RYUTSU INFORMATION NETWORK (RINNET) in Hakata-ku, Fukuoka is a system development company which specializes in distribution, retailing, and food manufacturing industry. RINNET is renowned for the quality of providing services supporting for improving work efficiency and business innovation in line with customer’s needs.

 

Mr. Ishigami (Managing director), Mr. Oka (Senior executive director), Mr. Kimura (Division manager of Sales division 1), and Mr. Noguchi who is working in the frontline of their new business, RPA introduction support service welcomed us at their office.

 

RINNET has expertise in work efficiency taking advantage of system development and IT technology. Why did they focus on RPA and select NTT DATA’s WinActor to achieve their goal? Mr. Oka told us the issues and challenges which their clients in distribution and retailing industries are facing.

 

(From right to left, Mr. Kimura, Mr. Ishigami, Mr. Oka, and Mr. Noguchi)

 

Mr. Oka​ ​Our major business is software development, but operations after development are also our important tasks. Our clients are mainly in distribution and retailing industries who require the 24/7 x 365 days a year operation.

 

In distribution and retailing industries, many different systems for purchasing, inventory control, sales, and customer management are separately working, where human intervention is necessary to exchange data among those systems.

 

Mr. Kimura also told us the situation which he frequently sees at the site.

 

Mr. Kimura​ ​We have a client who is in the retailing industry. In their routine operations, they import POS data of the previous day and process it for every 11 product categories. They need to finish this by 7 every morning. They need to include a morning shift as someone has to be at the site every morning. Of course, they receive complaints from our staff.​ ​​ ​

Also, the essential system for the distribution and retailing industries is Product Master Registration. RINNET is manually handling 10,000 items every year so we were looking for solutions to reduce human errors.

 

WinActor solves PC operation related issues

More or less, PC operations always exist not only in the distribution and retailing industries but also in many other industries. Then, we found and focused on NTT DATA’s WinActor as the solution tool.

 

Mr. Oka​ ​We found Winactor presented at a business show. We proposed Mr. Ishigami to conduct a verification test right away.

 

After that, it moved forward very quickly. We’ve designated a person in charge who identified the target operations to be automated in the company. For the verification test, we’ve picked up WinActor’s area of expertise, such as repetitive operation.​ ​However, Mr. Ishigami was still skeptical about that.

 

Mr. Ishigami​ ​NTT DATA sent us a group of people who gave us a lecture about WinActor. There was a lady in the group and she told us “I’m a first-year but it didn’t take that long to become able to handle WinActor”. I was so surprised to hear that!​ ​​ ​

 

Mr. Ishigami was surprised to realize the usability and the ability of WinActor presented at the site. At the same time however, he felt that having a facilitator or instructor was required to proceed automation with RPA.

 

Mr. Ishigami​ ​WinActor allowed us to be confident to tackle various issues our clients are facing in the distribution and the retailing industries. We also realized that we need to increase the number of people who can deliver this amazing tool, and those people must come from back-office section instead of system programmer.

 

Using WinActor, Back-office section generates sales!?

Mr. Ishigami felt that WinActor is the intuitive solution, so RPA’s advantages of being “user-friendliness” would fade away if programmer, like SE takes a lead in introducing RPA. Therefore, he decided to assign the staff who is in the back-office section including general affairs as their RPA instructor.​ ​

 

Mr. Ishigami​ ​You don’t need to be a programmer to start using WinActor. As times go by, those who are using WinActor get really into it and start taking a lead in automating several operations. I was surprised to see that, really. Also, some of the robots which were developed by our employees are contributing to reduce operations to promote our company-wide workstyle innovation. In the near future, the employees come from the back-office section might be able to visit clients as a RPA instructor.

 

WinActor seems not only automating their operations, but also changing their motivation and workstyle at RINNET.

On the other hand, Mr. Ishigami told us that he heard the evaluation on RPA, which was hard to believe for him.

 

Mr. Ishigami​ ​I didn’t believe it, but when I visited one of our clients to introduce RPA, the client told me “RPA takes work away from us”. Whereas Japan is suffering from the lack of working population, some companies still stick to simple and repetitive operations. Instead, we all should focus on achieving the workstyle innovation or improvement in productivity…​ ​

 

WinActor plays as a RPA Consultant for improving business

We asked Mr. Noguchi who works as a leader of their RPA introduction support service about the current situation and the goals of the site where they are using Winactor.​ ​

 

Mr. Noguchi​ ​WinActor has been gaining a good reputation about its user-friendliness at RINNET because those who have no experience in programming can also handle it easily.　For example, it seems only participating in some study sessions enables them to easily understand how to create scenarios using nodes, such as IF-ELSE. Our RPA introduction support service has been launched successfully, but our managing director is seeing higher achievement.​ ​
Our mission is to develop a new business for providing business improvement with RPA solutions and that includes AI robot.​ ​

 

The RPA introduction support service is getting to be the core business at RINNET. From there, they are already stepping forward and looking for a way to achieve their new initiative, playing as a RPA business consulting.​ ​​ ​

 

Mr. Oka​ ​Based on the automation with WinActor as one of our solutions, we are planning to offer optimization service for entire system at retailing stores, mail-order business, and distribution warehouse. Our scope also includes connecting job analysis and scenario creation in the upper stream. We expect that will be a new business, RPA Business Consulting.​ ​

 

RINNET is the one who is expert in distribution and retailing industries. They provide clients support to introduce WinActor with their specific know-how in those industries. Using such support to introduce WinActor is recommended as one of the ways for those who are interested in introducing RPA for their business.

 

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