System overview

Ministop Co., Ltd.
Eliminating lost sales opportunities in Vietnamese stores
Accomplishing a global project to renew system infrastructure within a short space of time
Ministop Co., Ltd. operates the Ministop convenience store chain both domestically and internationally.
Ministop implements an overseas strategy that is mainly focused on Asia, but has been facing challenges
in Vietnam. Frequent communications interruptions made it impossible to build a store-management system
based on IaaS outside of Vietnam. To remedy this situation, it was necessary to improve the communicationquality by migrating the system infrastructure to Vietnam. IIJ helped with this cross-border migration projectand succeeded in renewing the system infrastructure in just one month. The resulting enhanced stability instore operation solved the problem of lost sales opportunities.

Challenges

Achievements• The store-management system was operated using a data
center located in China• International communication between China and Vietnam
is unstable, resulting in frequent communication disruptions• System unavailability is seriously detrimental to accounting and ordering operations• Migrated system infrastructure from China to Vietnam injust one month• The new system infrastructure has remained stable without any failure• The project solved the problem of lost sales opportunities; the loss of food and associated investment havebeen dramatically reduced

Challenges before the migration

Frequent communication disruptions
had a huge impact on accounting andon order placement
Mr. Takahisa Saito
Manager
Headquarters System Dept.
Franchise Support Div.
Ministop Co., Ltd.

Mr. Tatsuro Yamamoto
Assistant Manager
Headquarters System Dept.
Franchise Support Div.
Ministop Co., Ltd.

Ministop, a member company of theAeon Group, a major retailing group,currently operates approximately
2,000 convenience stores (including
both directly-run stores and franchisestores) in Japan. In recent years, thecompany has focused on expansion
overseas, mainly in Asia. More than
3,300 stores in China, South Korea,
the Philippines, and Vietnam are nowin business. “Our global strategy is
not only to expand the overseas market but also to import local hot-selling
products to Japan as soon as possible to be a trend-setter,” says Mr.
Takahisa Saito, who works in the Sys-User profile
Ministop Co., Ltd.
1-5-1 Nakase, Mihama Ward, Chiba, Chiba Prefecture
Founded: May 21, 1980
Capitalization: JPY 7,491,533,000
Number of employees: 895
Since its founding, Ministop has developed a network of stores that all feature in-store kitchens, along with store operations that enhance its in-store processing products, such as cold
sweets and hot snacks. Ministop strives to enhance the value added to its products, taking
advantage of the Aeon Group’s strengths and creating shops that customers will want to use.
https://www.ministop.co.jp/tem Division at Ministop’s head office.
One rapidly growing economy inparticular, Vietnam, is one of the leading markets. Since 2011, the numberof stores has been increasing steadily.
In its early years, the store-management system for Vietnam was built onan IaaS platform in China; Ministop
had already expanded its business in
China before rolling out its system forVietnam.
However, the service quality of theinternational communications link wasunstable, and communication was frequently interrupted. “As of October
2018, we were operating around 120
stores throughout Vietnam, but theconnection to the system was interrupted almost every day,” Mr. Saito recalls.
The store-management system iscritical for accounting, sales management, distribution, and order placement, which means that if communication is interrupted, all functions of thestore-management system will stop. “Ifcash register payment takes longer,
the burden on the shop staff will increase, and this situation may lead toa loss of customers,” says Mr. Tatsuro
Yamamoto.
The impact on the supply chain isalso significant. “For example, we hadto discard ingredients for lunch boxesin the factory when store staff couldn’tplace an order because of a system
failure,” Mr. Yamamoto recalls. “Themost important task was to build an IT
environment that would not have anegative impact on our operations.”

Managed Firewall

Why Ministop chose HI GIO Cloud

Multilingual support ensuring peaceof mind
Recognized IaaS quality and performance
To face up to the challenges, Ministop
planned to relocate the store-management system from China to Vietnam to
avoid unstable international communications.
The company had several requirements. For example, Ministop’s Japan
headquarters wanted a contract withan IaaS vendor that supported Japanese language communication. It wasalso necessary to work with the Chinese SI vendor that developed andmaintained the store-management
system.
After careful consideration, thecompany chose HI GIO Cloud, a fully-fledged cloud service that has beendeveloped jointly by one of the biggest
network providers in Vietnam, FPT
Telecom, and IIJ group. HI GIO Cloud
provides high-quality IaaS. “SeveralJapanese companies have alreadybeen utilizing the service. We decidedto adopt HI GIO Cloud not only because it has a proven track record, butalso because IIJ has both English andVietnamese speaking staff,” says Mr.
Saito.
The biggest problem was that thesystem frequently stopped working
because of network failures. Ministop
needed to resolve this issue as soon
as possible. In response to this urgent
request, IIJ gave a prompt demonstration of its outstanding project management and engineering skills. In October 2018, IIJ started to discuss
requirements while coordinating withlocal partners of Ministop and the Chinese SI-vendor, and completed theInternet VPN
Support engineer

Factory

Vietnam-based stores (approximately 140)

deployment of IaaS infrastructure andnetwork settings that connect HI GIO
Cloud with every single store.
By the end of November 2018,
Ministop had switched the network
settings of its roughly 120 shops
throughout Vietnam and begun operating a store-management system
based on HI GIO Cloud as a new platform.
What HI GIO Cloud achieved

Launched the new platform in approximately one month
Avoiding lost opportunities throughstable operation
This project was a global project
spread across three countries andconducted in four languages: Japanese, Chinese, Vietnamese, and English. “Negotiations, adjustments, andcontracts between the complex set ofvendors went remarkably smoothly
thanks to IIJ’s support. We successfully began operating the new infrastructure within a month, which is avery short period in which to complete
building a system environment and migrating,” comments Mr. Yamamoto, appreciatively.
Since HI GIO Cloud’s cloud platform is located in Vietnam, the connection between the store-management system and individual stores isunlikely to be disrupted. Additionally,■ What we offer ■■ HI GIO Cloud■ Integration services■ Outsourcing services• This article is based on an interview given in January 2020. The data, organization names, titles, etc. in the article werecorrect as of the date of the interview.
• Company names and service names are registered trademarks or trademarks of their respective companies.

by utilizing the robust backbone of
FPT Telecom built across Vietnam, thequality of communication has dramatically improved.
There have been no significant
problems since the migration. “Smoothstore operations prevent the loss ofsales opportunities. We’ve drasticallyreduced food loss and investment loss
due to stopped or delayed orders tothe factory.” Mr. Saito expresses astrong sense of satisfaction.
Before the migration, when there
were issues, local offices complained
to the head office in Japan. In somecases, Mr. Yamamoto flew all the way
to Vietnam just to fix the situation.
“The number of complaints has fallen,
which gives us a huge sense of security.” (Mr. Yamamoto)
The company currently operates
around 140 stores in Vietnam. As thenumber of stores continues to grow,they also plan to provide new instore
services using a smartphone app.
“What we have to do next for further
enhancing our stores is to upgrade
the speed of Internet access lines,and add more Internet access lines forback-up,” Mr. Saito says. “We’re looking forward to IIJ’s proposals and support for further expansion.”
Ministop will continue to implement
its overseas strategy, including in Vietnam, to grow further as a global convenience store chain.

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