[Executive Interview] Beyond Digital Transformation: DNP's Approach to Data-Driven Management

DNP aims to create new value to realize a "more sustainable society where well-being lives." As part of this initiative, we spoke with Mitsue Sako, Corporate Officer of the Information Systems Division. She discussed the mission of the division, which is responsible for the information systems infrastructure and is essential for promoting digital transformation, as well as what it is working to achieve next.

• What is the mission of the Information Systems Division, given their task of promoting digital transformation?
• Unlearning conventional values through cloud migration
• Democratizing data and returning the collective strength of the entirety of DNP to each and every employee
• Creating new value by simplifying to the essentials

Mitsue Sako

Corporate Officer, Dai Nippon Printing Co., Ltd.
In charge of the Information Systems Division

Q. DNP's digital transformation aims to create value through "P&I Innovations" that combine the company’s proprietary printing and information technologies. What role does the Information Systems Division play in this? What is its mission?

As DNP works company-wide to realize its Third Corporate Founding, our mission in the Information Systems Division is to provide IT support that strengthens our financial and non-financial foundations, as well as IT governance and an environment that enables safe and secure digital transformation.

To enable DNP to advance digital transformation globally and deliver new value to society in the evolving digital economy, it is essential to achieve a competitive advantage through data-driven management and to build the necessary IT infrastructure. This is the data management infrastructure on which we are currently working. We believe it is essential to update our IT infrastructure flexibly, considering the premise of global society, security mechanisms to promote business safely and securely, environmental changes, societal challenges surrounding the company, and technological trends.

Q. As part of its digital transformation initiatives, the Information Systems Division has been working on migrating its core systems to cloud since 2022. What results have been achieved so far?

Since its founding, DNP has created a wide variety of businesses across diverse fields. In line with this, the Information Systems Division has strengthened competitiveness by developing its on-premises core systems that are optimized for each business segment while building on our expertise. However, with the accelerating changes in the external environment and advancements in technology, there is now an initiative for more rapid adaptability, beyond what has been considered "common sense."

It became inevitable that we who are responsible for IT would have to unlearn* and transcend the values and systems we had built up, and develop a strong IT infrastructure that could quickly respond to changes in the external environment.

The first initiative we undertook was cloud migration. We had built over 700 large-scale core systems to support the expansion of the business. Migrating all of them to the cloud was a highly challenging project, but we completed it in about eight months. As of September 2023, redundancy for both systems and networks has been completed in the East and West regions. We believe that achieving cloud migration for such large-scale core systems in such a short period of time is a major achievement for the Information Systems Division.

Q. Now that cloud migration is complete, what kind of changes can we expect within the company? Please elaborate on the future plans for the Information Systems Division.

Cloud, covering everything from high availability, maintainability, and security, to operational tasks, enables IT specialists to take the initiative in responding to the rapidly changing external environment. By leveraging this as a service, we can shift from "creating" systems to "using" them.

In non-competitive areas, we are actively adopting integrated Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions effectively in line with global standards. This allows these areas to evolve digitally while creating an environment where valuable IT talent can be proactively shifted to competitive areas. In these, we are modernizing systems in collaboration with each business segment, ensuring to position the data management platform at the core of all IT infrastructure strategies while working to aggregate and utilize data.

Managerial insights are wide-ranging, covering company-wide control, operational transformation, business and market creation, societal challenges, and corporate culture and capabilities. To contribute to building a foundation for data-driven management that is uniquely suited to DNP with its diverse business portfolio, we are collaborating company-wide to enhance our data management infrastructure.

Another goal is "data democratization." DNP has created a modest amount of core technologies around printing, which have grown into products and services with top market share. "Data democratization" refers to an environment in which the diverse intellectual property, expertise, tacit knowledge, and distinct values that underpin these elements are analyzed and visualized. This allows an environment where all employees can utilize information in an accessible and understandable way. Achieving this will enhance operational flexibility and accelerate DNP’s unique manner of digital transformation, which aims to create value through P&I Innovations.

The data management infrastructure we are working on is intended to increase the possibility of realizing this great potential.

Q. In terms of your career, could you share your current thoughts and what you hope to accomplish?

The IC card-related business has grown significantly and expanded into security and payment services. The area where I have been involved the longest within the DNP Group is the development of the OS (operating system) for these IC cards.

To fit a program into the limited capacity of a small IC chip, everything unnecessary must be thoroughly eliminated, and it must be simplified down to the essentials. My current mission is the same—grasping what is essential at the core of things in a complex and rapidly changing environment.

Understanding changes in the external environment, societal challenges, as well as indispensable technological advancements that we must keep pace with as an IT department, will let us apply a future-oriented approach to DNP’s digital transformation. This will allow us to continue building and optimizing services company-wide that benefit all of our employees, transcending boundaries of responsibility between IT and non-IT divisions.

December 11, 2023 by DNP Features Editorial Department