Tokyo-based Shiseido is home to some of the world’s largest beauty brands, with a history stretching back to 1872. Technology has since become a vital part of delivering memorable customer service, with the global brand experimenting with innovations ranging from interactive mirrors to augmented reality.
Inside Shiseido stores, technology is leveraged to deliver personalized customer experiences, with beauty consultants in Asia-Pacific using laptops as Point of Sale (POS) system. Shiseido employees also depend on their devices to check loyalty point balances in-store and take payments, helping assistants deliver exceptional customer service.
With teams across eight markets experiencing slow device performance, the company’s leaders were determined to find a solution that worked internationally. This would empower employees to elevate the customer experience, in parallel with broader and bigger technological transformations.
Sau Leng Tham, VP, Finance and Operations at Shiseido AP, said: “As our devices got older, they were becoming less reliable, leading to frustration for our employees and creating friction in the customer journey. To solve those challenges, we decided to refresh them as quickly as possible.”
More than a vendor
Shiseido sought a trusted IT solutions partner who would be invested in making the transformation a success, rather than hardware-only. The team had already experienced the performance and reliability of Lenovo devices so was confident in their choice.
Shiseido selected Lenovo TruScale Device as a Service (DaaS) as the solution to refresh its endpoint devices across Asia-Pacific, reducing up-front costs and enabling Shiseido to hand tasks such as patching and software updates over to Lenovo. As a subscription-based service offering hardware, software and IT services, Lenovo TruScale DaaS provides companies with a flexible, scalable and cost-effective way to manage their digital workplaces.
Rakshit Ghura, Vice President and General Manager, Digital Workplace Solutions at Lenovo said: “Empowering organizations to shift from a traditional ownership model to a flexible, outcomes-driven approach is at the heart of the Lenovo TruScale DaaS offering. It’s about giving businesses like Shiseido the agility to scale, the confidence of end-to-end support and the freedom to focus on driving innovation and serving customers, instead of managing devices.”
The laptop refresh in the Asia-Pacific region coincided with a wider change in the company’s global IT approach. This required careful planning. Leaders at the organization hoped to simplify and standardize systems and processes to improve efficiency and make it easier to turn rich stores of data into business value. Upgrading the laptops used by employees provided a simple way to elevate and streamline customer service, while also helping the business move towards its transformation goals.
“Our Asia-Pacific business covers around 2,000 employees,” said Rinah Oandasan, Regional Information and Communications Technology Director at Shiseido AP. “Across these geographies, many of our laptops were approaching end of life. Our group CIO’s vision is to transform a fragmented global IT landscape into a standardized portfolio of systems and processes.”
Cutting costs, driving change
A key part of the company’s new approach was to minimize upfront expenditure on devices. The flexibility of Lenovo TruScale DaaS was vital, allowing Shiseido to rapidly refresh aging laptops with 2,000 brand-new Lenovo devices, including Lenovo ThinkPad L14 Gen 5, T14 Gen 5, X1 Carbon Gen 12, and X13 Gen 4 laptops. Beginning with the company’s regional headquarters in Singapore, Lenovo experts worked to inventory existing devices and schedule replacements as they reached end-of-life. With Lenovo TruScale DaaS Shiseido was able to refresh devices quickly and seamlessly, supported every step of the way by Lenovo.
Sau Leng Tham, VP, Finance and Operations, Shiseido AP, said: “To keep our transformation effort moving forward, we wanted to avoid tying up large amounts of capital in acquiring new devices. Lenovo TruScale DaaS is an ideal way for us to provide our teams with modern, reliable laptops without large up-front capital investment.”
In addition, Shiseido benefits from Lenovo Premier Support, which provides round-the-clock access to expert technical assistance. Even though the service has not yet been required, its availability gives the company confidence that employees will always have fast, reliable help when they need it. This is especially important for customer-facing retail staff, ensuring Shiseido’s teams can stay focused on delivering exceptional experiences while Lenovo handles the complexities of device support.
The company also opted for Lenovo CO2 Offset Services to responsibly manage the overall carbon footprint of the new laptops, offsetting emissions including from production, transportation and energy consumption for each device. This supported Shiseido’s sustainability goals and its mission, ‘Beauty innovations for a better world’. The compact, bio-based packaging also minimized waste during delivery.
Shiseido has already offset two tons of CO2 through the device refresh. “By enabling Shiseido to directly offset the carbon emissions related to IT investments, we’re helping the business meet its sustainability goals and demonstrating how Lenovo solutions can deliver both business and environmental impact,” added Ghura.
A smarter future
Shiseido also selected Lenovo to consolidate and migrate hundreds of on-premises servers in Asia-Pacific to the Microsoft Azure cloud, as the company aimed to standardize its IT estate.
Shiseido has consolidated 300 on-premise servers into 85 virtual machines on Azure, a reduction of over 70%. This has helped to reduce infrastructure requirements and move the business toward a hybrid cloud future.
With many Asia-Pacific markets operating small IT teams, Shiseido relied on Lenovo’s expert support to deliver on its transformation goals. Through Lenovo TruScale DaaS, device management and support are delivered as one seamless package, ensuring consistency, efficiency, and peace of mind across the region.
Sau Leng Tham says: “Without a doubt, fast, modern Lenovo devices delivered through Lenovo TruScale DaaS are helping our beauty consultants elevate the customer experience. Lenovo is playing a key role in our global IT transformation: from supporting our move into the cloud to equipping our teams with the latest technology.”
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