Purchasing Strategic Institute (P.S.I.)

P.S.I. is reforming the concept of “purchasing” necessary for business activities while providing purchase-related business process outsourcing services. The company provides consulting, outsourcing, and various other services to reduce costs and maximize suitability.

Customer Profile
ORGANIZATION
Purchasing Strategic Institute Co., Ltd. (Tokyo, Japan)
ORGANIZATION SIZE
INDUSTRY
Service
PRODUCTS

Erroneous email sending can cause a serious business crisis

At P.S.I., more than 140 staff members exchange huge quantities of email with customers and related business operators every day.

Mr. Noritsugu Ishida, CEO of P.S.I. since 2011, explains the importance of preventing erroneous email sending: “Email is an important tool for communicating with customers. Many of our customers who are involved in purchasing strategies are top management or executive officers. Therefore, we often handle highly-confidential information. Guaranteeing safety and reliability is one of the most important business challenges”.

No matter how successfully employee training has been carried out, human errors cannot be prevented. Because of this, P.S.I. considered the necessity of a protection solution and adopted Active! gate SS.

Three deciding factors: Cooperation with Google Apps, Cost, and Speed

P.S.I. focused on the following 3 points:

1. The ability to link with Google Apps
2. Reasonable cost
3. The ability for the system to be built in short order after deciding to adopt it.

As Active! gate SS and Active! vault SS are fully cloud-based services, no server construction is required and it is easy to link them with Google Apps. After considering the balance between cost and functionality, P.S.I. adopted both Active! gate and Active! vault SS not only to prevent erroneous email sending, but also to enhance compliance and internal control.

After deciding to introduce Active! gate SS and Active! vault SS, P.S.I set up an environment in which all staff members could use the two services within a week.
Compliance and ICT investment optimization are extremely important issues for the company as it aims for a stock listing. The added effect of enhancing audit trail records by introducing the solution with a goal of preventing erroneous email sending and archiving emails embodies the effect of ICT investment.

“Our action was highly valued by our auditing firm.” -Noritsugu Ishida Technical Superiority

The size of a Google Apps mailbox is 25 GB per user. When handling huge emails daily, storage may run out within 3 years. Active! vault SS enables real-time email archiving, and once the archive period expires, the media on which the archived data is recorded will be delivered to the customer. Active! vault SS not only allows users to reduce operational workload and maintenance control, but also stores data securely.

Moral Improvement

The “Manager Approval” function of Active! gate SS is useful from a compliance viewpoint, and P.S.I. utilizes all optional functions of Active! gate SS, including this function. The company sets the holding term of external emails to 30 minutes, and strengthens their system by checking emails in-house before sending them out. In addition, it improves the reliability of sending emails to external recipients by using the file encryption and “Auto-Bcc” functions.
“To achieve secure email communication, it is important to automate any areas where this is possible and to collaborate on the parts which require human input. The morale of our staff members seems to have improved now that they can relax about the problem of erroneous email sending,” says Ishida regarding the importance of taking actions for security.