OREANDA-NEWS. July 07, 2015. Konica Minolta, Inc. (Konica Minolta) announced today that Konica Minolta Business Solutions Czech spol. sr.o (KMBSCZ), its sales company of Business Technologies based in Brno, has signed a definitive agreement to acquire WEBCOM a.s. (WEBCOM), one of the major provider for business process management solutions in Central and Eastern Europe, headquartered in Prague, the Czech Republic.

Through this acquisition, Konica Minolta will provide high-added value solutions by integrating document and IT based business process solutions.

Effect

KMBSCZ will be able to offer one-stop solutions in combination of its competitive document solutions including OPS*1 and WEBCOM’s business process solutions that can maximize management efficiency and earn high customer satisfaction, such as ERP*2 or CRM*3. Using such new business solutions, KMBSCZ will continuously build a solid relationship with a significant number of existing customers. Furthermore, KMBSCZ will create new customers by utilizing both companies’ superior solutions and new solutions that come from synergy benefits of the acquisition to improve information sharing and cross-functional cooperation, and will achieve sustainable growth in the Czech market as well as surrounding Central and East European countries.

Overview of WEBCOM

WEBCOM has been developing Solutions based on its advanced IT service know-how in the Czech Republic since its establishment in 1988. WEBCOM offers systems that can control and allocate effectively human resources, facilities, and information of a business to maximize operation and management efficiency, and also systems that support customer services and marketing. As a result, WEBCOM has attained high presence in IT service area in the country, and has been highly evaluated in customer satisfaction survey.

Company Name WEBCOM a.s.
Established 1998
Headquarters Prague, Czech Republic
Number of employees 140 (as of February 1, 2015)
Business operation Development, system building, and support for IT Service Solutions 
Sales Approximately CZK 350M (approximately Euro 12.7M) (FY2014)

The date of contract for the acquisition

July 2, 2015 (Czech local time)

Under its Medium Term Business Plan “TRANSFORM 2016”, making strong effort to offer OPS and other solutions in the office service sector is one of Konica Minolta's major management policies, and has been making achievements. In Central and East European countries, Konica Minolta has been making proposals earning high customer satisfaction on MFP-centric document solutions. As a result, Konica Minolta retains top position in the A3 color MFP market share, on unit basis, in the area.

Going forward, to resolve customer’s challenges, Konica Minolta drives its efforts that combine document solutions with IT services in a new way. For that purpose, Konica Minolta has determined it is highly effective to accelerate these initiatives with strengthened structure by acquiring the company that has expertise in IT services and its know-how.

With its brand proposition “Giving Shape to Ideas”, Konica Minolta will continue enhancing its presence in the office service field and the corporate values of the Konica Minolta Group through offering of solutions and services that fulfill the customers' needs and bring high added values.

*1
OPS (Optimized Print Services): a service to provide an optimized print environment to the customer.
*2
ERP(Enterprise Resource Planning): a method for operational efficiency or overall optimization with managing and distributing the resources of the company in a gross
*3
CRM(Customer Relationship Management): an action to improve customer satisfaction in building the good relations in the long term by delicate correspondence to a customer with IT-systems