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Home > Resources > Case Study > Fujinami
Japanese Hospitality major Fujinami adopts Fiorano Platform to empower franchisees
Fujinami a seller and rental supplier of “Oshibori”, or "hot towel", establishing Oshibori-Japan as a brand name and later diversifying into non towel services. Fujinami’s clients include global leaders such as Audi, Google, Estee Lauder, Facebook, Nippon Hotels, Nissan, and L'Oreal. With over 500 million oshiboris sold per month it is aggressively expanding into the Pacific region.
Japanese Hospitality major Fujinami adopts Fiorano Platform to empower franchisees
Fujinami a seller and rental supplier of “Oshibori”, or "hot towel", establishing Oshibori-Japan as a brand name and later diversifying into non towel services. Fujinami’s clients include global leaders such as Audi, Google, Estee Lauder, Facebook, Nippon Hotels, Nissan, and L'Oreal. With over 500 million oshiboris sold per month it is aggressively expanding into the Pacific region.
USE CASE
REST APIs. Order Optimization
BENEFITS
Accurate order processing. Productivity increases
INDUSTRY
Retail
KEY PRODUCT COMPONENTS
Fiorano Platform , Fiorano SOA platform
Business Challenge
A major retail destination of Oshibori is the hospitality industry and Fujinami used franchisees for collecting orders and supplies from/to shops and restaurants in a relevant district.
Manual order processing:
The franchise agency would send collected orders to Fujinami headquarters via fax. These were then manually processed - obviously a relatively slow and error-prone process once volumes increased the way they did.
Complex sales rules:
With several different product lines, applying sales rules which differed for each franchise became highly complex, cumbersome and unwieldy with frequent errors leading to delays and increased costs. Manual practices such as hand writing comments and making corrections by strikethrough on the faxed order sheets made order processing highly error-prone. If the person responsible for processing orders was absent, the entire process would come to a grinding halt.
Intricate packing and shipping logistics:
Complex calculations were required to compute the number of cases to be simultaneously packed which varied according to the destination warehouse. Specific bundle discounts had to be factored into the decision-making process. Franchisees had to fill out multiple order sheets for each warehouse/product.
This led to significant bottlenecks in the entire order-delivery and sales fulfilment cycle, severely limiting Fujinami's ability to scale and high costs eroding profitability.
500 Million
Oshiboris sold/month
Achieved by performing multiple
functions at a similar time.
Business Challenge
A major retail destination of Oshibori is the hospitality industry and Fujinami used franchisees for collecting orders and supplies from/to shops and restaurants in a relevant district.
Manual order processing: The franchise agency would send collected orders to Fujinami headquarters via fax. These were then manually processed - obviously a relatively slow and error-prone process once volumes increased the way they did. Complex sales rules: With several different product lines, applying sales rules which differed for each franchise became highly complex, cumbersome and unwieldy with frequent errors leading to delays and increased costs. Manual practices such as hand writing comments and making corrections by strikethrough on the faxed order sheets made order processing highly error-prone. If the person responsible for processing orders was absent, the entire process would come to a grinding halt. Intricate packing and shipping logistics: Complex calculations were required to compute the number of cases to be simultaneously packed which varied according to the destination warehouse. Specific bundle discounts had to be factored into the decision-making process. Franchisees had to fill out multiple order sheets for each warehouse/product.
This led to significant bottlenecks in the entire order-delivery and sales fulfilment cycle, severely limiting Fujinami's ability to scale and high costs eroding profitability.
500 Million
Oshiboris sold/month
Achieved by performing multiple
functions at a similar time.
"While selecting a product, we carefully evaluate efficiency value per use case. With the Fiorano Platform, development processes from configuration to deployment were very smooth and easy, so that alternative business scenarios could be completed very quickly."
Mr. Noriaki Aoki, Chief Architect , Fujinami Implementation partner, Intermirage
"While selecting a product, we carefully evaluate efficiency value per use case. With the Fiorano Platform, development processes from configuration to deployment were very smooth and easy, so that alternative business scenarios could be completed very quickly."
Mr. Noriaki Aoki, Chief Architect , Fujinami Implementation partner, Intermirage
Solution
Fujinami Towel Service commissioned Japanese system integrator, Intermirage to research options for digitizing their order processing system. They wanted a scalable system that could be adopted to meet their growing needs and one that would also use their existing legacy systems (Database) and networks. Given the fluid nature of business relations with the Franchisees they needed a flexible system that allowed them to make changes easily based on business expediency.
Fujinami evaluated solution-specific business application packages but concluded that in the long run such a selection would result in a spaghetti-like architecture with many end points. Their goal was simplicity of design coupled with performance and flexibility. They finally decided to use middleware-centric Fiorano Platform technology and selected the Fiorano SOA Platform to deliver the solution. The key values driving the selection of Fiorano over other technologies were: Ability to use existing IT infrastructure (network, Database systems, etc), High reusability of services allowing Fujinami to rapidly deploy and develop new business flows based on their internal requirements, In-built architectural-level scalability for future expansion overseas, Ease of use- so new business flows could be quickly developed and deployed by Fujinami engineers in-house.
Solution
Fujinami Towel Service commissioned Japanese system integrator, Intermirage to research options for digitizing their order processing system. They wanted a scalable system that could be adopted to meet their growing needs and one that would also use their existing legacy systems (Database) and networks. Given the fluid nature of business relations with the Franchisees they needed a flexible system that allowed them to make changes easily based on business expediency.
Fujinami evaluated solution-specific business application packages but concluded that in the long run such a selection would result in a spaghetti-like architecture with many end points. Their goal was simplicity of design coupled with performance and flexibility. They finally decided to use middleware-centric Fiorano Platform technology and selected the Fiorano SOA Platform to deliver the solution. The key values driving the selection of Fiorano over other technologies were: Ability to use existing IT infrastructure (network, Database systems, etc), High reusability of services allowing Fujinami to rapidly deploy and develop new business flows based on their internal requirements, In-built architectural-level scalability for future expansion overseas, Ease of use- so new business flows could be quickly developed and deployed by Fujinami engineers in-house.
Fiorano Deployment Architecture at Fujinami
"Drag-Drop-Deploy" compresses deployment time
Business Use case driven:
When developing new business flows and/or user interfaces screens, changes and enhancements often occur even after beta testing. On the Fiorano SOA Platform, the business flow designer can easily deploy Fiorano's prebuilt components which map to business functions and physical IT systems. The designers were able to rapidly implement change requirements even after beta testing using just a drag-drop-deploy approach.
Deployment in 90 days
The new order processing system was built in just three months. Intermirage support included architecture design and development of functionality of security, data, and user interface screens and to utilize Fiorano SOA Platform as a bridge to those functionalities.
REST based system
Web based user interface screens connect to the Fiorano SOA Platform via REST APIs (a combination of HTTP GET/PUT and XML response). This capability of communicating via a defined service API without any direct access to databases from web screens written by PHP or HTTP is very important as it is the key feature that enables flexible system expansion and enhancements.
Fiorano SOA provides a REST adapter prebuilt component which got the job done via simple configuration (XSD and property sheet) settings. Fiorano's REST adapter and event-port mechanism eliminated the effort of script coding (such as branching by IF or WHEN statements in XSLT syntax) which are required by other products. Fujinami developers saved significant time in creating and deploying REST APIs for business partners just by parameter settings in the Wizard.
Fiorano SOA Platform web-based monitoring functions such as logging in a variety of log levels, communication recording and problem tracing enabled effective investigation for resolving problems and error tracking.
Fiorano Deployment Architecture at Fujinami
"Drag-Drop-Deploy" compresses deployment time
Business Use case driven:
When developing new business flows and/or user interfaces screens, changes and enhancements often occur even after beta testing. On the Fiorano SOA Platform, the business flow designer can easily deploy Fiorano's prebuilt components which map to business functions and physical IT systems. The designers were able to rapidly implement change requirements even after beta testing using just a drag-drop-deploy approach.
Deployment in 90 days
The new order processing system was built in just three months. Intermirage support included architecture design and development of functionality of security, data, and user interface screens and to utilize Fiorano SOA Platform as a bridge to those functionalities.
REST based system
Web based user interface screens connect to the Fiorano SOA Platform via REST APIs (a combination of HTTP GET/PUT and XML response). This capability of communicating via a defined service API without any direct access to databases from web screens written by PHP or HTTP is very important as it is the key feature that enables flexible system expansion and enhancements.
Fiorano SOA provides a REST adapter prebuilt component which got the job done via simple configuration (XSD and property sheet) settings. Fiorano's REST adapter and event-port mechanism eliminated the effort of script coding (such as branching by IF or WHEN statements in XSLT syntax) which are required by other products. Fujinami developers saved significant time in creating and deploying REST APIs for business partners just by parameter settings in the Wizard.
Fiorano SOA Platform web-based monitoring functions such as logging in a variety of log levels, communication recording and problem tracing enabled effective investigation for resolving problems and error tracking.
Results
Productivity increases were significant with the Fiorano SOA Platform; one use case took only 2 days to implement and most of that time was spent on validating SQL statements for existing databases.
The new order system is now available as an online e-commerce site, "e-shinzai" (e-professional-materials in English) market, and every franchisee uses the system. This new system brought numerous benefits to the franchisees and Fujinami Towel Service:
1. Order-to-delivery cycle was compressed by an order of magnitude
2. Reduced complexity and costs
3. Exceptions handled expeditiously
4. Improved accuracy of orders
5. Employee productivity increased significantly
6. Provided transaction recording to franchisees
7. Automatic numbering management by each franchisee
8. Flexibility to change sales-rules or packaging/shipping algorithm on demand
9. Linked with sales campaigns
Fujinami is planning to integrate this order system with inventory management, and to expand the system for overseas operations.
Results
Productivity increases were significant with the Fiorano SOA Platform; one use case took only 2 days to implement and most of that time was spent on validating SQL statements for existing databases.
The new order system is now available as an online e-commerce site, "e-shinzai" (e-professional-materials in English) market, and every franchisee uses the system. This new system brought numerous benefits to the franchisees and Fujinami Towel Service:
1. Order-to-delivery cycle was compressed by an order of magnitude
2. Reduced complexity and costs
3. Exceptions handled expeditiously
4. Improved accuracy of orders
5. Employee productivity increased significantly
6. Provided transaction recording to franchisees
7. Automatic numbering management by each franchisee
8. Flexibility to change sales-rules or packaging/shipping algorithm on demand
9. Linked with sales campaigns
Fujinami is planning to integrate this order system with inventory management, and to expand the system for overseas operations.
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