Tokyo, November 27, 2018
Fujitsu today announced the launch of "Fujitsu Workplace Innovation Zinrai for 365 Dashboard," a new service that aims to create more diverse ways of working and improving the work-life balance of employees, using artificial intelligence to visualize the trends of business collaboration patterns and processes. Sales of the new service begin on November 27.
Fujitsu and Microsoft have been working to develop workstyle transformation solutions since December 2017, as part of their collaboration in the AI field. As the first outcome of this collaboration, the new service leverages the insights gained from Fujitsu's own approximately 2,000-employee internal trial, and puts Fujitsu's AI technology "Fujitsu Human Centric AI Zinrai" to work on the analysis of the trends of a business collaboration patterns and processes from Microsoft 365 and other apps. The service categorizes and visualizes broad collaboration and workstyle trends happening within an organization. This supports a shift to more creative tasks with more diverse and flexible ways of working.
Fujitsu will continue to work to develop and globally deliver solutions that help customers increase productivity, using AI.
Background
Recent years have seen a rapid advance in efforts to transform working styles, based on the goals of addressing long working hours, creating more diverse ways of working, and improving work-life balance. As these transformations move ahead, however, numerous challenges have emerged, such as the need to understand current workstyles, namely, who is doing what task for how long, and discover better ways of quantitatively grasping and evaluating measures to improve productivity.
Since December 2017, Fujitsu and Microsoft have extended their collaborative framework into the field of AI, working to jointly develop solutions that further transform the ways people work, using both companies' services and AI technology.
Features of the Service
Using the natural language and knowledge processing technology of Zinrai, which aggregates the results of Fujitsu Laboratories' research, this service analyzes the trends of a business collaboration patterns and processes from data collected through Microsoft Azure by using Microsoft 365 and other apps. This includes email and calendar metadata, as well as the ability to layer in an organization's data, including To/From data, subject lines, and timestamps, to shine a light on how people collaborate and spend their time at work. In order to understand how much time employees are spending on which sorts of work, the service analyzes the details of operations from three angles: "Tasks," "Targets," and "Topics." In addition, by linking with Microsoft Power BI, Microsoft's interactive data visualization tool, this service can visualize the results of analysis, which can then be approached from multiple perspectives.
This enables the service to provide a concrete understanding of issues in current operations, while having a quantitative grasp and verification of measures aimed at further improving productivity through the utilization of results gained through visualization.
At the same time, together with a consulting on original scenario creation to transform workstyles, and an array of other services, Fujitsu is providing the total support--from service implementation to ongoing results monitoring--that will help customers to transform workstyles.
Overview of Fujitsu's Internal Trial
Fujitsu has proactively taken the opportunity to develop a solution, beginning an internal trial in July 2018 aimed at categorizing and visualizing, to improve day-to-day operations with AI. Specifically, using Zinrai AI technology, it categorized operational details along the axes of what sort of task it was, what the goal of the task was, and the respective employee that was doing the task, gained from PC usage data and data from Microsoft 365, for about 2,000 Fujitsu employees. The solution visualized who was doing the task, which could then be analyzed and evaluated through a dashboard.
Among those offices that participated in this advance trial, Fujitsu made efforts to address the issues of frequent meetings and communication style, and as a result freed up an average of 43 minutes per day per person. This enabled employees to spend 16% more time on core tasks with a focus on corporate tasks and other operations.
Future Developments
In the future, Fujitsu will Integrate this service with Microsoft Workplace Analytics, which analyzes time management and collaboration patterns in organizations, thereby raising the quality of meetings and daily communication, supporting further workstyle transformations.
By 2020, Fujitsu aims to develop a 50.0 billion yen business through this service and related businesses. Moreover, this service is set to be rolled out globally, after first being offered in the Japanese market.
Pricing and Availability
Product Name |
Pricing (tax excl.) |
Availability |
Fujitsu Workplace Innovation Zinrai for 365 Dashboard |
From JPY 1,200/month per user ID |
November 27, 2018 |
Comment from Megumi Shimazu, SVP, Head of Managed Infrastructure Services Business Unit, Global Delivery Group, Fujitsu Limited
"Arising from our alliance with Microsoft, Zinrai for 365 Dashboard makes it possible to grasp, and quantitatively transform, the ways employees actually work. We will provide the insights and know-how gained from our own internal implementation to accelerate customer transformation in the ways they go about their business and support employees as they take charge of how they perform their jobs. Fujitsu will continue to work with Microsoft to promote new innovations that lead to a more prosperous society in the future."
Comment from Steven Guggenheimer, Corporate Vice President, Microsoft Corporation
"We welcome the launch of Zinrai for 365 Dashboard, a new service created through our collaboration with Fujitsu that will use Microsoft Azure and Microsoft 365 to transform the ways customers work. By visualizing work tasks and solving issues, this will provide people and organizations with insights to find new ways of working."
Related Links
Fujitsu and Microsoft Team Up for Artificial Intelligence (press release, December 22, 2017)
Microsoft 365
Microsoft Workplace Analytics