JBS Launches Provision of Cloud App Metis Sofie, That Works on Microsoft Teams and Enables Highly Productive Meetings Without Having to Rely on Individual Skills

Japan Business Systems, Inc. (Head Office: Minato-ku, Tokyo; Representative: Yukihiro Makita, President; hereinafter “JBS”) will release Facilitation Support App metis sofie (hereinafter “metis sofie”) on August 23, 2019. "metis sofie" consolidates all information related to meetings in a company or organization on the chat-based workspace offered by Microsoft Japan, Microsoft Teams, and supports highly productive meetings. Furthermore, on August 30, JBS will introduce metis sofie to everyone for the first time at Japan Partner Conference 2019, hosted by Microsoft Japan.

"metis sofie" is a service that allows all meeting participants to hold discussions with an awareness of the objective, goals, agenda, and remaining time of the meeting without overlooking anything. It also allows the results of the meeting to be recorded and shared on Microsoft Teams. "metis sofie" facilitates the various aspects of meetings, such as promoting discussion and decision-making, implementing tasks that emerge, and recording results. By enabling anyone to hold and lead meaningful meetings, this solution eliminates waste and contributes to improving a company’s productivity.

According to the “survey on the situation of time labor (first and second survey)”* loss due to wasteful meetings at companies with 10,000 employees or more is 1.5 billion yen annually. The time spent on internal meetings in a year is 301.2 hours at the assistant manager level and 434.5 hours at the department manager level. In spite of this, 27.5% of management-level staff feel that there are too many unnecessary meetings. The biggest reason for meetings being wasteful is that “nothing is decided even when the meeting concludes.” It is surmised that many meetings end without any clear outcomes.

With the recent work style reforms, how to make working hours productive is an urgent issue for companies and many companies are reviewing how they hold meetings.

Focusing on this problem, to date JBS has gathered together its knowledge and technological capabilities related to Microsoft Japan solutions to provide services that offer total support for meetings. The application to be released this time, metis sofie, is the long-awaited third in the series, following metis ami and metis elie. It will be released as an application that works on the next generation communication infrastructure Microsoft Teams which vitalizes team collaboration.

In order to draw out a suitable conclusion within a limited time frame, facilitation such as encouraging participants to speak, organizing discussions, and supporting decision-making is essential in order to move meetings forward in a productive and effective manner. On the other hand, according to our corporate survey, the levels of facilitation skills vary widely depending on the individual and the productivity of meetings depends heavily on the host and participants.

"metis sofie" standardizes the following items so that anyone can enter or refer to meeting information on Microsoft Teams. It allows people to consolidate meeting information as an extension of daily communication, reducing dependence on individuals’ skills, and visualizes and maximizes the outcomes of meetings.

Additionally, it is equipped with a linkage function with the JBS one-stop meeting schedule coordination app metis ami. Because the objective, goals, participants’ roles, and agenda information entered when coordinating meetings on metis ami is automatically linked to metis sofie, it is possible to make the plan and execution of a meeting consistent.

Linking metis sofie to Microsoft products or various metis services will vitalize meetings that account for a large amount of work hours and help to improve a company’s productivity.

"metis" is a cloud service family offered by JBS to resolve various issues relating to company meetings. "metis sofie" will be released as the third application in the series.

• First application One-Stop Meeting Schedule Coordination App metis ami (launched November 1, 2018)
  "metis ami" eliminates the hassle of searching for the necessary participants and their availability, which are necessary to coordinate meeting schedules, and realizes the smooth holding of meetings.
• Second application Conference Room No-show Reservation Elimination App metis elie (launched March 1, 2019)
  "metis elie" allows people to check into and check out of meeting rooms via smartphone and PCs. Conference reservations with no check-ins will be automatically cancelled, eliminating missed meeting room reservations.
• Third application Facilitation Support App metis sofie (launched August 23, 2019, this service)

• Linkage with Microsoft products such as Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Teams
• Introduction of services and network equipment unnecessary
• Possible to use with only about 30 minutes of setup work on the Office 365 side
• Improvement of user-friendliness and mounting of new functions continuously implemented based on customer feedback
• Two-week free trial offered. Possible to check operation and environment compatibility before signing a contract.

• Survey on the situation of time labor (first and second survey) Persol Research and Consulting Co., Ltd./ Jun Nakahara (2017–8)

https://rc.persol-group.co.jp/column-report/201812130003.html