Casio Case Study

Movable Type connects Casio Ltd., Employees, Speeds Content Changes, and Enhances Information Exchange

Using Movable Type as a CMS tool, Casio Ltd. can implement content changes quickly in its company intranet, promote greater idea generation from its employees, and streamline communication efforts between departments and managers/employees.

Customer Profile

Thinner, lighter, more durable - technology by Casio Ltd. has set revolutionary standards for years. All of Casio's research shares the same goal: To continually create electronics that are more compact and more sophisticated and to work on the miniaturization of products people use in their daily lives. With 50 partner companies, many overseas offices, and over 3,200 employees, Casio Ltd., is a global enterprise, with hit products such as G-SHOCK watches, EXILIM digital cameras - as well as its familiar line of calculators - in use worldwide.

The Challenge

"Blogs make it easy for people to share their thoughts, which in turn encourage new ideas to form." Koji Kawade, Casio Japan's Information Management Group

In order to promote better information exchange and communication between departments, Casio opened an internal portal site called "C's Café" in June 2002. The portal was integrated with each department's web server so all users could use it. It was that very access that presented some problems. Koji Kawade, of Casio Japan's Business Development Department Information Management Group, explained, "Each department was responsible for their content, but they were not familiar with HTML, so updating content sometimes fell behind schedule. Other difficulties using content arose as well, and the whole process took a lot of time."

The Solution

To improve the way Casio Ltd. employees and departments communicated with each other, and to provide a faster way to make content changes, a flexible communications platform was required.

After researching various CMS tools, blogs seemed to be the perfect answer. Casio selected Movable Type for its smooth integration into Casio's existing systems, the freedom it would give employees to communicate with one another, and the ease with which changes could be made to new and existing content. Mr. Kawade noted, "The large user community and availability of information in Japanese made Movable Type a better choice for us overall." Subsequently, 11 departments within the "C's Café" portal, including accounting and advertising, switched to Movable Type-powered blogs in July 2004. In addition to easily following internal updates, employees ultimately realized the power of using blogs to communicate with one another, across departments), and to exchange information.

The Change

Since using Movable Type-powered blogs, Casio has enjoyed easier content changes and increased communication. For instance, the person in charge of "company notifications" was able to change settings after only 5 minutes of training. The sales department reduced the time and work needed to update content. And as Watabe Sho from advertising added, "categories and archives are made automatically. People have conversations around our Digital Photo Gallery, increasing both posts and conversation."

Casio's managers use the blog to communicate directly to employees in order to lessen the gap between them. Currently, the director of the Operations Department disseminates information via a blog; communication is streamlined, and efficiencies are improved. In addition, Casio's Hanemura Technology Center in Tokyo uses blogs to promote new and original ideas and very easily post thoughts. This allows previously unpublicized knowledge to be shared, information to circulate, and new ideas to emerge.

The Bottom Line

Casio discovered what Movable Type-powered blogs can do for employee communication, information exchange, and content updates. In the future, Casio plans to use blogs for more sharing of information in Research and Development, and to create an English language portal for employees working in overseas offices.