SERAKU Co., Ltd. and SERAKU CCC, Inc.

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: the System Integration domain, focused on operational support for IT systems and infrastructure, and the cloud system adoption and utilization support domain, primarily for Salesforce, provided by our dedicated subsidiary, Seraku CCC. The second is our Internet Services business, which includes Midori Cloud, a SaaS platform for the primary industry—specifically agriculture—and NewtonX, a ChatGPT service for corporate clients.
The premise for introducing uSonar products this time is our internal utilization of Salesforce. We have been Salesforce users since around 2007. We use it for almost all of our core systems, not just sales management, but also daily pipeline management, recruitment yield management—which is critical for us—performance analysis for each interviewer, contracts, and accounting. Many of our employees are very familiar with it. During the initial stages of implementation, I personally experienced how difficult it was to master Salesforce internally. Based on the hypothesis that this need existed in the market, we commercialized it as an adoption support service starting in 2013.

Abe

While my primary responsibilities are as the Business Manager for Seraku CCC and the Sales Manager for NewtonX, I also concurrently serve as a Marketing Representative for the Sales Strategy Promotion Office at Seraku headquarters. I am responsible for the utilization, adoption, and deployment of uSonar across the entire group. Since the introduction of uSonar involves close integration with Salesforce, the team at Seraku CCC is primarily responsible for it.

A.J.

I belong to the Sales Department at the Yokohama Branch of Seraku headquarters. My daily mission involves proposal activities related to managed services, such as needs for resident engineers for system infrastructure. In this project for the introduction and internal utilization of uSonar products, such as Side Sonar and mSonar, I serve as a leader in gathering requests from the field perspective and achieving results through actual usage. I set up and facilitate discussion meetings on how our sales team can use uSonar services more effectively.

Abe

Our primary objective for using uSonar is to identify new potential clients, known as "new business development." Additionally, across our entire group, we use it for "deep-dive sales" targeting client companies where our current engagement is limited to only a few departments. These are our two main use cases.

A.J.

Regarding the scale of implementation, we have started by limiting usage to 70–80 sales members nationwide. We have assigned approximately two people from each division, including section managers and junior staff. Some members are already utilizing the platform extensively, and we intend to gradually increase the overall active usage rate. A key characteristic is that it is being used across the entire group in locations nationwide. It is currently utilized by over 10 departments and branches, including the three Tokyo metropolitan area divisions of Seraku, the COMPANY division, the Midori Cloud division, the NewtonX division, and our four regional branches in Yokohama, Nagoya, Osaka, and Fukuoka, as well as Seraku CCC.

Abe

We had a business alliance in 2018, so some of us were already aware of uSonar. However, at the time, we were actually contracted with a different corporate data provider and business card management service to drive our B2B ABM strategy. The challenge was that we were not seeing the results we expected relative to the costs. Our management team began questioning the status of our ABM initiatives.

Abe

As I mentioned at the beginning, we provide support services for Salesforce adoption to our clients, but at the same time, we faced the challenge of needing to improve the quality of our own new business development. I also felt that by properly promoting an ABM strategy, we could further maximize our use of Salesforce. ABM is a sales style that treats each customer as a single unit 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, it is generally considered that the following four points are 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, deduplicating, and centralizing data within SFA
4: Managing information from business cards exchanged by sales staff and integrating it with SFA

We decided to replace our existing products with uSonar to solve these four challenges at once, after conducting a thorough comparative review.

Abe

Yes, our management team was concerned about whether switching to uSonar would truly deliver ROI and results, even though it was for the purpose of advancing our ABM strategy. We, on the ABM strategy promotion side, 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

Yes. We decided to set aside its use for purely new business development for the time being and instead thoroughly utilize uSonar to revitalize cross-selling across our nationwide branches and business divisions. We were confident that this would ensure a positive 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 uSonar's LBC code, we anticipated that it would be possible to share customer information across our group's locations, such as between Nagoya and Yokohama. The corporate data service we had been using until then only provided company information at the headquarters level. In other words, our grasp was limited to the level of knowing that "Seraku holds an account (contract) with Corporation A." However, by overlaying uSonar's data with our own, we can see that "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 to pursue this." This makes it possible to understand customers at the level of individual business establishments. With this level of visualization, we could promote the sharing of customer information between Seraku Yokohama and Seraku Nagoya, and we were convinced that account-based marketing and true 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 one to three years, I did not think it would cause much confusion. Rather, I felt we could explain the benefits of a unified implementation to the field by stating, "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 launch within six months is exceptionally 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 the perspective of the sales team, not only has our ABM strategy become fully operational, but we have already exceeded our defined ROI target by 180%. I believe that if we had continued using our previous scheme with Salesforce for ABM, the potential we could have realized from Salesforce would have been limited. By implementing uSonar, we can say that ABM has truly begun to function as an effective customer acquisition strategy. On a more granular level, we have reduced the operational burden by eliminating inconsistencies in data entry, which has allowed us more time to focus on our customers. Furthermore, a significant benefit has been the net increase in the number of target customer companies registered in Salesforce.

Abe

There were significant benefits for our sales teams. What I would call the "democratization of tools" occurred. With the service we used previously, cost constraints meant that only a few individuals at the upper management level could access it, resulting in a top-down flow of information where the field team had to work based on lists created by leadership. However, the scheme proposed by uSonar was attractive because it allowed us to create an environment where many more sales personnel could log in for the same cost. Field sales staff can now freely create their own targeting lists. This has created a sense of democracy, fostering a vitality where staff approach prospects autonomously rather than just following a master list handed down from above. Another less visible benefit is that because everyone now has access to the same environment, we have standardized terminology such as "industry characteristics" and "market penetration rates," which has improved communication efficiency.

A.J.

Previously, managers tended to create targeting lists focused on credit-related factors like corporate capital and annual sales. Since we started using uSonar, our conceptual definitions of industries have aligned, and I feel that our methods for creating targeting lists have gradually become standardized. I also feel that using uSonar helps "Digital Sales" function effectively, as it fosters a culture where sales personnel think about their own approach methods and develop autonomy.

Abe

With our previous business card management system, we could perform the bare minimum task of importing exchanged business cards, but we were not really able to utilize that information for marketing activities. Because mSonar integrates 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" (Business Card Shogi) feature within SideSonar. My impression of the previous business card management service was that it only displayed information from the cards we had imported. With Meishi Shogi, I can see which colleagues are approaching which departments, and it even displays information on executives with whom we have not yet exchanged business cards, which is extremely convenient.

Abe

Many users primarily utilize mSonar for business card ingestion, while leveraging SideSonar for outreach. The fact that it connects to corporate data regardless of the ingested business card is a major differentiator from other business card management services.

Abe

The AI engine 'Rating2.0' is remarkable; it uses machine learning to analyze trends in past customer 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 in the process of implementing '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 even enter the pipeline. Digital sales, which seeks out future customers based on various past behavioral data, has begun.

A.J.

I use it quite extensively. A unique way I use it is by filtering with keywords in the 'Corporate Summary.' It leads to discoveries, such as finding companies I never knew existed. It also allows other team members to approach companies that have not yet been visited.

A.J.

Indeed, "Trans" allows us to append accurate corporate attribute data to company lists not yet registered in Salesforce, as well as to lists of business cards collected at exhibitions. It is also interesting that "Story" allows us to segment lists based on various criteria such as industry or IR (securities reports). At our company, we monitor "Stories" such as "SFA-Implemented Companies" or "System Subsidiaries," and we also utilize intent data lists such as "Engineer Recruitment" or "Interested in Data Centers."

Abe

Detailed explanations of functions and usage are very much appreciated. Furthermore, I would like to know more about specific use cases. I would like to see an expanded collection of tips, including how other companies are innovating and cases that were tried but did not succeed. I would also appreciate the enhancement of information exchange with other users, a user community, and user meetings. Failure is an inherent part of data utilization, and since failure is also valuable data, I hope we can share these experiences among those of us working on data utilization.

Abe

Historically, corporate sales—especially new business development—relied heavily on individual past knowledge and experience. However, since we began utilizing uSonar, we have started to achieve the 'data-driven sales' approach we have long aimed for, starting with our ABM strategy.
It is honestly rare to successfully acquire new business by relying on 'targeted strikes based on past experience,' and such methods lack reproducibility. With ABM, we can now create strategies based on our own data. As I mentioned earlier, it is perfectly fine if those strategies miss the mark. A miss is still valuable data, which we can then use to formulate our next strategy. I hope to accelerate this sales cycle even further.

Furthermore, I believe that strong sales organizations achieve results in new business development and demonstrate a high receptivity to new tools and systems. I feel there is a certain correlation there. In fact, the individuals currently securing new business at our company tend to be those who have mastered uSonar products.
Of course, there are still areas where we have not fully utilized the tools, and because new business development is inherently inefficient, people are often reluctant to engage in it. To meet targets, there is a tendency to rely on deep-account sales. However, the introduction of uSonar has made it clear that our sales organization is shifting from a personnel-dependent style to a 'Digital Sales' model driven by ABM.

Finally, building on our thorough internal utilization of uSonar, we would like to release a service to support the introduction and adoption of ABM uSonar × 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, the reality is that for Japanese companies, mastering these systems is extremely difficult in terms of both culture and skills. We hope to use our own successful implementation and utilization as a strong case study to provide persuasive proposals to our clients and contribute to the sales transformation of Japanese companies.