Tokyo, September 09, 2010
Fujitsu today announced that, in collaboration with Hankyu Hanshin Holdings, Inc. and H2O Retailing Corporation, it has built a system for the Hankyu Hanshin and H2O group companies' various customer point cards, such as the Emerald STACIA card, that offers new services such as jointly combining issued reward points and enabling immediate redemptions. Hankyu Hanshin's joint reward point services will further expand starting October 2010.
The new system consolidates customer information from Hankyu Hanshin group companies, including department stores, supermarkets, train lines, and hotels, as well as other affiliated businesses, such as participating shops, while allowing their existing reward point service to continue. In addition, the new system provides customers who apply via the Internet, a service that automatically combines accumulated points to be reflected on their individual STACIA cards.
Moreover at a number of affiliated stores, new services enabling the immediate usage of points have been designed to improve the benefits of redeeming points. Points obtained at affiliated stores can be added together (combined points service) and be used at participating stores of the customer's choice (point redemption service), thereby improving convenience while at the same time, expanding the use of these services as well as stimulating store business.
Background
Primarily through Hankyu Corporation, Hanshin Electric Railway Co., Ltd., Hankyu Hanshin Express Holdings Corporation, and Hankyu Hanshin Hotels Co., Ltd., which are its four major subsidiaries, Hankyu Hanshin Holdings has been involved in a variety of different businesses, including urban transportation, real estate, entertainment and communications, retailing, travel and international transportation, and hotels. For its part, H2O Retailing, with Hankyu Department Store and Hanshin Department Store at its core, is involved in a broad array of business areas relating to retailing, including department stores, supermarkets, parcel delivery, and shopping center management. In recent years, with intensified competition throughout Japan's retailing industry and a restructuring of the industry, the field of retailing is facing an increasingly harsh business environment. To cope with this environment, Hankyu Hanshin and H2O Retailing looked for ways to increase convenience while anticipating increasingly diverse lifestyle trends of its customers.
The Hankyu Hanshin group has taken measures to diversify its business. However to allow customers to further appreciate the benefits of the group as a whole, Hankyu Hanshin improved the content of its reward point program services and, in collaboration with Fujitsu, built a system for joint group reward points that enables customers to comprehensively take advantage of the various reward point services of its group companies and affiliated stores.
Using as a base its reward point system solution, which has a proven track record of over twenty corporate deployments among department stores and supermarkets, Fujitsu built a system that efficiently handles the management of member and point information, point redemptions, management of incentives, as well as the settlement of expenses of group companies and affiliated stores. The system enables points to be combined over the Internet. While ensuring compatibility with legacy kiosk terminals and point terminal systems, as well as the systems of affiliated stores, Fujitsu built a highly scalable system with the flexibility to accommodate new stores in the future.
With the new system, customers are freed from the hassle of managing multiple point cards and can now enjoy consolidated management of the variety of reward point services offered by group companies, encompassing department stores, supermarkets, train lines, and hotels. Customers can now enjoy using points accumulated on various cards from affiliated stores, through one STACIA point card enabling convenient and efficient use.
About Fujitsu's Reward Point System Solution
In addition to managing the points of department stores and shopping centers, Fujitsu's reward point system solution can consolidate all these points, enabling programs that allow their customers to earn and use combined points from multiple types of retailers, making it the ideal retail technology solution. Moreover, with the flexibility to enable the exchange of points with other alliance member companies, the solution can handle reward point programs that are developed in concert with other business partners.
Fujitsu is committed to using ICT to support the continued business expansion of the Hankyu Hanshin group, which is continuously undertaking reform initiatives in the aim of being a corporate group that contributes to society.
