Japanese Hospitality Leader Fujinami Deploys Fiorano ESB In Under 90 Days To Scale Operations

Compressed order-delivery cycle and optimized shipping logistics provide major boost to profitability and competitiveness

Palo Alto, CA (I-Newswire) January 16, 2013 - Fiorano Software, a leader in enterprise integration middleware, announced today that Fujinami Towel Service, a leading Japanese hospitality supplies company, has deployed the Fiorano ESB Enterprise Service Bus to scale operations, improve customer service and increase profitability.

Fujinami has a highly distributed network of franchisees who collect sales orders from and deliver supplies to shops and restaurants. In the past, manual order processing and complex rules for different franchise-product combinations slowed down operations and resulted in frequent errors. Handling intricate packing and shipping logistics on an ad-hoc basis resulted in a sub-optimal allocation of resources. The result was significant bottlenecks in the entire order-delivery and sales fulfillment cycle that limited Fujinami’s ability to scale operations. High costs eroded their profitability.

The company needed a scalable middleware system that could meet their growing needs and leverage their existing legacy systems (Database) and networks. Business terms with franchisees were in a continuous state of flux. This required an extremely flexible system that allowed them to make changes easily based on business expediency.

The initial architecture and design was handled by Intermirage, a system integrator. Describing the selection and deployment process, Mr. Noriaki Aoki, Chief Architect at Intermirage, said: "In selecting an SOA platform product, we carefully evaluate the implementation efficiency and value per use case of each alternative. With the Fiorano SOA Platform, development processes from configuration to deployment were very smooth and easy so alternative business scenarios could be completed very quickly. In addition, Fiorano’s REST adapter and event-port mechanism eliminated the need for coding scripts, such as branching by IF or WHEN statements in XSLT syntax, which are required by other products. We also saved significant time by creating and deploying REST APIs for business partners just by setting parameters in the Wizard."

The new order processing system based on the Fiorano ESB Enterprise Service Bus was built in just three months with the support of Intermirage. With Fiorano ESB, and the resultant SOA based system, Fujinami developers can now rapidly implement change requirements using just a drag-drop-deploy approach. Fiorano’s prebuilt components deploy just by mapping them to business functions and physical IT systems. The new system allows remote monitoring, logging and tracking for effective error tracking and problem resolution. It has the flexibility to change sales rules or the packaging/shipping algorithm on demand.

“Productivity increases were significant with the Fiorano SOA Platform,” says Mr. Aoki. “One use case took only two days to implement and most of that time was spent on validating SQL statements for existing databases.”

Building on this success, Fujinami now plans to integrate this order system with inventory management, and to expand the system for overseas operations.

View the complete case study here: http://www.fiorano.com/customers/casestudies/CS_Fujinami.pdf.

About Fujinami Towel Service (http://www.fujinami.co.jp/):
Founded in 1967 as a seller and rental supplier of “Oshibori”, or "hot towel", Fujinami established Oshibori-Japan as a brand name and redefined the sensation and originality of Oshibori itself. It now handles diversified hospitality supplies including non-towel services such as doormat rentals and the supply of sanitary materials and store articles, leveraging their established service network. Fujimami’s clients include global leaders such as Audi, Google, Estee Lauder, Facebook, Nippon Hotels, Nissan Price Nippon Loreal. Fujinami is aggressively expanding into the Pacific region including Vietnam and China, aiming for a “hub” business for procurement and sale of their goods.