SERAKU Co., Ltd. / SERAKU CCC Co., Ltd.

Abe

The business of Seraku Co., Ltd. is primarily built on two pillars. The first is our Digital Integration business, which consists of two areas: system integration, focusing on IT system and infrastructure operation support, and cloud system adoption and utilization support, primarily for Salesforce, provided by our dedicated subsidiary, Seraku CCC. The second pillar is our Internet Services business, which includes "Midori Cloud," a SaaS platform for the primary industry with a focus on agriculture, and "NewtonX," a ChatGPT service for corporate clients.
The premise for implementing uSonar products lies in our internal utilization of Salesforce. We have been Salesforce users since around 2007. We manage almost all of our core systems through Salesforce, ranging from daily pipeline management and recruitment yield management—which is critical for us—to performance analysis for each interviewer, as well as contracts and accounting. It is not just for sales management; many of our employees are very familiar with it. During the early stages of our own implementation, we realized how difficult it was to master Salesforce internally. Based on the hypothesis that this need existed in the market, we commercialized our adoption support services starting in 2013.

Abe

While my primary responsibilities involve serving as the Business Manager for Cerak CCC and the Sales Manager for NewtonX, I also concurrently handle marketing for the Sales Strategy Promotion Office at Cerak. In this project, I am responsible for the utilization, adoption, and deployment of uSonar across the entire group. Since the implementation of uSonar requires seamless integration with Salesforce, the Cerak CCC team is primarily leading this effort.

A.J.

I am part of the Sales Department at the Yokohama Branch of Cerak's headquarters. My daily mission involves proposing managed services, such as addressing needs for resident engineers for system infrastructure. In this project regarding the implementation and internal utilization of uSonar products, such as Side Sonar and mSonar, I serve as a leader responsible for consolidating requests from the field perspective and ensuring we achieve tangible results through actual usage. I facilitate meetings and discussions to determine how our sales team can most effectively leverage uSonar services.

Abe

First, the primary purpose of using uSonar is for what we call "new business development" to find new clients. Beyond that, our second main use case is for account expansion within our group, specifically targeting client companies where our current engagement is limited to only a few departments.

A.J.

Regarding the scale of utilization, we have initially focused on 70 to 80 sales members nationwide. We have assigned approximately two people from each department, including both section managers and younger staff. Some members are already using it extensively, and we intend to gradually increase the overall active usage rate. A key feature is that it is being used across the entire group throughout the country. It is being utilized by over 10 departments and branches, including three sales divisions at Cerak's Tokyo headquarters, the COMPANY Division, the Midori Cloud Division, the NewtonX Division, as well as our four regional branches in Yokohama, Nagoya, Osaka, and Fukuoka, and Cerak CCC.

Abe

We had a business partnership established in 2018, so some of us were aware of uSonar. However, in reality, we were contracted with another corporate data provider and a business card management service to advance our B2B ABM strategy. The challenge was that we were not seeing the expected results relative to the costs. Our management team began asking about the status of our ABM initiatives.

Abe

As I mentioned at the beginning, we provide Salesforce adoption support services to our clients, but at the same time, we had a challenge in wanting to improve the quality of our own new business development. We also felt that by properly promoting an ABM strategy, we could further utilize Salesforce more thoroughly. ABM is a sales style that views customers as individual companies and tracks progress by department, and I believe it is an effective B2B sales strategy that fits the data-driven era.
To advance an ABM strategy, the following four points are generally considered essential:

1: Connecting external corporate data services with SFA
2: Appending the latest external corporate data to your own customer data stored in SFA
3: Cleansing, matching, and centralizing data within SFA
4: Managing information from business cards exchanged by sales staff and linking it with SFA

To solve these four challenges at once, we re-evaluated our options and decided to replace our existing products with uSonar.

Abe

Yes, the management team was concerned about whether switching to uSonar would truly deliver ROI and results, even for the sake of advancing our ABM strategy. We, as the team driving the ABM strategy, even felt a sense of urgency that if we could not recover the initial investment and demonstrate ROI within the first year, we would not be able to continue the contract.

Abe

Certainly. We decided to set aside its use for pure new business development for the time being and instead focus on thoroughly utilizing uSonar to activate cross-selling across our nationwide branches and business divisions. We were confident that this would ensure a tangible return on investment. We could say this with certainty because we knew that uSonar's data systematically codes companies nationwide down to the level of individual business locations.

Abe

By using the LBC code from uSonar, we anticipated the ability to share customer information across our group's locations, such as Nagoya and Yokohama. The corporate data service we used previously only provided information at the headquarters level. In other words, our understanding was limited to the granularity of knowing that 'Seraku holds an account (contract) with Corporation A.' However, by overlaying uSonar's data with our own, we can now understand our customers at the business location level, such as 'Corporation A has a Yokohama branch and a Nagoya factory. Seraku's Yokohama branch has an account, but the Nagoya branch does not yet have a contract. There is room for us to pursue this.' Once visualized in this way, we can promote the sharing of customer information between Seraku Yokohama and Seraku Nagoya, and I was confident that account-based marketing, the true form of ABM, would accelerate.

Abe

We were using a major service for business card management as well, but we switched to mSonar in May 2023. Since we had only been using the previous service for about one to three years, I did not expect much confusion. Rather, I felt I could explain the benefits of a unified introduction to the field team by saying, 'Instead of using standalone tools for each task, business card management has now been included in our sales development system.'

Abe

It took about three months from the time I joined the project. I believe that implementation and operation within six months is extremely fast for a SaaS-based service that handles corporate data.

Abe

By switching to a combined solution for ABM data and business card management, we reduced costs by approximately 40% compared to our previous setup. This was a major benefit, as it was a primary concern for our management team. From a sales operations perspective, the full-scale implementation of our ABM strategy has already exceeded our target ROI by 180%. I believe the potential of Salesforce would have been limited if we had continued using our previous scheme for ABM. With uSonar, we can say that ABM has begun to function effectively as a customer acquisition tool. On a granular level, we have reduced the operational burden by eliminating data entry inconsistencies, which has allowed our team to spend more time engaging with customers. Furthermore, the net increase in the number of target companies registered in Salesforce has been a significant achievement.

Abe

The sales team has also experienced significant benefits. We have essentially achieved a democratization of tools. Due to cost constraints, the previous service we used was only accessible to a limited number of senior-level staff, resulting in a top-down flow of information where the field team had to work from lists created by management. However, the scheme proposed by uSonar allowed us to provide access to a large number of sales personnel at the same cost, which was a major appeal. Now, field sales representatives can freely create their own targeting lists. This has fostered a sense of autonomy; rather than simply following a master list handed down from above, our team has developed the vitality to approach prospects autonomously. Having an environment accessible to everyone has also standardized terminology such as "industry characteristics" and "market penetration rates," which has improved communication efficiency—a benefit that is not always immediately visible.

A.J.

Previously, managers tended to create targeting lists based on credit-related factors like capital and annual sales. Since we started using uSonar, our definitions of industry segments have become aligned, and I feel that our methods for creating targeting lists have gradually become standardized. I believe that using uSonar helps "Digital Sales" function effectively by fostering a culture where sales personnel think for themselves and develop autonomy in their approach.

Abe

While our previous business card management system handled the basic task of importing exchanged business cards, it did not allow us to effectively utilize that information for marketing activities. By integrating mSonar with Salesforce, business card information is accumulated directly, allowing us to use it for marketing immediately.

A.J.

Since mSonar also integrates with SideSonar, I frequently use the "Meishi Shogi" feature within SideSonar. My impression of our previous business card management service was that it only displayed information from the cards we had imported. However, with Meishi Shogi, I can see which colleagues are approaching which departments, and it even provides information on executives with whom we have not yet exchanged business cards, which is extremely convenient.

Abe

Many of our team members primarily use mSonar for importing business cards and use SideSonar for outreach. The ability to connect to corporate data regardless of the imported business cards is a major differentiator from other business card management services.

Abe

The "Rating2.0" AI engine is impressive; it uses machine learning to analyze trends in past transaction data—such as annual revenue and number of employees—to generate lists of similar target companies, including those we have yet to approach. At our company, we input past customer lists into Rating2.0 by division and region to generate lists of future prospects. As a result, we have discovered companies we previously overlooked, which has improved the comprehensiveness of our customer lists.
We are also working on utilizing "Live Access." This is an initiative to identify companies visiting our website based on their IP domain. It allows us to see which companies are potential leads before they officially become prospects. Digital sales, which seek out future customers based on various past behavioral data, have begun.

A.J.

I use it quite extensively. A unique way I use it is by filtering with the keyword "Corporate Summary." It leads to discoveries like, "I didn't know this company existed." It also allows other team members to approach companies that haven't been contacted yet.

A.J.

It is true that "Trans" can accurately append corporate attribute data to company lists not yet registered in Salesforce, or to lists of business cards collected at exhibitions. It is also interesting that "Stories" allows you to segment lists based on various axes such as industry or IR (securities reports). At our company, we monitor stories like "SFA Adopters" or "System Subsidiaries," and we also utilize intent data lists such as "Engineer Recruitment" or "Interested in Data Centers."

Abe

I truly appreciate the detailed explanations of the features and how to use them. Furthermore, I would like to see more use cases. I would like to see an expanded collection of tips that includes how other companies are innovating, as well as cases where trials did not go as planned. I would also appreciate the enhancement of information exchange with other users, a more robust user community, and the organization of user meetings. Data utilization is inevitably accompanied by failures, and these failures are also valuable data. I hope that those of us working on data utilization can share these experiences with each other.

Abe

Until now, corporate sales, especially new business development, have unfortunately relied on the past knowledge and experience of individuals. However, since we started using uSonar, we have begun to realize "data-driven sales," including ABM strategies, which is something our company has always wanted to achieve.
Honestly, "hitting the target based on past experience to acquire new business" is a rare case and lacks reproducibility. With ABM, we can create strategies based on our own data. As I mentioned earlier, it is fine if those strategies miss the mark. A miss is also valuable data, so we can simply use that to formulate the next strategy. I hope to keep this sales cycle moving more effectively.

Also, I believe that strong sales organizations achieve results in new business development and have a high receptivity to new tools and systems. I feel there is a certain correlation there. In fact, the people currently acquiring new business at our company tend to be those who have started to master uSonar products.
Of course, there are still areas where it is not being used, and because new business development is inherently inefficient, people tend to avoid it. To meet targets, there is a tendency to rely on deep-dive sales. However, I feel that the direction of our company's sales shifting from a person-dependent style to "Digital Sales" through ABM has become clear since we introduced uSonar.

Finally, starting with our own thorough utilization of uSonar, I would like to release a service to support the introduction and adoption of ABM uSonar x Salesforce for our clients. As sales activities become increasingly difficult year by year, the number of required systems continues to grow. On the other hand, mastering these systems is extremely difficult for Japanese companies in terms of culture and skills. I hope to use our own introduction and utilization as a good case study to provide persuasive proposals to our clients and contribute to the sales transformation of Japanese companies.