With its 2020 Vision for the Keihin Group, Keihin Corporation aims to expand globally by promoting various initiatives such as the development of information infrastructure that links offices worldwide, and achieve its goal of becoming a truly independent system parts manufacturer capable of competing with mega-suppliers on products and technology that contribute to the global environment. The company revealed that its IS department faced difficulty in allocating sufficient resources to the planning and development of new initiatives, as it was burdened by system maintenance operations that have expanded from the backbone system to the information system. It leveraged on “Management Consulting”, a corporate technical support service provided by Microsoft Premier Support team. Through Management Consulting, it was able to identify issues in its business which led to a breakthrough.

As a leading provider of travel insurance products, ACE Travel Insurance knew that in order to accelerate growth, it needed a fast and easy way to enable its travel and insurance industry partners to sell its insurance policies online, through a system that is fully integrated with the partner’s sales processes and systems. Since implementing the ACE Central Reservation System, based on Microsoft BizTalk Server, ACE Travel Insurance has cut development time by more than half, shortened time-to-market, enabled faster and easier integration of new partners and reduced sales cycle. All these have helped to sharpen its competitive advantage and speed up entry into new markets.

Pennsylvania’s Central Bucks School District needed a more flexible software system for managing its operations. For more than 20 years, the organization relied on a legacy system. However, this system lacked the built-in capabilities to enable Central Bucks to efficiently adapt and streamline core processes, such as budget administration and purchasing. After evaluating several enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, the organization opted to implement K12 Enterprise from Microsoft partner K12 Enterprise. This solution tailors functionality in Microsoft Dynamics NAV to the unique challenges of K-12 school systems. Now, with a flexible, powerful system built on Microsoft SQL Server technology, Central Bucks has strengthened compliance through better reporting and increased the efficiency of key processes by up to 80 percent.

Salt Lake City was one municipality among thousands in the United States to be hit by the recession. But it was one of the first to respond by streamlining its building permit process. Making that process faster, simpler, and easier for real estate developers would attract more of them to the city, officials reasoned. So, the city adopted a Microsoft technology–based solution featuring a document management interface that was tailored for the permit process by provider Avolve Software. The results: The time required for the process has been reduced by up to 50 percent, potentially shaving days or weeks off the typical schedule. Even the carbon footprint generated by the process has been reduced. Salt Lake City now points to businesses—from a major retailer to a global manufacturer—that have launched or expanded in the city as a result.

Professional staffing firm Kforce provides contract, contract-to-hire, and permanent employees primarily to companies in North America. To increase the availability and performance of its time-and-expense system, the company worked with software developer AgileThought to create a new application based on a service-oriented architecture (SOA) and the Microsoft platform, including a database with 4 gigabytes (GB) of data. As a result, Kforce has increased system availability to 100 percent, reduced the average logon time by 83 percent, shrank the hardware footprint by 50 percent, and cut IT expenses by 50 percent.

ODEL PLC (ODEL), Sri Lanka’s leading fashion retailer, wanted a scalable solution that will enhance both management and operational visibility across its 15-store network. With Microsoft Dynamics™ NAV, ODEL empowered its aggressive growth plans with enhanced inventory management, comprehensive sales analysis capabilities and increased management visibility.

Chorley Council in north-west England is one of three local authorities that have embarked on a radical project to transform service delivery to residents and businesses. Chorley is replacing its existing customer services management software with the Asidua Customer Contact Platform, which is built on the Microsoft Connected Government Framework. Although the rollout is in its early stages, the three councils expect to reduce staff by 20 full-time equivalents as manual processes are replaced by automated business workflows. The local authorities are on target to save around £2.6 million (U.S.$4.2 million) over four years—a major bonus in the current economic climate. They envisage further savings through using the Asidua solution, in line with government policy set by the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government in the Comprehensive Spending Review in 2010.

Chicago-based Dutch Farms has 160 employees and distributes a private-label line of dairy products and eggs and a range of refrigerated and frozen foods. After exhausting the capabilities of its aging, Unix-based enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, the company realized that it needed a modern solution with comprehensive and integrated functionality to keep up with growth and the needs of a dynamic, highly competitive market. For its new ERP system, Dutch Farms chose Microsoft Dynamics NAV and implemented the solution with help from Microsoft Gold Certified Partner Solution Systems. Since deployment, the company has grown its revenue by 25 percent without needing to add staff to back-office positions, gained comprehensive insight and control over operations, and sharpened its competitive edge with both small and large retailers alike.

3DISC, founded in 2007, is the global company in the Computed Radiography reader field of the X-ray imaging market .Since 3DISC has been producing a single product and it was not long after it began mass production, It had to establish certain levels for sales, manufacturing and quality from the initial point of production to enter the global market. Therefore it decided to adopt ERP after receiving consulting service from TECTURA Korea and incrementally extend ERP modules and proceeded with implementation in production and order management functions first . As a result, 3DISC used the default function of Microsoft Dynamics AX to achieve its goals of establishing direction for business automation and standardization without PI (Process Innovation) consultation. 3DISC plans to extend ERP system into the finance and accounting in the future.

United Kingdom publisher A&N Media was finding that its existing business integration and management environment required a skills base that was not in line with its decision to standardise on Microsoft technologies. In addition, there was greater internal development capacity in using Microsoft middleware and the Microsoft .NET Framework. The IT team deployed Microsoft BizTalk Server 2009 to integrate disparate systems, enhance end-to-end connectivity, and exchange data more quickly. As a result, A&N Media has achieved its consolidation objectives, improved the supportability of its integration platform, and seen significant performance gains in data capture and aggregation. In one test run, the new solution is exceeded targets by more than 600 per cent and by 64 per cent in a second example.