In May 2024, NEC unveiled its value-creation model NEC BluStellar, designed to help customers successfully drive transformation. In just a year and a half since its debut, NEC BluStellar has grown at a remarkable pace, putting NEC firmly on track toward achieving its FY2025 revenue target of 624 billion yen. What has fueled NEC BluStellar's success, and how will the company propel its next stage of growth? We spoke with Norihiko Kimura, NEC Corporate Executive Vice President and Head of the Digital Platform Services Business Unit, who leads the NEC BluStellar initiative.

NEC BluStellar: A value-creation model that leads our customers to the future

NEC BluStellar was named with the idea of serving as a beacon—like the brightest star in the night sky—guiding society, people, and customers toward the future. It integrates everything NEC has learned from its full-scale digital transformation (DX) efforts since 2019.

Kimura explains:
"NEC BluStellar provides end-to-end support across the entire cycle, from consulting and service delivery to operations and maintenance. It is the culmination of our achievements in DX for both customers and NEC itself."

Kimura adds, "At the heart of NEC BluStellar is the promise that NEC will offer customers a wide array of 'refined assets' to help them build what they envision." By positioning NEC as Client Zero, the company also shares the insights and know-how gained from applying these assets internally.

Kimura joined NEC in 1993 as a new graduate and spent the following 30 years in financial markets sales.

"I was placed in charge of the core banking system for Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation in 2004, a role I continued for around 20 years. One project that left a lasting impression on me was the previous upgrade of their core banking system, as it was the first time I experienced such a project since I began overseeing their system. This was a large-scale project in which we conducted a proof-of-concept to determine whether we should upgrade the core banking system using the same NEC mainframe on which it was currently run, or upgrade it to a new platform to keep pace with the open-system trend. In the end, we completed the upgrade on the mainframe." 

This was a massive project that spanned a roughly ten-year period. While safeguarding the ledger, a critical component of the bank, NEC worked together with various stakeholders to move forward with the implementation of new technologies to maintain and develop this core banking system, which functions as part of social infrastructure. Kimura, who was a Department Manager at the time, describes this project as having been a great learning experience. 

"In the development of Seven Bank's fourth-generation ATMs, we didn't just upgrade functions and performance. We developed entirely new services using ATMs as a platform. Creating something society will truly need, by backcasting from the ideal future, is very similar to the approach behind NEC BluStellar," says Kimura.

Kimura became the executive in charge of the financial sector in 2021 and was appointed to lead the division responsible for the business that would become the foundation of NEC BluStellar in April 2024, a moment he still remembers clearly.

"By that time, NEC had transformed significantly through its own DX, from internal systems to customer engagement and talent development. We also knew that NEC BluStellar was about to be introduced. I did feel the pressure of leading a division that would play such a major role in changing NEC's business model. At the same time, opportunities of this scale come only once in a lifetime, so the feeling of 'I'm ready to take this on' was even stronger."

For many years, NEC's business model primarily focused on providing products and services customized to individual customer needs. A downside of this approach was that solutions could not easily be rolled out more broadly.

NEC BluStellar changes this structure by consolidating products, services, and assets that had been scattered across the company and organizing them into reusable formats that can be deployed repeatedly across different industries. 

Strength built on three core pillars

According to Kimura, NEC BluStellar's greatest strength lies in the combined force of three core pillars: its business model, its technology, and its organization/human resources.

"NEC BluStellar's business model consists of three layers. The first is NEC BluStellar Products & Services, a portfolio of more than 500 DX-related solutions. The second is a set of 150 NEC BluStellar Offerings, created by combining these products and services into ready-to-use packages. The third is 30 NEC BluStellar Scenarios, which bring together the optimal mix of offerings to support customers end to end, from strategic consulting to implementation and ongoing operations."

On the technology side, NEC draws on decades of technical expertise, with particular strengths in AI and security—areas where the company maintains a high level of competitiveness. As for people and organization, NEC has 12,000 DX professionals, supported by an additional 10,000 strategic consultants across the group who work side by side with customers from the very earliest stages of planning. "The real power of NEC BluStellar comes from being able to unite all three pillars and deliver them as one integrated solution," Kimura says.

Within the Enterprise Business Unit, which serves large corporate clients, teams approach customers from the concept-development phase and center their proposals around the full set of NEC BluStellar Scenarios. Meanwhile, in the Public Business Unit responsible for government ministries, agencies, and municipalities, the teams focus on scenarios tailored to public entities, along with proven NEC BluStellar Offerings and NEC BluStellar Products & Services that can be rolled out horizontally across multiple regions.

NEC also wants to explore the expansion of NEC BluStellar in the Telecom Services Business Unit and the Aerospace and National Security Business Unit, which engage in network projects for telecommunications operators and aerospace and defense projects, respectively, as well as in the Digital Government and Digital Finance (DGDF) Business Unit, which handles global business, and in NEC Group companies. 

"NEC BluStellar will underpin business endeavors across the entire NEC Group. For instance, we expect to see accelerating momentum in transferring intelligence for the security arena—particularly in cybersecurity and related areas—to the private sector. In this way, I believe NEC BluStellar will be able to demonstrate its value," Kimura explains.

Advancing NEC BluStellar talent development

At NEC IR Day 2025, held this past November, Kimura outlined NEC BluStellar's long-term ambitions, citing future targets of 1 trillion yen in revenue and an operating margin of 20%. To achieve these goals, he emphasized three priorities: deepening and scaling the adoption of NEC BluStellar Scenarios, strengthening competitive advantage through AI and security, and accelerating market expansion.

Equally critical, he noted, is talent. NEC plans to increase two key roles essential to driving NEC BluStellar forward: Business Conductors and Product Marketing Managers.

"NEC BluStellar requires more than consulting. What customers need from us is seamless, end-to-end support from strategy to execution," Kimura says. "We need people who can draw medium-to-long-term roadmaps and grand designs directly from customer challenges, walk alongside those customers on the path toward the optimal scenario, and commit to solving the issues they face. That's the role of the Business Conductor."

He describes the Product Marketing Manager in this way: "To solve customer challenges comprehensively, they act as a command center for analyzing markets and identifying potential customer management problems to create new high-value-added scenarios. They also take on the role of managing the entire scenario creation process and flexibly reconfiguring scenarios as needed, depending on market conditions and the customer's situation. In our next mid-term management plan, we will focus on developing talent for these two roles and accelerating the delivery of value to customers to address their business challenges."

Ultimately, it is NEC's people who lead customers through transformation. Kimura closes with a renewed sense of commitment:

"Since our founding, NEC has evolved continuously. To keep leading the transformations shaping society and our customers, we must be the ones who change first—and keep changing. We will remain an organization that drives change from within." 

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