Updated tablets
allow customers toconnect with regional
financial institutions
NEC Solution Innovators project manager, Takuya Manabe, and his team often travel throughout Japan - notfor pleasure but for work. A 27-year veteran in financial technology, he recently worked to bring financial
services to farmers and residents in the countryside, who are mostly in what the Japanese refer to as

their silver years. As the rural population ages, a number of financial institutions in the countryside haveconsolidated or closed down, leaving the remaining residents with even less access to essential services.
NEC Corporation provides a combination of products and solutions to meet the complex and ever-changing

needs of its customers. They are a leader in integrating IT and network technologies that benefit businesses
and people around the world, with more than 100,000 employees bringing the company’s century ofexpertise in technological innovation to empower people, businesses, and society. Explaining the role of
NEC SI, Manabe said, “NEC as a whole prides itself on providing social solutions. NEC SI’s role within thecompany is to provide all-round, one-stop IT solutions to the organization. We work with various divisions
such as consulting, marketing and sales within NEC.”“I play the role of an IT architect, planning the software framework and overall direction of the system,hardware, and network,” said Manabe. “As system integration specialists, we develop software and hardware,and one of NEC group companies provides 24-hour all-year-round support domestically, so clients feel very
secure using our system. I believe this is where our strength lies.”

Manabe worked with two colleagues, Nobuhiko Kouchi and Akinobu Nishi, to come up with a solutionthat would enable farmers and people living in the countryside who do not have easy access to physicalfinancial institutions facilities to carry out financial transactions. For years, financial institutions have useda system based on PDAs, but the small screens were hard to upgrade and the UI was uncomfortable for thecustomers they were visiting. It was difficult for the customers to both read documents and to sign themand, therefore, for the bankers to execute the necessary operations. They needed a more customer-friendly,
accessible solution that takes advantage of the latest technology.

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Kouchi, an assistant manager who has been with the company for 11 years, and Nishi, a sixth year ITengineer with the company, also specialize in financial solutions for systems such as the ATM server,

supporting older PDAs, and developing applications for tablets. Each brought their own client expertise todevelop a customized application to be used on Windows-based tablet.

Programming Roadblock“Some of our clients were already using a specialized tablet for banking, but we decided to offer an easierto-use tablet with better functions,” said Manabe. “We took feedback from the ground to get some ideas

when the development process started. After several months of iteration, we realized that to make the tablet
a success, UX would be a major factor.”

In order to achieve outstanding UX, the team decided to use WPF to develop the tablet application on the.NET Framework. The team has been using C/C++ as well as Microsoft technologies, but this was the firsttime for them to use WPF for actual development.

Kouchi said, “We were concerned with the decision internally. I asked my colleagues whether anyone hadexperience with WPF but it seemed no one had experienced it a lot.”

In order to succeed with the project, they needed assistance from outside, and Infragistics was able tosupport their project from the beginning. Infragistics’ platform specialists provided onsite training thatcovered fundamentals of WPF platform such as XAML, Layouts, Data Bindings, Commands, Styles, andTemplates. In addition, Infragistics built a sample screen for the training to represent a business scenario theproject needed to cover.

“Fortunately, we had a chance to have conversations with Infragistics to understand their components andservice offerings. After the meeting, we decided to receive WPF training from Infragistics to acquire thenecessary skills for the project. When we asked about our programming issues during the WPF training,

Infragistics provided sample codes to solve the problem right away. The decision to work with Infragistics
and the decision to use Infragistics Ultimate UI for WPF controls proved the crucial move in the eventual

successful development. If not, it wouldn’t have helped how many engineers we had onboard at the time,”
said Manabe.

Using Infragistics’ WPF controls for the development of the extracurricular assistance application, theproduct was launched three years after it was originally envisioned.

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Infragistics’ WPF controls help to make developers more productive in building Windows desktop apps using

WPF. This broad array of controls includes high-performance charts, high-performance grids, a scheduling UIwith agenda, and data entry controls that save developers time in creating new WPF applications.

After purchasing Infragistics WPF controls, Manabe and his team received priority support from Infragistics,
as Infragistics support provided samples codes very quickly.

“We received tons of support and were surprised by the ease of use of the solutions provided,” recalled Nishi,

who was the main contact to interact with Infragistics Support Team. “Our main point of contact was email. We
also used phone support service and received a response within 24-hours.”

In this project, the features mainly utilized were Infragistics’ WPF editor controls and reporting functions thatwere available at that time. Functions such as restricting the maximum number of digits in an editor and limit
alphabet input were integrated using Ultimate UI for WPF.

we appreciate the most is the robust training and support“ Whatfrom Infragistics with regard to any programming issues in WPF

platform, which we did not have experience. Thanks to this wewere able to complete our project within budget and time frame.
Takuya Manabe - Project Manager for NEC Solution Innovators“Handy Solution for Rural Challenges

For end-use clients, the public relation offices from regional financial institutions, the main benefit ofswitching from PDAs was the intuitive and easy-to-use layout. The screen was larger for clearer viewing, andbuttons were provided for various functions, as the older generation were not so used to tapping the screen
or zooming in and out with finger swipes.

“Customers for the clients can do various banking services at their clients’ home, in place of going to the bankwith a bank booklet”, said Kouchi. “There was also no need for clients’ customers to sign papers physically, as
these could be signed electronically online.”

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“The functionalities of the tablet can be tailored to clients’ needs. And in the future we will add facialrecognition features to eliminate the need for passwords,” added Manabe.

Each tablet and application package requires customization for the client, and around 13 to 15 months isrequired from planning to set-up at the end-user. The first user of NEC SI’s financial services tablet cameonboard in May 2016, and by the end of 2017, five corporate clients were onboard.

will work to speed up the development process and churn out“ Wethese tablets in the tens of thousands in a few years’ time.
We believe we can do this buy using Ultimate UI to itsmaximum potential“Takuya Manabe - Project Manager for NEC Solution Innovators

Start Your Own Success Story

To get your company’s success story started, check out these samples to learn more about how Infragistics
Ultimate UI for WPF enables developers to build high-performing applications quickly and easily. Then try

Ultimate UI for WPF along with the full suite of Infragistics developer products available for a free 30-day trial
as part of Infragistics Ultimate.

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About Infragistics

Infragistics is a worldwide leader in providing tools and solutions to accelerate application design anddevelopment, insights and collaboration for any organization. More than two million developers use

Infragistics enterprise-ready UX and UI toolkits to rapidly prototype and build high-performing applications

for the Cloud, Web, Windows, iOS and Android devices. Infragistics Enterprise Mobility solutions ReportPlus
and SharePlus, give business users the latest advancements in self-service business intelligence andcollaboration software. Additionally, Infragistics offers expert UX Services and award-winning support.

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