Leading Service Platform and Global Footprint to provide quick and reliable deployments for Konica Minolta’s CS Remote Care for roll-out across 32 countries (EU / Norway / Switzerland).
The Hague – 15th February 2010 – Today KPN and Konica Minolta Business Solutions Europe announced that Konica Minolta is using the KPN M2M Corporate service, powered by Jasper Wireless, to provide wireless connectivity for CS Remote Care, Konica Minolta’s remote diagnostic system. The partnership with KPN enables Konica Minolta to offer its customers a provision-free remote monitoring service designed to provide fast and effective problem recognition and support. The commercial roll-out of the wireless Konica Minolta CS Remote Care service follows an initial successful pilot project initiated with Jasper Wireless. The agreement encloses a 5 year partnership for the European markets.
Through the partnership, Konica Minolta’s multifunctional products (MFP) are being equipped with the KPN Global SIM, which instantly and automatically transmits valuable system performance data from the customer’s premises to Konica Minolta’s service department. The KPN Global SIM features automatic-provisioning, meaning an effortless activation process for the end-user and ensuring all the benefits of remote monitoring can be immediately realized.
“Businesses need to get the most from their office equipment, with faults or a lack of consumables causing not only frustration, but also impacting productivity and service costs. And in today’s digital world there is a real need for high quality and high-tech maintenance support,” commented Olaf Lorenz, general manager, International Marketing Division of Konica Minolta Business Solutions Europe. “We have embraced this challenge, integrating new technologies into the customer service delivery process. By partnering with KPN, we can offer an easy, out-of-the-box solution for remote service all over Europe. The solution is perfectly designed for our kind of business; the KPN Control Center considerably simplifies this service roll-out in all of our country divisions with upstream free connectivity testing, automated provisioning for field deployment and data usage controls for optimized operations. Plus our customers realize the benefit and convenience of CS Remote Care without having to change a single thing about their network.”
Konica Minolta’s remote diagnostic system features many services, including a notification system, often reporting problems before they have even been perceived by the user. Other automated features include supply management for consumables and remote meter reading.
“Konica Minolta is capitalizing on the immense value of connectivity; it reduces service costs, provides key value added product differentiators and help introducing new revenue streams,” commented Kim Bybjerg, Director M2M Division at KPN. “The combination of the KPN Global SIM for local service across dozens of countries and of the KPN Control Center, to simplify operations and to grant real-time support for efficient connected products communication, is paramount to unlocking this new service revenue. We are proud to be supporting Konica Minolta in deploying its innovative CS Remote Care service throughout Europe.”
About KPN
KPN is the leading telecommunications and ICT service provider in the Netherlands, offering wireline and wireless telephony, internet and TV to consumers and end-to-end telecom and ICT services to business customers. KPN’s subsidiary Getronics operates a global ICT services company with a market leading position in the Benelux, offering end-to-end solutions in infrastructure and network-related IT. In Germany and Belgium, KPN pursues a Challenger strategy in its wireless operations and holds number three market positions through E-Plus and BASE. In Spain and France, KPN offers wireless services as an MVNO through its own brands and through partner brands. KPN provides wholesale network services to third parties and operates an efficient IP-based infrastructure with global scale in international wholesale through iBasis.
At December 31st, 2009, KPN served over 41.2 million customers, of which 32.9 million were in wireless services, 4.7 million in wireline voice, 2.6 million in broadband Internet and 1 million in TV. With 20,755 FTEs in the Netherlands (33,148 FTEs for the whole group), KPN reported full-year revenues of EUR 13.5bn and an EBITDA of EUR 5.2bn in 2009. KPN was incorporated in 1989 and is listed on the Amsterdam Stock Exchange.
About Konica Minolta Business Solutions Europe
Konica Minolta Business Solutions Europe GmbH is a leading provider of image information products with subsidiaries and distributors in more than 50 countries in the EMEA region. The company places major emphasis on the document management and solution business in the office and production environment, especially in the field of colour output as well as related supplies. Konica Minolta Business Solutions Europe is a subsidiary of Konica Minolta Business Technologies, Inc., headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. With a total workforce of 21,000 employees worldwide, Konica Minolta Business Technologies gained net sales of over 4.4 billion euros in fiscal 2006/2007. Building on its strong core of optical technologies developed over many years as a printer and camera manufacturer, Konica Minolta Business Technologies aims to be a corporation offering products and services that are essential to all areas of digital imaging.
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Konica Minolta: Katrin Mares, +49 (0)511 7404-655
KPN: Stephen Hufton, +31612968974
