Home Konica Minolta announces status as a Microsoft Global Managed Partner

Konica Minolta announces status as a Microsoft Global Managed Partner

| 22 March 2021

The combined capabilities of the two companies accelerate digital workplace transformation for Konica Minolta’s customers

Konica Minolta announces its new status as a Global Managed Partner. Headquartered in Tokyo, Konica Minolta has its Group companies in 50 countries and employs a staff of nearly 44,000. The Microsoft Global Managed Partner designation reinforces Konica Minolta’s goal of bringing greater focus to its global strategic direction via jointly developed, industry-specific solutions and services and by delivering IT cloud services and solutions for the digital workplace at small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) in the majority of the countries it serves.

Konica Minolta has grown steadily as an IT specialist in recent years, through both organic growth and strategic acquisitions. Among the company’s central goals in its mergers and acquisitions is to expand its business by leveraging the power of Microsoft solutions.

"Microsoft has become increasingly important as an ally for us. The goal has always been to bring together the best of both worlds. We want to bring the leading expertise to the market, combining our knowledge from our business – with its roots in the print area, which we have been doing for many decades - and the technology of Microsoft. This designation is a true testament to our longstanding relationship and the exceptional work of our unified teams for clients around the world." said Hajime Takei Senior Executive Officer and Division President of Digital Workplace Business Headquarters at Konica Minolta Inc.

"We are delighted to partner with Konica Minolta on a global level to accompany their growth in IT and to unlock the opportunities of digital transformation for their customers. The Microsoft Cloud is uniquely positioned to provide a breadth of industry-leading services and products to support Konica Minolta's development of differentiated solutions for the digital workplace." emphasizes Casey McGee Vice President ISV Sales at Microsoft.

As part of its market entry into information management in 2014, Konica Minolta began offering Microsoft SharePoint solutions to its customers. The company later added solutions based on Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Microsoft 365 (formerly Office 365), as well as Microsoft Azure custom development. The company first focused on the markets of Europe and North America; with its new status as a Global Managed Partner, Konica Minolta has recently added the Asian-Pacific region. Today, more than 300 certified Konica Minolta employees worldwide are helping customers adopt and use solutions to help transform their business.

Microsoft-based applications fit ideally into the infrastructure that SMBs typically employ. Konica Minolta’s expertise and deep customer understanding, coupled with intelligent services from Microsoft, creates a substantial benefit – especially for SMBs. In addition, Konica Minolta has developed a variety of its own applications, solutions, and services based on Microsoft cloud services to meet a wide range of customer needs in the SMB sector.

“The alliance with Microsoft enables us to combine our core competencies and trusted customer relationships with the best-secured and scalable cloud technology in order to flexibly build solutions for businesses,” explained Konica Minolta’s Hajime Takei. “Utilizing their applications, we are able to offer our customers from SMBs systems and functionalities previously only available to larger enterprises. Through this global collaboration, we will be able to offer our customers even more opportunities to accelerate innovation and ultimately drive success.”

Today, those individually built services cover a wide range of functions in the field of digitally managed content and processes digitally. Examples are the target group-oriented solutions “Automotive CRM” for car dealerships, “for.RealEstate” for real estate agents and “for.CARE” for social and governmental customers. These tailor-made solutions can be integrated seamlessly with existing systems. "With more than 90% of our customers running on Microsoft technologies, we can ensure that our Microsoft-based applications fit ideally into the infrastructure usually found at our small and medium-sized customers,” added Jaromir Sponar, ITS Business Development Manager, Microsoft MVP, Konica Minolta Business Solutions Europe.

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About Konica Minolta Business Solutions Europe

Konica Minolta’s journey started 150 years ago, with a vision to see and do things differently. We innovate for the good of society and the world. The same purpose that kept us moving then, keeps us moving now.

Konica Minolta Business Solutions Europe GmbH, based in Langenhagen, Germany, is a wholly owned subsidiary of Konica Minolta Inc., Tokyo, Japan. With its unique expertise in imaging, data processing and data-based decision making, Konica Minolta creates relevant solutions for its customers - small and medium-sized businesses, large enterprises and public sector - and solves issues faced by society.

As a digital workplace solution provider, Konica Minolta helps its clients to identify and unlock the potential digitalisation holds and reach the next level in the digital maturity of their organisation by rethinking the workplace. In support of an ‘Intelligent connected workplace’, Konica Minolta offers cloud, IT, managed print and video solution services for remote working, collaboration, workflow management and automation and security. The company’s success in driving transformation is also confirmed by IDC, since the ‘IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Print Transformation 2020 Vendor Assessment’ stated that Konica Minolta is ‘recognised globally as a leader in print transformation’. Konica Minolta has been a Microsoft Global Managed Partner since 2021.

Konica Minolta's Igniting Print Possibilities offering helps printers, converters and brand owners maximise workflow automation to increase efficiency. The company delivers consultancy in all communication matters as well as top-of-the-line production, packaging as well as label printers. Its finishing devices create print products that stand out and create added value. Konica Minolta has established itself as the production printing market leader for more than a decade in Europe (InfoSource).

For an increasing number of organisations, success today is more than the narrow definition of financial prosperity – it also includes protecting the environment and having a positive impact on their workforce as well as the societies they are embedded in. With its commitment to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Konica Minolta has pledged to consistently pursue its sustainability and social responsibility goals.

The company has been repeatedly recognised for its rich history of social contribution as well as for working towards achieving the SDGs throughout its business and supply chain. Konica Minolta is listed among “2022 Global 100 Most Sustainable Corporations in the World” and received the highest level in EcoVadis Sustainability Ratings.

For its innovative service approach that complements their devices perfectly, Konica Minolta was awarded the prestigious ‘Buyers Lab PaceSetter Award for Serviceability and Support 2020/2021’ from Keypoint Intelligence.

Konica Minolta Business Solutions Europe is represented by subsidiaries and distributors in more than 80 countries in Europe, Central Asia, the Middle East and Africa. With approximately 8,700 employees (as of April 2022), Konica Minolta Europe earned net sales of over EUR 1.9 billion in financial year 2021/2022.

Worldwide, the company has over 39,000 employees and is operating in over 150 countries.

For more information, please visit https://www.konicaminolta.eu/eu-en/news and follow Konica Minolta on Facebook and YouTube.

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Contact

Melanie Olbrich

Expert Corporate Communications

Melanie.Olbrich@konicaminolta.eu

+49 (0)511 7404-5337