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

Overview of freee and the Mission of the Business Infrastructure Division

Under the mission "Empowering Small Businesses to Take Center Stage," freee provides a back-office support platform including "freee Accounting" and "freee HR," targeting everyone 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 data infrastructure centered on Salesforce and to 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 for the "Unreachable" Segment

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 not yet encountered freee, a new strategy for developing new customers was required.

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

• Existing corporate database products offered low attribute enrichment rates for small and medium-sized enterprises, rendering them insufficient for executing precise, segmented initiatives.
• Account data within Salesforce lacked sufficient identification at the corporate number and branch level, failing to guarantee data uniqueness and resulting in cumbersome management and increased manual labor.

As a result, initiatives utilizing internal data were not yielding sufficient effects, and the burden of manual data cleaning led to increased costs and operational overhead.

1. Evaluation Point: Comprehensiveness of Business Locations and Depth of SME Data

The primary evaluation point was the overwhelming comprehensiveness of the corporate database (LBC) held by uSonar. We highly valued the fact that, particularly for the size of corporations freee targets, it accurately captures corporate information that other tools could not.

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 aligned perfectly with our data-driven strategy.

3. Consideration Perspective: 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 our current strategy.

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

"For us, supporting small businesses, catching the birth of each newly established corporation as quickly as possible 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 corporations, was the optimal partner, and we decided to proceed with the implementation.

Implementation Effects and Future Outlook

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 cleaning and external list purchases
〇 Improvement in targeting accuracy and calling efficiency for inside sales
〇 Increase in lead generation volume

1. Implementation Effect (Current Status): Achieving Corporate Attribute Enrichment and Improving Data Infrastructure Accuracy

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

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

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

3. Outlook on Costs and Labor: Reducing the Burden of External List Purchases and Data Cleaning

We also expect to reduce the cost and time associated with data maintenance.

Comment from Nobuaki Hiratsuka, General Manager of the Business Infrastructure Division, freee K.K.

Through the implementation of PLANSonar, we have been able to organize our account data on Salesforce into a more consistent format, and the accuracy of the corporate attribute information that serves as the foundation 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 data-driven, appropriate personalization initiatives.

About freee K.K.

freee K.K. operates under the mission "Empowering Small Businesses to Take Center Stage," providing a back-office support platform including "freee Accounting" and "freee HR," targeting everyone 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 promotes the construction of essential infrastructure to support the growth of small businesses.

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

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

Article Published: June 15, 2026