For more than 60 years, i-PRO was part of the globally successful Panasonic group of companies. When Panasonic chose to spin off i-PRO as an independent business, the team seized the opportunity to re-think almost every aspect of its operations, from manufacturing to sales, from finance to engineering.

When operating as a subsidiary, for example, i-PRO relied on Panasonic’s central services and systems to create financial, sales and operational reports each month. However, to ensure effective management of the new company, i-PRO decided to move to daily key performance indicator (KPI) tracking—a dramatic change in reporting culture.

Mr. Masato Nakao, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of i-PRO, explains: “As a specialist business unit in Panasonic, we depended on the enterprise resource planning [ERP], accounting and sales systems as well as IT infrastructure from our parent company to support our operations. For the new company, we looked to build brand-new systems, processes and IT infrastructure from the ground up that could give us faster business insight and provide greater agility. Crucially, the transition agreement gave us only three years to design and deploy our own solutions before we lost access to our legacy systems and data.”

To achieve its objectives for rapid reporting and information cycles, i-PRO launched a project to specify integrated sales, finance and ERP applications, and the IT infrastructure, to drive its core business activities. With April 2022 as the final go-live date, i-PRO engaged IBM Consulting™ to help the company design, build and deploy what became known as the i-PRO system, and selected SAP S/4HANA® Cloud and Salesforce.

Ms. Ayako Shiga, Chief Information Officer (CIO) at i-PRO, explains: “We selected IBM for the i-PRO project because we knew they had extensive experience of supporting large-scale digital transformation projects for major international companies. The close partnership between IBM and SAP was an added plus too; we were confident that this would help us to establish efficient processes backed by reliable solutions.”

While moving its legacy business applications to the cloud, i-PRO merged previously siloed data from legacy systems and built a central database to ensure seamless data flow between all business units.

Ms. Shiga explains: “We drew up plans for the i-PRO system in 2020, built the new IT environment, and started migrating 11 core legacy systems over a one-year period. Because we didn’t have the time or resources to create a tailored system for each location and site, we took a global fit-to-standard approach instead by consolidating processes across all regions.”

As an additional advantage, IBM works closely with Panasonic to keep its ERP, finance, sales and accounting applications and IT infrastructure running smoothly. i-PRO was able to tap into IBM’s deep understanding of Panasonic’s systems, helping to ensure a smooth transition to independence.

Mr. Nakao explains: “We chose to work with IBM on this project because we could trust them to deliver an effective solution that would support our growth ambitions. And if we met any issues along the way, we knew that IBM could help us to resolve them quickly and effectively.”

i-PRO began migrating applications and data from its parent company’s systems in the summer of 2020, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. With shelter-in-place orders issued in many of the locations that i-PRO serves, IBM and i-PRO shifted to remote working to keep the cloud migration running on track.

As well as the unexpected COVID-19 challenges, i-PRO also learned that it would lose access to its legacy systems much sooner than initially expected. With the reduced timelines, IBM and i-PRO could no longer count on reverting back to legacy systems if any serious issues occurred while building the i-PRO system.

Mr. Nakao reflects: “We decided to migrate to the new i-PRO system without a fallback IT environment and asked IBM to help us ensure that our new IT infrastructure would be production-ready by our go-live date. To facilitate this and minimize the risk or potential errors, we took our systems offline for a two-week period. While this downtime led to some losses, the decision helped us to set up entirely separate systems from our parent company and keep the project running on time and on budget. In fact, we completed the project in just under two years instead of three.”

With the new cloud-based environment for its mission-critical business systems, i-PRO can focus on its international expansion strategies in Asia, Europe and North America. Offering users real-time access to sales and financial data through intuitive dashboards, SAP S/4HANA Cloud gives i-PRO detailed insight into company performance, helping managers track progress and incentivize company growth.

In addition, SAP S/4HANA Cloud is helping i-PRO to enhance operational efficiency. For example, i-PRO Americas created a self-service portal for US suppliers, systems integrators and partners to enable them to view the availability of all products and inventory.

“Through our new partner portal, systems integrators can access up-to-date inventory data from our US warehouses and major distributors,” explains Ms. Shiga. “Equipped with this information, our partners can provide more accurate project estimates for their customers, greatly improving satisfaction.”

Ms. Shiga adds: “In the coming months, the sales team plans to create a dashboard that will display live data on sales to date, discount rates, operating expenses and much more. These innovations, enabled by SAP S/4HANA, will help sales managers to create incentives that are directly linked to company performance. Looking ahead, we also plan on sharing integrated business data with all of our locations to enable similar developments.”

Building on the success of its cloud migration, i-PRO plans to apply the data and insights from SAP S/4HANA Cloud and Salesforce to drive future growth.

Mr. Nakao remarks: “Using SAP S/4HANA Cloud, we can view data on all aspects of our sales, accounting and finance operations in real time. As a result, we can make more informed decisions and adapt faster to sudden changes in market conditions.”

He adds: “Looking ahead, we plan to trigger manufacturing processes automatically as soon as customers place an order, and deliver the final product within 24 hours. Efficient applications, standardized processes, and fast access to real-time data are vital to achieving this vision, powered by SAP S/4HANA Cloud.”

Ms. Shiga concludes: “With support from IBM and SAP we successfully established i-PRO as an independent company and laid the foundations for international growth. We look forward to continuing our partnership with IBM as we work towards strengthening i-PRO’s reputation as a world-leading manufacturer of surveillance systems.”

With more than 60 years’ experience in the surveillance industry, i-PRO (link resides outside of ibm.com) manufactures high quality CCTV cameras and sensors. Today, i-PRO offers image analysis, facial recognition and video evidence management solutions, as well as endoscopes and microscopes for healthcare organizations. Headquartered in Japan and employing 1,400 people, the company operates across Asia, North America and Europe.