Fujitsu Limited

Fujitsu Launches Cloud Services for Agricultural Industry

New SaaS solution supporting business administration and farm management

Tokyo, April 5, 2010 — Fujitsu today announced the availability of a set of cloud computing services to support businesses in Japan's agricultural industry. The services will be available to agricultural producers, agricultural corporations⁽¹⁾, retailers, and the JA Group, Japan's federation of agricultural cooperatives.

The F&AGRIPACK series of agricultural cloud services supports the agricultural industry by bringing clarity to business operations such as management, production, and customer relations. Delivered as software as a service (SaaS)-based solution using Fujitsu's datacenters, it is both easy to use and accessible from a computer using the Internet.

As part of this effort, Fujitsu is offering both a business management solution, which is designed to support the accounting, payroll calculation, and tax preparation needs of farms, and a farm management solution, which tracks plant productivity logs and assists with food safety. This package will be available to the JA Group, agricultural producers, agricultural corporations, and retailers.

Fujitsu has also joined forces with Fujitsu Kyushu Systems Limited, Fujitsu Hokkaido Systems Limited, and Fujitsu Tohoku Systems Limited to establish an agricultural solutions center, the largest of its kind in Japan, with approximately 100 personnel. The new center aims to expand its services and provide enhanced support to the agriculture industry, including the JA Group. The center will continue to support companies involved in farming to further expand their businesses.

Background

With Japan's experienced farming community growing older and rising concerns over the country's food self-sufficiency ratio, a variety of policies have been put in place to prevent a downturn in the food supply, including government-sponsored promotion of farming, establishment of agricultural corporations, and participation by companies outside the industry. Even so, the presence of agricultural producers and corporations throughout Japan is scattered, and given the relatively limited size of their operations, most lack ICT skills and dedicated ICT professionals.

Fujitsu aims to systematically deliver cloud services building upon the knowledge acquired from the agricultural-support system field tests performed in Miyazaki Prefecture in southern Japan, to enhance operating efficiency within the agricultural industry.

F&AGRIPACK Series Features

Fujitsu plans to roll out products in the F&AGRIPACK series as a package of business support services for the agricultural industry that will help customers bring clarity to areas of their business such as management, production, and customer relations.

Features of Business Management Solution

Serving as an accounting service customized for agriculture, this solution accurately handles agriculture-specific accounting practices, such as depreciation and workers' dividends⁽²⁾. It also accurately prepares tax forms in conjunction with the business consulting services of an accountant. The software underlying this service was developed by Fujitsu Kyushu Systems Limited.

(1.) Integrated service handles accounting, payroll, and tax forms
By simply entering data from transaction tickets and pay stubs into an on-screen form, users can easily manage their journaling and payroll taxes. In addition to basic functions, such as accounting, asset tracking, and payroll, this service handles year-end adjustments, earnings declarations, and business diagnostics functions. It can also quickly manage categorized profit and loss information without requiring any special data-entry or configuration.

(2.) Covers wide range of functions, including tax forms, based on daily record-keeping
Users can sort transaction tickets simply by categorizing them on-screen by transaction type, without the need for any specialized accounting knowledge. By inputting tickets on an accrual basis, the program can automatically produce settlement reports. It can also produce corporate tax and consumption tax forms.
(3.) Handles requirements specific to community corporations
The service automatically handles consumption-tax calculations for worker's dividends. In addition, it automatically calculates the accrual limit for funds reserved for strengthening the foundation of farm management, and supports automatic journaling.

Features of Farm Management Solution

This service tracks production logs of agricultural products and appropriately handles production management based on agrochemical standards. The software underlying this service was developed by Fujitsu Hokkaido Systems Limited.

(1.) Supports the increased use of bookkeeping
Production logs can easily be recorded by running handwritten logbook sheets through character recognition software. This also makes logbook storage more efficient and simplifies the process of doing spot-checks on logbooks.

(2.) Ensures safety of agricultural products
A function that checks whether agricultural-chemical use is within legal limits ensures the safety of agricultural products. This helps to prevent any problems involving quality issues before they occur, and helps producers appeal to consumers in their use of safe practices and products.

(3.) Supports stable management of agricultural corporations
Production records can be used as the basis for improving the quality of agricultural products and making production levels consistent. This information is also important for swiftly dealing with public-health issues and for maintaining steady management of agricultural corporations.

The service-use contract for the accountant assisted model is executed between the accountant and Fujitsu, and the accountant provides the agricultural producer/corporation with a user ID to utilize the service (this service is used by agricultural producers/corporations that have a consulting contract with an accountant). The service-use contract for the general model is executed between the agricultural producer/corporation and Fujitsu directly.

Pricing for JA and agricultural corporations is per entity

Sales Target

F&AGRIPACK Business Management Solution: 30 licenses for accountants and 1,200 licenses for agricultural corporations over the next three years.

F&AGRIPACK Farm Management Solution: Licenses for 48 organizations over the next three years.

Future Plans

Fujitsu plans to add SaaS solutions that cover agricultural process management and field management in the future.

Glossary and Notes

1 Agricultural corporation:

Term for corporations engaged in agriculture, operating as corporations. Approximately 10,000 of these entities exist in Japan.

2 Workers' dividends:

A dividend distributed to farm-union members in proportion to their contribution to the corporation's business, instead of compensating based on a set unit value equivalent to the labor performed by the farm-union member.

3 GAP:

Abbreviation for Good Agricultural Practices. A set of methods for agricultural production designed to ensure food safety, which are to be followed and logged.

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About Fujitsu

Fujitsu is a leading provider of IT-based business solutions for the global marketplace. With approximately 160,000 employees supporting customers in 70 countries, Fujitsu combines a worldwide corps of systems and services experts with highly reliable computing and communications products and advanced microelectronics to deliver added value to customers. Headquartered in Tokyo, Fujitsu Limited (TSE:6702) reported consolidated revenues of 5.3 trillion yen (US$53 billion) for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2008. For more information, please see: www.fujitsu.com.

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