Since its founding in 1932, KITO Corporation has built a relationship of trust with customers as a major manufacturer of material handling equipment that is indispensable for hoisting, transporting, and fixing luggage.
Their main products, chain blocks, lever blocks, and rope hoists, are used not only in Japan but also in the United States, Europe, Asia, and other parts of the world. The company is always ahead of the curve to provide superior safety, durability, and productivity, and is highly regarded by its customers.
The problem
A few years ago, Kito deployed Skype for Business on-premise, so that employees can communicate effectively across any devices and from any location. While Skype for Business helped Kito to bring together all the typically disparate ways to communicate on one platform, there were frequent complaints about the call and video quality.
It was not just the call quality, but also the end-user satisfaction that was taking a hit. This was especially concerning since it was not only employees complaining about internal communication, but there were issues with external calls with customers as well.
This was unacceptable, especially since one of Kito’s values is to never compromise “quality” against “costs” and the company strives to pursue innovation to overcome any constraints.
Across Kito’s several offices in Japan, there was an urgent need to enable the productivity users expect from Skype for Business. Identifying the root cause was not straightforward since there are multiple hops along the way. For example, one of the reasons for poor call quality may be packet loss, which is caused by a particular router, a loose cable connection or a weak Wi-Fi signal.
The solution
The IT Team at Kito urged the network systems integrator and the Skype for Business implementation vendor to investigate the issues and help find a solution. However, since these vendors had limited visibility, they were unable to monitor the entire network. Hence the answers from each vendor were minimal, and the complaints about poor call quality kept coming in.
After significant research, Kito deployed IR solutions, including Path Insight, to identify the root cause of audio and video call quality issues like less bandwidth, latency, jitter and packet loss through the entire solution environment.
With IR, Kito has been in safe hands. As a Microsoft IT Pro Tools certified solution for Skype for Business, IR’s solutions automate network monitoring and assessment, without having to deploy invasive network probes. IR & Microsoft have been closely aligned for many years, going back as far as the Lync application before Skype for Business.
The benefits
As a company, Kito is committed to continually improving its products, services and operation through relentless innovation. The same can be said about its IT team as well. Kito now had end-to-end network visibility, including every single node, through live dashboards that provided real-time data. The IT team could identify and resolve network capacity and capability problems in their Skype for Business environment. They saved time and frustration as there was no longer a need to talk to the SI to investigate and respond every time there was a problem. The team received instant alerts if there are any issues in the Skype for Business environment, including session border controllers (SBC), servers, network, and endpoints.
I was able to understand the status of the entire network and each node. Thanks to IR, we discovered that multiple devices are in an abnormal state such as high CPU usage and packet loss, among others.
"Based on the data, we were able to deal with the root cause by requesting the construction vendor to investigate and respond. Also, since Quality of Experience (QoE) data for each call is recorded, it is possible to refer to the data even when inquired by employees,” said Kazutoshi Matsuda, Manager of Information Systems Department.
Kito’s founder left a lasting message to the company - Value both standard as well as custom-made products - because he believed that no single product can meet all customer needs. However, with IR’s solutions, Kito’s IT team found the one solution that helps them to deliver a high-quality Skype for Business user experience. This maximized end-user satisfaction and improved the ROI on Skype for Business.
Kazutoshi Matsuda
Manager of Information Services, KITO Corporation
