SYSMEX business innovation app development directed in the field through the Power Platform and assured with Microsoft Unified Support

The healthcare industry has been facing increasingly diverse and complex needs in recent years, such as the realization of personalized medicine and control of rising healthcare costs in developed countries, and the development of healthcare infrastructure and improved access to healthcare in emerging and developing countries. The realization of a society where each individual, regardless of his or her location or position, can enjoy appropriate medical processes and maintain quality of life throughout his or her life may be said to be a wish shared by people all over the world.

Therefore, renewed attention is being paid to the importance of examination and diagnosis. Diagnosis based on appropriate tests will realize optimal medical care for each individual, and provide appropriate care not only during poor health, but also in daily life and after treatment is completed. Sysmex Corporation, active in more than 190 countries and regions, operates its healthcare business with the vision of providing value in healthcare through a series of stages called "healthcare journey".

Accelerating growth through improved systems to lessen the burden on frontline employees

Since establishment in 1968, Sysmex has grown with a focus on laboratory testing of bodily fluids, starting with blood and urine. In the long-term corporate strategy from 2023, the company aims to support development of a society where people around the world, and throughout their entire life, are supported by their long-term vision of “Together for a better healthcare journey”. It is now working on a variety of measures aligned to that purpose, including business domain expansion and human resource development.

“I believe digital technology plays a vital role in realizing these measures and continuing our grow as a company,” says Masayoshi Higashi, Senior Planner, Digitalization Planning, DX Strategy Development, Sysmex Corporation. The company is currently undertaking a global project revising its core and peripheral systems in order to standardize overall workflows. That includes data storage across different countries that has become inefficient due to disparate optimization efforts.

Higashi is hopeful that these core system updates will accelerate the speed of the company's growth, but now also faces a range of new challenges.

“While optimizations have progressed with standardization of core systems, we felt that not enough adjustments have been made for the burden of on-site work. At the DX Strategy Promotion Division, we believe focus should be on both systems that standardize operations and data, along with making manual fieldwork more efficient with creation of refined process improvements.” (Higashi)

This led to the idea of a project promoting internal crowd-sourced development using Microsoft Power Apps, a low-code app development tool in the Microsoft Power Platform. Higashi, who was originally an internal proponent of Microsoft 365, felt that some of the features provided by the product suite were not being fully utilized. After reading a case study released by Microsoft Japan, he thought that a solution to the company’s problems was possible with the Power Platform.

“An on-site employee who knows requirements well can make an application quickly and satisfactorily. In addition, the cost is also low. We felt there was high potential as a tool for reducing staff workloads.” (Higashi)

Proof-of-concept with prototypes developed with Power Platform

Higashi enthusiastically explained an approach to his team members for introduction of the Power Platform. However, initial reactions were not positive. Sumiaki Matsumoto, Manager of the Information Solution, DX Strategy Development, Sysmex Corporation, had past and previously unfavorable experience given the history with EUC (End-User Computing). Certain heavy users built up their own applications, and due to transfers and retirements, it became difficult to continue operation and maintenance of those programs at the company.

“When we first heard from Higashi, we were concerned that we might encounter a similar tough situation." (Matsumoto)

However, since Microsoft 365 was already implemented and the Power Platform was ready to use, Matsumoto decided to directly try out the application. He created a smartphone app to allow users to search for available meeting rooms and make reservations. As soon as he started working on the app, Matsumoto felt, "This can definitely be used!”

“It was my first time developing a low code app, but I was able to create one in much less time and effort than I had imagined by combining necessary components and applying appropriate settings. I felt app development could be possible even by ordinary employees without experience in IT. With that type of in-the-field DX, it is possible to not only improve the efficiency of on-site operations, but also lead to the development of talent that can grow to master IT. As a countermeasure against risks posed by previous issues with EUC, we have reconsidered how we can take advantage of this new potential." (Matsumoto)

This is the background of the Internal Crowd Development Project, led by Higashi, Matsumoto, and Takaaki Hori of the Information Solution, DX Strategy Development, Sysmex Corporation.

Strategic project roll-out to increase user base through weighted evaluations

“The profound advantage of the Power Platform is that even non-IT people can create applications with no or low code. They also feel that they can solve their own problems. The movement to spontaneously solve problems really spreads from there," says Higashi.

"On the other hand, it is not an easy-to-use tool like Microsoft Teams, so we have to understand that just because we push introduction, it may not be used immediately," he says.

The promotion team decided to come up with a plan since it would be difficult to ensure widespread adoption immediately simply by encouraging use of the tool.

“We first selected departments expected to have a likelihood for higher internalized crowd development. Then we provided extensive support through briefing sessions and hands-on training, developing a "weighted" style of introduction to support the increase of local users.” (Hori)

The promotion team initially approached the R&D department as a likely target for such a weighted introduction. However, the team learned instead that the back-office unit, which supports developers, has more complicated tasks that need to be changed and improved. When asked to change the target to the back-office unit, the team responded, "Let's do it.”

“However, they were concerned about whether they would be able to develop the product. While the R&D department has staff with strong IT backgrounds, most of the members of the back-office department had no programming experience which meant we were concerned with their capabilities,” says Higashi.

Members of the promotion team were soon to change their opinions.

After the briefing and two days of hands-on training, almost single-handedly the back-office team launched several applications, including one for recording training courses for R&D personnel, another to manage product viability for overseas exports, and yet another for mid-career hiring of R&D personnel. I was very surprised at this.” (Higashi)

A backup system provided by Microsoft's Unified Support

Higashi attributes the program’s success to the highly motivated crowd-sourced developers and functionality of the Power Platform itself, as well as the support provided by Microsoft Japan.

“Microsoft Japan accompanied us during the hands-on training and we could ask questions immediately if there was anything we didn't understand. Everyone left with a feeling of ‘I can do it too’ which I believe led to continued efforts.” (Higashi)

Microsoft Japan's support for the company is not only limited to such training events, but also provided through Unified Support.

Unified Support is not just a product support service, but a higher-level service that combines 24-hour customer-specific information, suggestions for effective use, and proactive problem prevention and security services.

“IT Operations are outsourced to an external support desk, where inquiries from employees are first handled. While basic Q&A is not a problem, more complex questions about Microsoft 365 features or how to utilize them are often escalated to our Information Solutions Department. It was expected that the Power Platform would also fall squarely into this latter pattern. " (Matsumoto)

Sysmex adopted Unified Support to alleviate the anticipated lack of resources in the Information Solutions Department.

Matsumoto highly appreciates Unified Support, saying, "In addition to responding to inquiries, we are offered timely information on new services and consultations.”

Hori also mentions, "Best practices are put forward in response to inquiries from our crowd developers, which we find more useful than our own responses to them. Once a month, we have a face-to-face session for users with an engineer from Microsoft Japan and it is so popular that the slots fill up in no time at all.”

Proceeding with project expansion and preparation for anticipated challenges

With that backup system in place, the implementation team gained confidence from the initial rollout of the support project for the Power Platform. The scope of support expanded to other departments, including sales and supply chain management. The number of crowd developers has steadily increased, and now more than 40 apps have been developed on-site helping to improve operational efficiency.

“Case studies and an application catalog have been published on our internal portal site. We started receiving many inquiries from people saying, ‘If this can be done, our department would like to also try it.’ We now have a waiting list for the information sessions," energetically says Hori. “We plan to switch from weighted approach for introduction support to a recruiting approach and encourage adoption widely within the company.”

Matsumoto talks about how he addressed the aforementioned risks associated with promoting crowd-sourced development.

“It was challenging to ensure information security and create a mechanism to manage these crowd-sourced applications. Therefore, we established guidelines on what kind of apps are allowed for development. That led to configuring the usage environment so that operations violating guidelines are not even allowed on the Power Platform. We are also preparing a management dashboard allowing us to keep track of who in which department is creating which apps and their usage." (Matsumoto).

Fostering the right mindset first with later adjustments for speed

While assuring safety in this way, Higashi says emphatically, "We are not yet anywhere near stepping on the brakes.”

“If we are talking about offense and defense, I think we are still in the offensive phase. There may be some efforts that may not be effective and could be wasted, but I believe that it is more risky to stop our forward momentum.” (Higashi).

“Our promotion team is taking a "try first" approach starting from consultations with users. In addition, regular monthly meetings for the latest information and service updates are held with Microsoft Japan. We are very grateful they understand our situation well enough to give us specific advice relevant to our company.” (Higashi)

“My aim is to support people motivated to realize what they want to do, and spread word within the company that someone working with them has created an application, or that their own department can also work on digitalization." (Matsumoto)

“The appeal of the Power Platform is in the mindset of frontline staff that are not content with their existing work, but want to transform and digitize it more. Such a mindset will be important for us in the future. I want to support the spread of this thinking throughout the company. I believe that a field-led DX culture can then take root and accelerate digital transformation for all of Sysmex." (Hori)

An environment created by the IT department in which field staff can work in a relaxed manner

Sysmex continues to scale up its crowd-sourced development, with initiatives such as holding exchange meetings with other companies exploring the Power Platform. Higashi says that the secrets to project success are "getting involved," "trusting the field," and "letting autonomy take care of itself.”

“It is important that not only interested employees but also their supervisors understand the relevance of crowd-sourced development. We believe that this will increase the psychological safety of developers, allowing them to work freely and spontaneously towards digitalization." (Higashi).

In the future, Higashi hopes to apply AI to further improve the efficiency of business operations with the foundation of the Power Platform. “I think there will be areas where internal resources alone are not sufficient, so I hope we will continue to receive generous support from Microsoft Japan," he says.

With the introduction of crowd-sourced development tools, and also the careful attention given to the roll-out, backup systems, and sustaining on-going motivation, the company is steadily promoting voluntary in-house DX. Sysmex aims to continue making its presence felt in the field of healthcare, which is indispensable in our daily lives.