLADIAN: Okay, before we take questions, let me just quickly summarize
firstly by thanking all three of our partners for coming and sharing their story around
intelligent systems with us all today.
I think what we've seen is that the migration towards intelligent systems has already
started. We've seen a demonstration here from Razorfish, the end-to-end experience
drawing in consumers. We've also seen from our partners that the offerings that they're
providing today are already making the migration across. We've seen the importance of
capturing data and seamlessly transmitting it back through to the cloud, and being able to
drive these business decisions based on this. This is very apparent from the entire partner
ecosystem today.
So, I'd like to thank you all for your attention, and I really appreciate you making the time
to come and join us this morning for this.
And with that, I'm going to open it up for questions.
PARTICIPANT: Now we take questions. If you have question, please raise your hand
and please mention your media and your name. There will be a person with a
microphone, and John Boladian will be answering your questions. If there is any
question to partners, we will address them individually after this session. Please raise
your hands if you have any questions.
PARTICIPANT: (Off mike).
PARTICIPANT: Any questions.
JOHN BOLADIAN: So, I believe we have some time scheduled later on as well for
some additional one-to-one Q&A time. You can also use that opportunity.
PARTICIPANT: All right, we would like to close this session now, and the people in
charge are still here, so you can directly ask them questions. Thank you very much for
coming all the way down here despite this weather. Thank you very much.
END