Tanaka

As part of our business strategy, we have established seven core business pillars, including custom housing. This includes not only custom homes that focus on meticulous design but also new business ventures such as select housing, where dual-income households prioritizing cost and time performance can choose their preferences online. As we evolve in line with societal changes, we believe that developing information infrastructure for employees nationwide—especially tools and data environments for our sales departments—is a crucial theme that directly impacts customer satisfaction. We think daily about what DX that leads to business transformation and results should look like, while providing the necessary environment for each business division, corporate sales team, and sales representative at our branches.

Tanaka

Our sales department uses Salesforce as our core system. I have a long history with Salesforce, having been involved in its implementation in the early 2010s while in the Corporate Planning Department. Later, I also managed it from a sales field perspective. As data accumulated within Salesforce, corporate data duplication occurred, hindering its effective use. Consequently, in my current position, I became involved in restructuring the operational environment.

Tanaka

When operating internally, data issues such as inconsistencies in notation and failure to update inevitably occur during entry. We learned about the existence of uSonar's LBC code, which can absorb any notation variations and consolidate data into a unique record. After integrating it, we were able to see a path toward restructuring our operations, and the issues with Salesforce have largely been resolved. I hold the LBC code in very high regard.

Tanaka

In addition to B2C scenarios such as attracting customers to housing exhibitions, our company engages in B2B sales, where we sell lumber and building materials to construction firms and serve corporate clients as building owners. Furthermore, we have a B2B2C business flow where we capture demand from land and building owners through financial institutions, tax accountants, and real estate agents in each branch area. Since owners looking to utilize their land or buildings effectively often consult with financial institutions or tax accountants first, our local branches place great importance on maintaining strong relationships with these partners and real estate agents.

Tanaka

We utilize Salesforce to grasp relationships with these "B" partners and visualize differences in activity levels across each branch, while using LBC codes to normalize and update our data. Since we became able to integrate with LBC codes, accurate data is linked even for small-scale businesses, which has significantly reduced the operational burden of manual entry for each staff member. Conversely, before this, it was difficult to enforce data entry rules, which led to data duplication.

Tanaka

I believe everyone was using it with the mindset of it being nothing more than an "electronic business card file." It was a free business card management app that could integrate with Salesforce, but we had no sense of benefit from the data integration. When we learned that this service would be discontinued in the spring of 2024, we began looking for other free apps. That was when uSonar proposed mSonar, which, although a paid service, comes equipped with LBC.

Tanaka

The deciding factor was the ability to envision the convenience of a business card application that integrates with LBC codes, which cover detailed business locations nationwide. Previously, even when we scanned business card information using a management application, we could not effectively utilize it in conjunction with Salesforce. As mentioned earlier, our company already manages customer data in Salesforce using LBC codes. With mSonar, the LBC code is linked the moment a business card is scanned, allowing Salesforce data and business card data to be connected instantly. I felt that this dramatic level of convenience brings value to field sales that cannot be achieved with other applications.

Tanaka

We compared three to four well-known business card management applications in terms of functionality and cost.

Tanaka

In our lumber and building materials business, we have many transactions with local builders and contractors. It is extremely convenient that when we exchange business cards, the information is immediately linked to the corporate data in uSonar, which is maintained at the small-to-medium enterprise and sole proprietorship level. We would like departments and group companies that frequently exchange business cards to use mSonar as a standard practice.

Ashida

Regarding the registration of customer information (input burden), I have heard that it has become much easier for our field sales teams. Previously, recording visit activities or interviews in Salesforce, creating related corporate data, and logging interactions took an average of about 15 minutes per person per task. With the introduction of uSonar, input candidates are now suggested automatically. This not only ensured the accuracy of input values and suppressed variations in notation, but also reduced the time to less than 3 minutes per task. In other words, we believe that we have compressed our operational efficiency by a factor of five, effectively increasing productivity fivefold. While the input of end-user customer information is performed daily by each sales team, the registration of corporate entities such as the financial institutions mentioned earlier, which act as intermediaries in the distribution channel, was inevitably a burdensome task that often led to inconsistent notation. The fact that the hassle of entering data from scratch has been eliminated is a major change, and it has been very well received by our staff. The same applies to business card data.

Kamiya

Regarding the registration of activity history for my own sales accounts in Salesforce, I have heard that while staff previously had to register it themselves before the LBC integration, it is now pre-populated, making it much easier to register activity history.

Ashida

By implementing the LBC code from uSonar, we were able to eliminate approximately 20% of the duplicate corporate data that originally existed within Salesforce. Since then, we have been able to centralize our data, enabling sales and marketing activities based on accurate corporate information. For example, we are now able to accurately generate reports on the number of business cards, sales opportunities, and deals for each branch office using the Salesforce dashboard. From this, we can identify which branches are receiving sufficient referrals from financial institutions and which branches have room for improvement. Furthermore, based on the data visualized on the dashboard, we are now able to discuss how to formulate strategies to achieve our KPIs.

Tanaka

Looking back, our data used to be fragmented, and creating reports using spreadsheets for meetings was time-consuming. Now, with the dashboard, the need to create unnecessary numerical tables has been eliminated. We can say that sales productivity has increased significantly.

Kamiya

Since we were switching business card management services, the secure migration of business card image data was a major hurdle, but we received detailed support for this as well. We are constantly handling inquiries regarding operation methods, and we will continue to work with uSonar to hold training sessions to further ensure the system is fully adopted.

Tanaka

One example is handling personnel transfers. In any sales environment, including real estate and financial institutions, business is largely built on human connections. While handovers are standard practice to ensure these connections are not lost during transfers, being able to see on data how a predecessor was connected to a client makes the transition much smoother and serves as a benchmark for the successor's activities.

Ashida

It could also be used to identify potential new business, such as deciding to approach a local builder within a branch's territory that we do not yet have a relationship with.

Kamiya

We have already received numerous inquiries from the field, such as, 'The rating for the company we are planning to do business with is showing this on mSonar; is it safe to proceed with the contract?' The benefit of mSonar is that you can easily check a counterparty's creditworthiness on your smartphone, so we want to ensure this is well-communicated to the field teams.

Tanaka

For example, if we can quickly identify that a contact works for a group company within a specific industrial hub, we may be able to tailor our communication and proposals accordingly. We have high expectations for the potential of mSonar and LBC.