Seminar Report:
Three kintone × uSonar Users Present
Practical Case Studies on Operational Efficiency and Sales Transformation!

Part 2: Practical Examples of Operational Efficiency and Sales Reform

In the second part, Marute Otsuka, Sakura Color Products, and Kuze introduced their respective use cases combining kintone and uSonar services in a panel discussion format.

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

Before Using uSonar

Marute Otsuka (Mr. Ishii): Previously, the same customer would be registered under different codes if they went through different distributors (such as paint retailers), 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 painters behind those distributors.
Therefore, it was necessary to correctly identify cases where the same customer was being reached through different distributors, and we are utilizing uSonar tools to solve this challenge.

Sakura Color Products (Mr. Okada): Due to distribution complexities, our system generated multiple customer management codes for the same retailer, requiring significant manual effort for data mapping. 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 provides sales representatives with a powerful tool that enhances 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 assignment of codes at the business establishment level as a key factor in their decision to adopt our solution.

Marute Otsuka (Mr. Ishii): I felt it was excellent that the database covers everything from large corporations to sole proprietorships. The fact that LBC codes were assigned at the factory and business establishment level was the deciding factor.

Sakura Color Products (Mr. Okada): Our customer base includes many sole proprietorships, and we also maintain a master database of educational facilities like kindergartens as final delivery destinations. The fact that our data matched approximately 70% of their information, combined with the ability to integrate with kintone on a daily basis, was significant.

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

Actual Results

Marute Otsuka (Mr. Ishii): By being able to manage our end-user painting companies, we are now able to send direct mail and perform other outreach. Since many painting companies share the same name, the ability to manage them accurately is a major success. We also use Live Access to identify companies that visit our website. Since we can link information captured via the business card management tool mSonar to kintone, we have made email distribution much easier by integrating it with third-party email delivery 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 tasks that we previously handled manually. We were also able to integrate customer records that had been siloed because they were managed by individuals, using kintone. Furthermore, a secondary benefit of introducing uSonar tools is that headquarters staff can now monitor the activities of individual stores. For example, interactions with headquarters staff at chain stores and individual store staff were previously managed separately, but by utilizing the corporate LBC, we can now view all of these interactions in one place.

Kuze (Mr. Sawada): Our employees perform their daily tasks using the screens for Side Sonar (now PLANSonar) and kintone side-by-side. Because we have integrated our existing customer data, we can visualize which hotels are already clients and which are not, even when a single company operates multiple hotels. This is very useful for selecting targets for our approach. Additionally, we appreciate 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, the session moved to a Q&A segment where the speakers answered questions from the participants.
After the presentations, a networking reception was held, allowing attendees to speak with the speakers and interact with one another.
It became 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 relationships.