freee Adopts PLANSonar to Improve the Accuracy of its Salesforce Data Infrastructure

Overview of freee and the Mission of the Business Infrastructure Division

With the mission of "Empowering Small Businesses to Take Center Stage," freee provides a back-office support platform including "freee Accounting" and "freee HR" for users ranging from sole proprietors to mid-sized enterprises.

The Business Infrastructure Division, which led this implementation, is responsible for supporting freee's sustainable business growth through both "data" and "systems." Their mission is to maintain the Salesforce-centered data infrastructure and plan and execute marketing initiatives using a CDP, ensuring that departments such as Marketing, Sales, and Customer Success can provide the optimal customer experience at the right time.

Background of Implementation: Seeking a Breakthrough to Reach Untapped Segments

The Business Infrastructure Division previously focused its customer acquisition strategy on digital media, but this approach began to show limitations in the customer segments it could reach. To deliver value to the many small businesses that have yet to encounter freee, a new strategy for acquiring new customers was required.

In considering a new strategy for customer acquisition, the following challenges were identified:

• Existing corporate database products offered limited attribute information coverage for small and medium-sized enterprises, rendering them insufficient for precise, segment-based initiatives.
• Account data within Salesforce lacked sufficient identification at the corporate number and branch location levels, failing to guarantee data uniqueness and resulting in cumbersome management processes.

As a result, initiatives utilizing internal data were not yielding sufficient effects, and the burden of manual data organization was increasing in terms of both cost and labor.

1. Evaluation Point: Comprehensive Coverage of Business Locations and Extensive Data on Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises

The primary evaluation point was the overwhelming comprehensiveness of the corporate database (LBC) held by uSonar. We highly valued the fact that it accurately covers corporate information with high precision, particularly for small and medium-sized enterprises—the target scale for freee—which other tools failed to capture.

2. Data Integration Centered on Corporate Numbers (Keeping Salesforce Always Current and Clean)

The mechanism to keep data within Salesforce current and clean through integration centered on corporate numbers also aligned with our data-driven strategy.

3. Perspective of Consideration: Differences in Characteristics of Existing Database Services

During our comparative review, we emphasized the differences in characteristics compared to the database services we were already using. The service we originally used was based on credit data, making it very strong for companies of a certain size, but it was insufficient for data on small and medium-sized enterprises and newly established corporations, which are the core targets of this strategy.

4. Reason for Decision: Directly Linked to the Mission of "Quickly Capturing Newly Established Corporations"

"For us, as supporters of small businesses, quickly catching the birth of every single newly established corporation is directly linked to our mission." With this in mind, we were convinced that uSonar, which can dramatically improve the data enrichment rate for small and medium-sized enterprises, was the optimal partner, and we decided to proceed with the implementation.

The expected effects and specific initiatives following the implementation of PLANSonar are as follows:

"Maximizing Marketing and Sales Results by Utilizing Clean Data"

〇 Acceleration of new customer acquisition in untapped channels
〇 Dramatic improvement in conversion rates
〇 Reduction in costs for data organization and external list purchases
〇 Improvement in targeting precision and calling efficiency for inside sales
〇 Increase in lead generation volume

1. Implementation Effect (Current Assessment): Realized Enrichment of Corporate Attributes and Improved Data Infrastructure Precision

By implementing PLANSonar, we have achieved high-precision enrichment of corporate information within Salesforce account data, focusing on small and medium-sized enterprises. Furthermore, as data within Salesforce is organized using LBC as a common key, the precision of our CDP (data infrastructure) has increased, enabling more advanced data utilization.

2. Expected Effect: Advancement of Personalization Initiatives and Improvement in Conversion Rates

This allows us to personalize our approach based on industry, scale, and other detailed information, which is expected to improve conversion rates in marketing and sales activities.

3. Outlook on Cost and Labor: Reduction of Burden for External List Purchases and Data Organization

We also expect a reduction in both financial and time costs associated with data maintenance.

Through the implementation of PLANSonar, we have been able to organize account data on Salesforce into a more consistent format, and the precision of corporate attribute information, which is the premise for segment design, is improving. Moving forward, we intend to further promote personalization initiatives using our CDP and accelerate the delivery of value to small business operators with whom we have not yet had contact.
By utilizing the rich corporate attribute data obtained from PLANSonar, we will also accelerate strategic new business development in untapped industries. We will strengthen our system to propose optimal value to each individual customer through appropriate, data-based personalization initiatives.

freee K.K. operates under the mission of "Empowering Small Businesses to Take Center Stage," providing a back-office support platform including "freee Accounting" and "freee HR" for users ranging from sole proprietors to mid-sized enterprises. Aiming for a society where everyone can operate a business freely and with confidence, the company realizes the automation and visualization of operations through the power of technology. Beyond merely providing tools, it is promoting the construction of essential infrastructure to support the growth of small businesses.

Website: https://www.freee.co.jp/

For inquiries regarding this matter: uSonar Co., Ltd. Public Relations (Hiyama/Takahashi)
Email: pr@usonar.co.jp