Okada

The Marketing Department I belong to is responsible for planning and promoting product planning, development, and sales strategies. With approximately 30 members, we are primarily responsible for products and markets across Japan. The department is broadly divided into four sections: Product Planning, Promotion, Digital Strategy, and EC. My team, the Digital Strategy Section, consists of four members responsible for corporate website operations, SNS management, public relations, sales activity promotion, and promoting the utilization of sales systems (kintone, product DB, BI tools).

Okada

As a premise, our company migrated our SFA/CRM to Cybozu's kintone in July 2022. Our section is responsible for promoting the use of kintone within the sales department. With the previous SFA/CRM, both the sales and marketing teams felt that the burden of entering customer data was too heavy, and it took a significant amount of man-hours to aggregate and analyze data or create lists. We wanted to resolve these data-related issues when migrating to kintone.

Okada

Yes. We understood that there were challenges in the foundational organization of our data, which is a prerequisite for effectively utilizing data to achieve results. Specifically, multiple codes existed for the same customer, and they were not linked to one another. Consequently, a unified code was not used for customer data or email distribution, and the manual workload for analysis was extremely high. Because customer data was not linked, activity reports (daily reports) were also entered under separate codes, causing data to be scattered. Furthermore, business card management was primarily paper-based and held individually by sales representatives. Additionally, since customer data was also being newly created through manual entry, we could not standardize the formatting rules for addresses, company names, and personal names, leading to inconsistencies in notation. This further complicated the problem.

Okada

I was at a loss for a time. First, I explored whether we could solve it internally. I tried to perform data consolidation based on various criteria, but I struggled because none of them resulted in a definitive common code.

Okada

I was aware that services existed that sell corporate data and provide master data on a one-time basis, as I had researched this in the past. However, while that would clean the data temporarily, the root cause would remain unaddressed, and I believed the same situation would recur over time due to new customer registrations. While searching for a service that offers a persistent connection, automatically maintains data, and assigns common codes, I discovered the services offered by uSonar.

Okada

We compared several companies, but we ultimately chose uSonar because it comprehensively organizes companies nationwide at the branch level and includes a wide variety of attribute information. Additionally, since our sales targets include educational institutions such as schools, the extensive database of school-related facilities, including elementary schools, junior high schools, kindergartens, and nursery schools, was also a major appeal. Furthermore, it was important that we could leverage uSonar services, such as the business card and corporate information app "mSonar," not only for defensive data maintenance but also for proactive sales activities. We considered strengthening our approach by enhancing our email utilization and creating lists of similar companies based on corporate name searches.

Okada

Yes, we succeeded. uSonar possesses a corporate database that comprehensively covers companies nationwide down to the branch level, and they manage data using common codes for each company and branch (LBC codes). We then assigned (matched) LBC codes to our own customer data, and even if the company names or addresses in our customer data had inconsistent formatting, the same LBC code was assigned to the same customer. This allowed us to identify duplicate corporate data within the system and duplicates caused by input variations, enabling the integration and centralization of our corporate data. Although I cannot disclose the exact number of customers, after cleaning the duplicate data, we were able to reduce the total data volume by approximately 40%. We also reduced our facility information, which consisted of over 100,000 records, by more than half. This data compression reduced our maintenance and utilization costs, establishing the foundation for effective corporate data utilization.

Okada

We built a corporate master, customer master, and business card management application within kintone. By using the LBC code as a common identifier for all of them, they began to function smoothly. Previously, the task of linking corporate data took about 3 to 4 hours per session (or 1 to 2 days in difficult cases), but now, including list creation, it is completed within a few minutes, or at most 30 minutes.

Okada

Beyond managing existing customer data, by using sideSonar, data for new prospects we have engaged with is stored in our SFA/CRM with LBC codes attached. This is significant because it allows us to link data before and after they become customers. Previously, before registration in the core sales system, each sales representative would manually create customer entries for daily reports. Consequently, we were unable to link that information with the data after registration in the core sales system.

Okada

With the introduction of mSonar, business card information captured via smartphone and converted into digital data is immediately linked to accurate corporate information, which has advanced our accumulation and utilization efforts. We previously managed email distribution lists for business partners and others using Excel. Naturally, because maintenance such as adding business card information was difficult, we were limited to fewer than 1,000 entries, but since integrating with mSonar, that number has increased by about 5 times. The fact that sales representatives no longer have to perform manual entry, as they did with Excel management, has been a major benefit.

Okada

Regarding the results, looking back, this kintone and uSonar implementation project was essentially completed by myself, with only partial cooperation from our internal systems department. I was grateful for the low barrier to entry for system implementation and integration. I was also impressed by the attentive sales and implementation support from uSonar, as well as their prompt responses to our inquiries.

Okada

Thanks to your support, the utilization of kintone and uSonar (including mSonar and sideSonar) is progressing smoothly. We have developed approximately 200 applications, ranging from customer master data and business card management to sales activity logs, calendar management, and product master data. Currently, about 120 members of our sales and marketing departments use these as their daily information infrastructure tools. To initiate the rollout, we held briefing sessions for every sales department by section to promote understanding, and we also conducted follow-up sessions to drive the transition from initial implementation to expanded usage. While utilization is currently progressing, I feel there is still some disparity in proficiency levels among individual users. Moving forward, I aim to standardize and elevate these proficiency levels while encouraging more proactive usage to improve our overall sales and marketing capabilities.