LONDON – 24 May 2010 – Hitachi Consulting UK today announced that it has won a contract and commenced work with the Met Office. This undertaking supports the Met Office’s current programme of change to rationalise and improve the cataloguing of products and services offered to Met Office’s customers.

Hitachi Consulting UK will oversee and implement a solution built on the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 platform, resulting in an overall centralised system the aim of which is to improve business processes. Once completed, the solution will be utilised by people across the Met Office in an effort to offer customers better service and support the management and the sale of weather-related services and consultancy.

The Met Office is the United Kingdom's national weather service, and is one of the leading and most highly respected global meteorological weather service providers.

The Met Office is currently undergoing a programme of change to rationalise and improve the cataloguing of products and services offered to customers. To support this process, the Met Office required a technical solution which would help move information from the existing Word templates into a searchable and actionable service catalogue. At the same time, the Met Office identified an opportunity to support sales and enquiry processes in the new centralised solution by replacing the existing application. This new solution provides them the flexibility and functionality to track customer calls and queries, maintain visibility in the process and convert the calls/queries to sales opportunities as appropriate.

“We knew we needed to engage with an external team and after conducting a competitive tender process we believe Hitachi Consulting UK was the right fit for us,” said Claire Ross, Senior Project Manager at the Met Office.

The solution also needed to provide integration to a variety of back office and other systems, including financial, asset management and content management. Hitachi Consulting UK will be implementing Scribe Insight to accelerate this integration, making use of the Dynamics CRM database and Web services adapters to provide the required interfaces.

The project will include design, build, migration, training and transition to Hitachi Consulting Managed Services, providing support for an initial period of three years.

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About Hitachi Consulting Corporation
As Hitachi, Ltd.'s (NYSE: HIT) global consulting company, with operations in the United States, Europe and Asia, Hitachi Consulting is a recognized leader in delivering proven business and IT strategies and solutions to Global 2000 companies across many industries. With a balanced view of strategy, people, process and technology, we work with companies to understand their unique business needs, and to develop and implement practical business strategies and technology solutions. From business strategy development through application deployment, our consultants are committed to helping clients quickly realize measurable business value and achieve sustainable ROI.
Hitachi Consulting's client base includes 25 percent of the Global 100 as well as many leading mid-market companies. We offer a client-focused, collaborative approach and transfer knowledge throughout each engagement.
For more information visit www.hitachiconsulting.com

About Hitachi, Ltd.
Hitachi, Ltd., (NYSE: HIT / TSE: 6501), headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, is a leading global electronics company with approximately 360,000 employees worldwide. Fiscal 2009 (ended March 31, 2010) consolidated revenues totaled 8,968 billion yen ($96.4 billion). Hitachi will focus more than ever on the Social Innovation Business, which includes information and telecommunication systems, power systems, environmental, industrial and transportation systems, and social and urban systems, as well as the sophisticated materials and key devices that support them. For more information on Hitachi, please visit the company's website at http://www.hitachi.com.
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For further information, please contact:
Vanessa Land
Devonshire Marketing
Tel: 0870 242 7469
Email: [email protected]

Distributed on behalf of Devonshire Marketing by NeonDrum (http://www.neondrum.com)
Nicky Denovan
Tel: +44 7747 017654
nicky[at]neondrum[dot]com