Konica Minolta wins Information Management Award at TEA

Their digital and IoT solutions enhanced productivity and simplified operations of a micro SME.

Recognizing the contribution of the company’s revolutionary systems to micro SME operations, Singapore Business Review decided to merit the Information Management Award for logistics to Konica Minolta Business Solutions Asia Pte Ltd for their digital and IoT solutions that aided Lian Nam Heng Marketing Pte Ltd on its digital transformation.

The food import-and-export trading firm implemented Konica Minolta’s bespoke solutions suite to counter their operational challenges and address their business needs. In particular, the company adapted Konica Minolta’s warehouse management software and IoT security and monitoring solution.

As digital disruption touches and ignites industries, organizations have to undergo a technological transformation in order to remain competitive and cut down operational expenses so that employees can generate more valuable contributions.

To answer this, Lian Nam Heng sought the assistance of Konica Minolta to resolve the organisation’s poor inventory management and legacy systems, which were extremely dependent on cumbersome manual and paper-based processes that hindered maximum efficiency and brought forth errors.

Through intricate fact-finding sessions held at Lian Nam Heng’s operations and management sectors, Konica Minolta identified and surfaced various roadblocks towards the company’s business growth. .

Konica Minolta discovered large invoice piles, which were extremely costly and occupied plenty of office space.

They also pinpointed the manual preparation of orders for deliveries as one of the primary sources of inefficiency and errors within the organization. The business was extremely reliant on delivery staff to take back the invoices to the accounts team after day-to-day delivery for manual reconciliation, which was again subject to human errors and poses transparency, accountability and inefficiency problems. The same can be said for the time-consuming manual retrieval of previous orders for verification.

Apart from this, Lian Nam Heng also did not gain any visibility of the items released per delivery order, since they were not equipped with a tracking mechanism.

As a resolution, Konica Minolta suggested a systems suite and earned the consensus of Lian Nam Heng for implementation.

Lian Nam Heng incorporated Konica Minolta’s warehouse management software to oversee document processes alongside real-time status updates via a centralised online gateway. This enabled the company’s most painstaking and error-prone processes to be automated, which enhanced efficiency and drove employee morale upwards.

Besides this, Lian Nam Heng also switched from their traditional dot matrix invoice printing to Konica Minolta’s colour multifunction printers, which cut printing time of invoices and other documents to half.

Konica Minolta also identified Lian Nam Heng’s new needs as they look forward to company expansion. They found that the firm needed a powerful intelligent monitoring security system to safeguard their inventory from theft and rodent threats. They also needed the said solutions to act as a hazard pre-warning and as an in-house tracking of staff safety within the warehouse vicinity as well as an access system for authorized entry to the warehouse premises.

For this Lian Nam Heng adapted Konica Minolta’s IoT security and monitoring software, which utilizes analytical video systems to keep tabs on and protect the warehouse and all operation employees within the area.

Because of these solutions, Lian Nam Heng achieved accelerated precise digital workflows and uplifted processes, which allowed staff to work at least 30 percent quicker so they can allot their time and energy on more significant tasks.

Watch the interview below to know more about their winning project:

The Technology Excellence Awards, presented by Singapore Business Review, was held via video conferencing throughout the first and third week of June.

This year’s nominations were judged by a panel consisting of Daryl Pereira, Head of Cyber at KPMG; Cheang Wai Keat, Head of Advisory Services in Singapore and ASEAN

Technology Consulting Leader at Ernst & Young; Chin Chee Choon, Advisory Leader and Assurance Director at Nexia TS; Rizwi Wun, Partner, Acting Head of Intellectual Property and Technology Practice Group at RHTLaw Asia; Carolyn Chin-Parry, Managing Director and Digital Accelerator Leader at PwC.

If you would like to join the 2021 awards and be acclaimed for your company’s exceptional technological innovations, please email Julie Anne Nuñez at julie@charltonmediamail.com