Shiseido Co., Ltd.

Dispersed IT systems made it difficult to
establish seamless communication

The Shiseido Group operates in 120 countries. Its medium to long-term strategy, VISION 2020, is to thrive as an Asian player in the global market by strengthening cooperation between its production base, R&D and sales teams in each country.

"Today's business environment is dynamic. So we were striving to reinforce brand management and enable swift response to new challenges," explained Mr. Kameyama. These goals required seamless collaboration between people in different divisions and agile information sharing. Nevertheless, the company's communication environment was not sufficient to support them.

"Just to hold a meeting, we had to book a room several days in advance and manually print and distribute paper documents," added Mr. Kouno. Meeting participants tended to focus more on the documents, which reduced discussion and interaction.

There were complex issues with the company's IT systems as well. The customized web-based email system did not support schedulers and room booking systems. The user interface was also inconsistent. Although a Web conference system was in place, necessary hardware such as cameras, microphones and speakers were not always there and they were almost useless. "Although we had useful tools and systems, each of them were independent and communication was not integrated. We had to reform the communication infrastructure and create a new environment where we could work more flexibly," said Mr. Kameyama.

Enterprise Cloud and Office 365
in a hybrid cloud platform

Shiseido initiated a workstyle innovation project to achieve its vision and resolve critical issues. Its Strategic Information System Planning Department decided to implement IT measures in the Management, Corporate Planning, Human Resources and General Affairs departments. It also adopted Office 365 (Microsoft's cloud-based groupware) for corporate communication because it included email, information sharing, video conferencing and other necessary tools in an integrated service that can be accessed from various devices.

However, the company's existing IT environment was incompatible with Office 365. "We had to update the entire infrastructure, including the server, and test connections between the latest PCs and tablets while considering security concerns," explained Mr. Kameyama.

The company chose NTT Communications (NTT Com) as its partner for this project. "NTT Com had abundant experience in implementing Microsoft products," Mr. Kameyama noted, "and could provide our entire ICT communication environment, including cloud, network and security authentication. Furthermore, we had confidence in NTT Com because of its experience implementing and operating our corporate backbone network."

With NTT Com's support, Shiseido implemented a new company-wide communication infrastructure with Office 365 in a hybrid cloud, Enterprise Cloud as its primary cloud service, and Arcstar Universal One as a VPN service ensuring secure global networking. The company also replaced its PCs, added more tablets, and introduced Mobile Connect to realize secure remote access while balancing usability and security.

"NTT Com served an important role in our project," said Mr. Kouno. "With all-around flexibility, it analyzed the issues and managed several IT vendors as our single point of contact to smoothly migrate our system from the existing environment without any problems."

Enhanced workstyle reform accelerates
global brand strategy

The new communication platform has dramatically changed Shiseido's workstyle. "We can check emails anywhere thanks to secure remote access, and check schedules across organizations thanks to the integrated company-wide platform. We've received positive feedback from employees for the flexible meeting arrangement process," Mr. Kouno smiled.

The quality of communication has improved as well. Nobody books meeting rooms anymore, because Web meetings are instantly available whenever participants are online. Using tablets, they can participate in meetings wherever they are, even when traveling abroad. "The ability to discuss issues face-to-face without time and place constraint is motivating employees to communicate even more," said Mr. Kameyama.

The workstyle of managers has changed as well. Paperless management meetings have become the norm, eliminating the need to prepare loads of paper documents. "Now managers hold discussions on tablets where the latest information is always at hand. They can edit shared documents on the spot, thus accelerating information sharing as well as the decision making process," added Mr. Kameyama.

Shiseido will accelerate the deployment of its global strategy, with its focus on Asia, by extending the framework to its overseas offices. Now they can easily realize the corporate philosophy of "100% consumer-oriented" and "inspiring a life of beauty and culture." Building on its brand strength, Shiseido will advance its growth strategy into the next generation.