[Customer story]

Key benefits

• H.323 connection with the legacy SONY video conferencing system

• Excellent audio and video conferencing quality on iPad

• Customized address book and user training program to encourage adoption and enhance ease of use

Arkadin collaboration solutions

• Arkadin® Video

Utilizing existing video conferencing hardware and iPads with a cloud based video conferencing solution to increase communication and meeting participation for shop and office based employees

Overview and challenges

Bell-Park sells mobile phones exclusively for the SoftBank Group, one of Japan’s major mobile telecommunications carriers. The company operates across a network of 211 SoftBank shops, three office sites and a new overseas site.

Bell-Park had been using two remote collaboration solutions: Sony video conferencing rooms in its offices in Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya and a PC web conferencing solution for its shops. These two solutions, which were run as entirely separate systems, were beginning to compromise efficiency, as Takumi Nakanishi from Bell Park’s Information System Department explains,

“We began to realize the limitation of our current solutions when we had a requirement to contact another site for video conferencing. The PC based web conferencing was also becoming restrictive.”

[Customer story]

Region

Employees

Vertical

Japan

1,300

Retail (mobile telecommunications)

Customer

Bell Park

Customer story [Enjoy sharing]

Customer Story

“I was amazed, other vendors attempted to demonstrate it but they all failed. Arkadin came and instantly connected to the conferencing system. That first impression was really good and the quality was excellent.”

Takumi Nakanishi, Information Systems Department

Bell Park

1. The legacy video conferencing service from Sony only connected the offices in Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya. Bell-Park needed a quick and economical video conferencing connection with the new overseas site.

2. Every shop had PC based web conferencing capability so the team could communicate and discuss documents with their area manager. Each store only had one PC, so if it was being used for web conferencing, it was not available for other critical business.

Nakanishi urgently needed to solve the first challenge. The cost of setting up a video conferencing room using the same hardware as the three existing rooms was prohibitively expensive. He therefore looked at whether it would be possible to connect the PC web conferencing system that was used in the shops with the Sony video conferencing system, but unfortunately the systems proved to be incompatible.

The web conferencing solution used in the shops was impacting productivity, so Nakanishi looked at how he could expand access:

“I wanted to see if web conferencing could be done from the iPad, as we have demo models in each store. I tried our existing web conferencing service on the iPad, but it was hard to use and the quality was not good enough.”

The Arkadin solution

Nakanishi initially contacted Arkadin to try and solve the video conferencing problem. He put together a shortlist of vendors that claimed to be able to connect to the Sony Video conferencing room hardware via the H323 protocol and was interested in ArkadinVideo powered by Vidyo, a cloud based HD video conferencing solution.

The short listed vendors were invited to demonstrate their solutions. Arkadin used a laptop to connect to the conference room and showed that they could connect in 10 seconds. Nakanishi said, “I was amazed, other vendors demonstrated it but they all failed. Arkadin came and instantly connected to the conferencing system. That first impression was really good and the quality was excellent.”

Business value

ArkadinVideo, was implemented into the video conferencing rooms in Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya via the H.323 connection so all three Japanese sites and the overseas site could connect to each.

The implementation of the solution resulted in a dramatic improvement in scalability as one of the key benefits of ArkadinVideo is that it is not restricted to a video conferencing room. It can be used from an internet

Customer story [Enjoy sharing]

Customer Story

Bell ParkCustomer Story

enabled PC or mobile device such as the iPad, something which was extremely attractive to Bell-Park. In addition to the HD video conferencing functionality, ArkadinVideo also offers desktop and document sharing, which is the essential requirement that was delivered by the PC web conferencing solution. Nakanishi comments, “It surprised me to see that ArkadinVideo was quite so good, even on a 3G network; I was impressed. The product is well designed, very simple to use and the sound and image is very clear; which led me to believe that it would be good enough for remote meetings from our shops.”

Nakanishi and his team thoroughly tested the solution prior to the full scale deployment. During this phase they focused on several elements which were customized to encourage user adoption and improve ease of use within their specific corporate environment:

Address Book: By default the ArkadinVideo address book shows all available contacts, in this case over 200 shops, on the system. The address book was customized to list just the shops within the same sales group.

User Training: Arkadin delivered a customized user training program in two stages: remote online training using ArkadinVideo as the delivery platform and onsite training at the Tokyo HQ.

Training Manual: Arkadin created a video user manual which was very easy and cost effective to roll out across a large number of sites compared to the traditional printed manual.

Easy Access: A hyperlink to ArkadinVideo has been added to the internal corporate portal so video conferencing can be accessed by everyone in one-click.

Nakanishi concludes: “Video conferencing has increased throughout the company since we started using ArkadinVideo. Not only are we able to video conference with our overseas base, but the SoftBank office staff are also able to use it at any time from their desks, without relying on the availability of a video conference room. End users have praised the Arkadin service, describing the quality as very good, even when used from a poor network environment and a big improvement on the previous service. It has been great for enhancing communication between everyone both in store and in the office, leading to increased collaborative work for all and greater efficiency in the shops.”

About Arkadin

Arkadin is one of the largest and fastest growing Collaboration Service Providers in the world. With a vision rooted in the belief that progress emerges from people’s desire to share, Arkadin offers a complete range of integrated audio, web, video and Unified Communications solutions. These services are delivered in the cloud for fast, scalable deployment and a high ROI. The company’s global network of 52 operating centers in 32 countries has dedicated local support teams to service its 37,000 customers. As an NTT Communications Group company, Arkadin offers the most comprehensive collaboration and Unified Communications services for meeting customer needs around the world.

To find out more about Arkadin please visit www.arkadin.com