JBS and Cambridge Technology Partners Collaborate to Enhance Functions of Cloud App metis sofie, Enabling Anyone to Hold Streamlined Meetings on Microsoft Teams

Japan Business Systems, Inc. (Head Office: Minato-ku, Tokyo; Representative: Yukihiro Makita, President; hereinafter “JBS”) announces a collaboration with Cambridge Technology Partners Limited (Head Office: Minato-ku, Tokyo; President & CEO: Tsutomu Suzuki; hereinafter “Cambridge”), which possesses strength in facilitative transformation consulting, etc., to enhance the functions of Facilitation Support App metis sofie (hereinafter “metis sofie”) which enables anyone to hold streamlined meetings.

The business person of today spends a lot of time in meetings—it is said that they can spend anything up to 30,000 hours in meetings. Based on a calculation of working 10 hours a day, 30,000 hours amounts to about 8 years.*

It is a fact that many business persons spend a great deal of their precious time and working lives in meetings. The recent work style reforms in Japan have given added urgency to the issue of how to make working hours productive, and many companies are reviewing how they hold meetings.

Focusing on this problem, to date JBS has gathered together its knowledge and technological capabilities relating to Microsoft Japan solutions to provide services that offer total support for meetings under the metis brand, which has been well-received. Many companies say that “we hold meetings without being aware of their significance or goals and that time is often wasted,” and metis sofie which allows anyone to hold highly productive meetings has been acclaimed in particular. In the four months since its release, JBS has received inquiries from ten major companies about metis sofie.

• Reference: Ryo Sakamaki (Cambridge), 世界で一番やさしい会議の教科書, Nikkei Business Publications

Cambridge has led numerous transformation projects to success with facilitative consulting. The core of Cambridge-style facilitation is to “involve stakeholders while setting feasible goals and processes to achieve them as one team.” The book 世界で一番やさしい会議の教科書 which is based on this concept and the theme narrowed down to “how to make meetings successful,” has received high acclaim as being easy to apply in the field and easy to understand.

By injecting this Cambridge know-how into metis sofie, JBS thought that it would be possible to enable companies to experience Cambridge-style facilitative consulting. So, JBS made the following improvements to functions through collaboration with Cambridge.

• Changed the screen layout so that matters to be decided in a meeting, matters that have been decided, and a To Do list is always within eyesight during a meeting.
• Unless it ends on time, it is not a meeting. A time management function was added to allow users to see the elapsed time by agenda at a glance.
• A function was added to allow users to take minutes for each agenda item registered in advance so that they can see which statements are related to which agenda item.

JBS and Cambridge will continue to collaborate aiming to improve companies’ productivity with the metis series so that customers can take the first step toward making meetings the starting point for success in transformation projects and at work sites that are experiencing difficulties, based on Cambridge’s meeting facilitation and other methodologies that contribute to transformation projects. Through this collaboration, JBS will further enhance its sales activities, aiming to achieve contracts with 50 companies—a goal set out at the time of the release of metis sofie.

Metis is a cloud service family offered by JBS to resolve various problems related to company meetings.

• One-Stop Meeting Schedule Adjustment Application metis ami (launched November 1, 2018)
  Metis ami eliminates the hassle of searching for the necessary participants and finding available rooms, which are necessary to coordinate meeting schedules. Additionally, by entering the roles of participants, goals of the meeting, and agenda when sending meeting participation requests, it allows users to hold meetings in which the participants understand the purpose of the meeting.
  • This service is no longer available.
• Conference Room No-Show Reservation Elimination App metis elie (launched March 1, 2019)
  Metis elie allows people to check into and check out of meetings rooms via smartphone and PCs. Conference reservations with no check-ins will be automatically cancelled, eliminating missed meeting room reservations.
  • This service is no longer available.
• Facilitation Support App metis sofie (launched August 23, 2019)
  Metis sofie is a service that allows anyone to hold streamlined and efficient meetings on Microsoft Teams without having to rely on their personal skills. Metis sofie enables all meeting participants to hold discussions with an awareness of the objectives, 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.
  • This service is no longer available.

• 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