[Seminar Report]
Three kintone and uSonar Users Present
Practical Examples of Operational Efficiency and Sales Transformation Revealed!

[Part 2] Practical Case Studies of Operational Efficiency and Sales Reform

In Part 2, Marute Otsuka, Sakura Color Products, and Kuze presented case studies in a panel discussion format, showcasing how they each combined kintone with uSonar services.

Speakers (from left):
Mr. Shin Sawada, DX Promotion Manager, Corporate Strategy Promotion Office, Kuze Co., Ltd.
Mr. Kengo Okada, Manager, Digital Strategy Section, Marketing Department and Web Sales Development Section, Sakura Color Products Corp.
Mr. Kentaro Ishii, Deputy General Manager, Systems Department, Administration Division, Marute Otsuka Co., Ltd.

Before Using uSonar

Marute Otsuka (Mr. Ishii): Previously, if the same customer was routed through different distributors (such as paint retailers), they would be registered under different codes, making it impossible to determine if they were the same entity. As a manufacturer of painting supplies like brushes and rollers, Marute Otsuka wholesales these products to distributors. However, the actual end-users are the painting contractors behind those distributors. Therefore, we needed to accurately identify cases where the same customer was being reached through different distributors, and we are using uSonar tools to solve this challenge.

Sakura Color Products (Mr. Okada): Due to our distribution structure, our system generated multiple customer management codes for the same retailer, which required significant manual effort to link. We had previously implemented a competitor's product, but we decided to use uSonar tools to resolve this issue.

Kuze (Mr. Sawada): When we first introduced SFA, employees were reluctant to input data due to the high workload. To dispel the image that this would increase their workload, we introduced uSonar tools to demonstrate that it would provide our sales team with effective weapons and improve convenience, which led to the successful adoption of case management.

Why We Adopted uSonar

Although the three companies operate in different industries and business models, they all cited the fact that codes are assigned at the business location level as a key reason for adoption.

Marute Otsuka (Mr. Ishii): I appreciated the comprehensive coverage from large corporations to individuals. The fact that LBC codes were assigned at the factory and business location level was the deciding factor.

Sakura Color Products (Mr. Okada): Our retailers include many sole proprietors, and we also maintain master data for end-delivery locations such as kindergartens and educational facilities. The fact that we achieved a 70% match rate with that information and could integrate with kintone on a daily basis was significant.

Kuze (Mr. Sawada): Many of our customers are sole proprietors, and we adopted the service after finding that 94% of our internal customer data matched the uSonar database. We had struggled for about 20 years with issues like multiple customer codes for the same account and an inability to consolidate data, so being able to perform data cleansing was a major achievement.

Actual Results

Marute Otsuka (Mr. Ishii): By being able to manage painting companies as end-users, we are now able to send direct mail to them. Since many painting companies share similar names, the ability to manage them accurately is a major achievement. We also use Live Access to identify companies that visit our website. Since we can link information captured by the business card management tool mSonar to kintone, it has become easier to send emails by integrating with third-party email marketing applications.

Sakura Color Products (Mr. Okada): We achieved the unification of customer names and codes, allowing us to compress our data by approximately 40%. It has been a great help as we no longer need to perform the data cleansing and deduplication work that I previously had to do myself. We were also able to integrate customer records that had been siloed because they were managed by individuals, using kintone. Additionally, as a secondary effect of introducing uSonar tools, it became possible for headquarters staff to monitor the activities of individual stores. For example, interactions with headquarters staff at chain retailers and interactions with individual store staff were previously managed separately, but by utilizing the corporate LBC, we can now view these collectively.

Kuze (Mr. Sawada): Our employees use the PLANSonar and kintone screens side-by-side. Because we have integrated our existing customer data, we can visualize, for example, which hotels are already our clients and which are not among companies that operate multiple hotels, which helps us in selecting targets for our approach. Furthermore, a feature we find very beneficial is that the address data linked to the LBC is categorized into fields such as prefecture and municipality. Thanks to this, we can now visualize logistics efficiency by viewing areas as a whole.

Following this, we moved to a Q&A session where the speakers answered questions from the participants.
After the presentations, a networking event was held where attendees could talk to the speakers and interact with one another.
It was a very lively event, providing a rare opportunity for networking and information exchange that is difficult to achieve in the course of daily business or social circles.