Tokyo (February 10, 2014) - Konica Minolta, Inc. (Konica Minolta) today announced that the company is establishing Business Innovation Centers (BICs) in 5 major regions around the world to develop new businesses responding to regional customer needs and markets.
Konica Minolta has been vigorously driving transformation of its core Business Technologies Business by shifting from traditional business models based on sales of MFPs (multi-functional peripherals) to provision of services which assist the customers in improving and innovating their business processes by utilizing ICT.
The company plans to establish BIC in each of its 5 key regional markets of North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, China and Japan in order to develop solutions in the customers'business environment, further supporting the needs in the specific market. Each regional BIC will focus on gaining a deeper understanding of customer needs to develop new services, as well as manage the entire lifecycle of new service business development, from ideation to actual business deployment activities, at faster time to market.
The BICs will be closely collaborating with a diverse range of entities, such as research institutes, partner companies, and startups during the development process. At every BIC in the 5 key regions of the world, its top management and core staff are locally employed best talent, as their wealth of knowledge and understanding are essential to drive businesses specifically tailored for the region.
Capitalizing on those advantages, each BIC will develop new services through marketing initiatives including analysis of customer needs and research on technical trends and valuable services and products in the regional market. The BICs will primarily focus in the ICT services field. In the future, they will expand their business fields to develop new innovative products and solutions.
Based on the above mentioned strategic plan, the first BIC for the Asia Pacific has launched in Singapore. Singapore was chosen as the development headquarters for services business in the Asia Pacific region because of its central location and strong support network. In the initial phase, the Asia Pacific BIC will be focusing on development of cloud-based service offerings such as software-as-a-service (SaaS) and business process-as-a-service (BPaaS) to add to Konica Minolta's Intelligent Office service offering. The center will also be working closely with customers to develop industry-specific cloud-based solutions. By providing the services through the Konica Minolta cloud infrastructure, Konica Minolta will deliver the economies of scale and savings and agility to the customers.
Under the communication message “Giving Shape to Ideas,” Konica Minolta has been aiming to contribute to a better society and grow as company worthy of support and trust of society by creating and delivering new services and values to customers.