Konica Minolta Business Solutions Europe (Konica Minolta) is pleased to announce the successful use of a prototype of its new remote visual support tool, AIRe Link. As with many other manufacturing organisations, Konica Minolta’s service and support was heavily affected by travel restrictions over the past four months due to COVID-19. The situation accelerated the development and pilot testing of a tool for remote visual support being developed by the Konica Minolta Business Innovation Centre as part of intelligent connected workplace solutions. AIRe Link enables companies to identify or solve problems on their print devices themselves while being supported by Konica Minolta remotely. More than 1,000 on-site customer visits were saved across Europe during the first four months of internal pilot usage. Furthermore, Konica Minolta is now also offering the beta version of the tool free of charge to external companies so they can also solve issues remotely when supporting their clients.
As a cloud solution, AIRe Link enables a technical specialist to see what the customer sees, using the camera from the customer’s smartphone or tablet. Rather than installing an application or creating an account, the customer only needs to click on an invitation link received via SMS and a session opens in the browser of their smartphone or tablet. The technical specialist can also use a live pointer or drawing in the snapshot of the customer scene to provide visual navigation during issue analysis and when guiding the customer through the correction procedure.
Using AIRe Link results in the faster identification of issues and very often the remote resolution of problems, helping technicians with less travel, faster troubleshooting, cost reduction and saving in CO2 emissions. It also significantly improves customer satisfaction and safeguards the well-being of service employees.
Using of AIRe Link inside Konica Minolta
After proving its benefits and stability within a closed beta version, Konica Minolta decided to accelerate the development of AIRe Link, and is currently deploying the solution in service teams across Europe. The aim is to increase the efficiency of the Konica Minolta Service and Support Department whilst ensuring business continuity for Konica Minolta and its customers in case of restrictions that do not allow onsite customer visits.
AIRe Link for other industriesIn addition to detecting malfunctions on MFP or Production Print devices, Konica Minolta is also offering the AIRe Link tool as an open beta solution free of charge to its customers, dealers and external companies. It can also be used for devices or machines in other industries, as the following example of its customer Bruker highlights. Bruker is a global company with 6,000 employees supplying high-performance scientific instruments and high-value analytical and diagnostic solutions that enable scientists to explore life and materials at molecular, cellular and microscopic levels. One of Bruker’s customers in Croatia had issues with its instruments. “With AIRe Link, we were able to resolve the problem remotely and we thus saved travelling to Croatia. AIRe Link is helping us to save costs for us while increasing customer satisfaction as they do not have to wait for a service technician. In addition, AIRe Link is actually the only way to get the instruments back into operation for our customers in restricted countries. The AIRe Link solution is easy to use and provides excellent quality of video and audio”, says David Burian from Bruker s.r.o, Czech Republic.
All it takes companies to start using the solution is to create a user account in the tool, which takes only a couple of minutes.
The current open beta will switch to a production version in 2021.
The AIRe Link initiative mirrors Konica Minolta’s evolution by offering customers intelligent connected workplace solutions, while increasing sustainability measures and promoting the well-being of employees.
About Konica Minolta Business Solutions Europe
Konica Minolta Business Solutions Europe GmbH, based in Langenhagen, Germany, is a wholly owned subsidiary of Konica Minolta Inc., Tokyo, Japan. Konica Minolta enables its clients to champion the digital era: with its unique imaging expertise and data processing capabilities, Konica Minolta creates relevant solutions for its customers and solves issues faced by society. As a provider of comprehensive IT services, Konica Minolta delivers consultancy and services to optimise business processes with workflow automation. The company further offers its customers solutions and managed services in the field of IT infrastructure and IT security as well as cloud environments. With regard to its office printing solutions, ‘IDC MarketScape: Western Europe Smart Multifunctional Peripheral 2018 Vendor Assessment’ stated that Konica Minolta is ‘recognised globally as a leading smart MFP provider of note’. As a strong partner for the professional printing market, Konica Minolta offers business consulting, state-of-the-art technology and software and has established itself as the production printing market leader for more than a decade in Europe, Central Asia, the Middle East and Africa (InfoSource). In the healthcare sector, Konica Minolta drives digitalisation of clinical workflows and offers a broad range of next-level diagnostic solutions. Its Business Innovation Centre in London and four R & D laboratories in Europe enable Konica Minolta to bring innovation forward by collaborating with its customers as well as academic, industrial and entrepreneurial partners. For its solutions that combine ‘smart service with smart technology’, Konica Minolta was awarded the prestigious ‘Buyers Lab PaceSetter Award for Outstanding Serviceability 2018/2019’ 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 approximitaley 10,000 employees (as of April 2020), Konica Minolta Europe earned net sales of over 2,34 billion in financial year 2019/2020.
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