Tahara

Panasonic Electric Works develops a wide range of businesses related to living environments and social infrastructure, such as electrical construction materials and housing equipment. Our department, the Business Architect Center within the Marketing Division, is responsible for developing the data infrastructure that supports Panasonic Electric Works' overall sales and marketing activities, as well as planning and operating business platforms centered on Salesforce.
In particular, we are consolidating various systems around our construction-related customer database, known as the "CCD." We aim to share information on clients, facilities, and eventually key personnel across the entire company, enabling the visualization of project progress and customer relationships.

Tahara

The major challenge was that each company managed and operated its master data using different rules. Even for the same enterprise, there were inconsistencies in data across companies due to differences in notation, granularity, and the interpretation of parent-child relationships. Information on clients and facilities is used for various purposes, including sales activities, project management, business analysis, and governance.
However, as long as duplicates and incomplete records remain, accurate analysis and cross-company information sharing become difficult. We needed a common key to uniquely identify each client.

Tahara

There are many decisions to be made, such as the level of granularity for management, the definition of notation rules, and how to ensure consistency with existing core system masters. Furthermore, master data maintenance is not a one-time task. It requires an operational philosophy that continuously reduces unnecessary, duplicate, and incomplete data as registrations and updates occur daily.
Therefore, there were limitations to creating rules solely within the company. We concluded that we needed a mechanism to centralize master management operations by integrating with external corporate and location information databases, allowing for constant, automated information updates.

Tahara

In November 2023, we implemented uSonar as the "Master of Masters," which serves as the foundation for our customer master. Our company has a unique approach to operating Salesforce, utilizing a structure that includes parent-child relationships. We were searching for a master that could support this structure.

The primary objective of the "Master of Masters" is to uniquely identify business partners. We decided to utilize LBC's corporate and location information, which offers extensive corporate coverage, as a common key to integrate customer data across our consolidated subsidiaries.
By doing this, we aimed to enable the mutual linking and sharing of projects and transaction statuses at both the corporate and office levels.

Tahara

The high quality of the data and the fact that the data structure logic is consistent and well-defined. Master data should not simply be changed flexibly to meet every request from the field. Rather, it is important that the rules and underlying concepts remain consistent.
Of course, we made various requests regarding the data during the implementation process. Among those, there were some very in-depth discussions, but the fact that uSonar had a clear philosophy was actually a point we highly valued when designing our operations.

Fujii

Previously, Panasonic EW and its consolidated subsidiaries managed data separately, with individual sales users handling business card and facility information registration. Currently, CCD has transitioned to a structure consisting of a "Master Org" that governs all master data and a "Multi Org" utilized by each company. We have consolidated client and facility master data within the CCD Org and integrated it with uSonar's LBC.

Registration and updates are managed by the Master Management Team, with data integrated and distributed to each company's Salesforce environment via MuleSoft (a data integration tool). Allowing individual sales users in the field to freely create and update client records can lead to data inconsistencies.
For this reason, we have centralized client creation and updates within CCD, ensuring they are always linked to LBC via SideSonar. Furthermore, by integrating Quick Search into the user application screen, we have shifted to an operational model that ensures accurate information is linked from the moment of application.

Fujii

In maintaining our client master, we have continuously reduced duplicate, incomplete, and unnecessary records. As of October 2022, we had approximately 210,000 client records, of which 2% (4,985 records) were duplicates, 10% (20,093 records) were incomplete, and the valid and accurate data rate was 84%.
Following the integration with uSonar, our client records now total approximately 176,000, and we have succeeded in reducing duplicate records to zero. Incomplete records have also been virtually eliminated, leaving only minor variations in naming. The valid and accurate data rate has increased to 99%.
As a master foundation for correctly executing operations, analysis, and governance, we have been able to achieve data with high precision and freshness.

Fujii

For example, we are seeing results even in scenarios where new business partners are registered. We changed our operations so that field staff are no longer required to manually enter new business partners in Salesforce, which prevents duplicate registrations. Instead of creating new customer records, sales representatives simply verify the link on the screen and associate it with the correct existing business partner. We make extensive use of Quick Search in the background, and I feel that the operational time spent checking for new business partners has been reduced by approximately 70% to 80%.
The system's ability to identify valid applications that do not require manual checking has led to the automation of our application workflow, significantly reducing the lead time for processing applications. From a user perspective, tasks that used to take one to two days are now completed in about 30 minutes, which we believe has greatly improved convenience.

Tahara

By centralizing the business partner master data under the Panasonic EW Group, the sharing and utilization of customer data have become seamless. Regardless of whether there is an active transaction, we can now share project details at both the corporate and office levels using LBC as the key.
For example, we can now view proposed amounts, negotiation history, discount rates, project status, and reasons for lost deals within Salesforce. Since updates to corporate information are supported based on LBC data, we can maintain the integrity of project information while accounting for differences between new and old company names.

Tahara

We participated in the Salesforce Utilization Champion Tournament and received significant attention, and it seems our initiative was highly regarded for its innovation, accuracy, and versatility. Discussions have begun regarding its use as a shared platform within the Panasonic Group. Based on the Construction Customer Database (CCD), we have started collaboration with three consolidated engineering companies, and we are now looking into expanding this to our consolidated product sales companies and other business units in the future.

Furthermore, we have received interest as an advanced case study of data utilization in a large enterprise, including inquiries and site visits from other industries regarding our internal and external Salesforce utilization initiatives.
While many companies envision the centralized integrated management and utilization of data within group companies, it is a difficult area to establish in actual operations. We hope to continue sharing the importance of persistently bringing systems to a state where they can be operated stably. We would be pleased if this leads to greater vitality and improved productivity for Japanese companies.

Tahara

Moving forward, we will use CCD as a foundation to further promote cross-company data sharing. We aim to integrate information on business partners, facilities, and key personnel across consolidated companies, making it accessible for use in management dashboards and BI/AI tools.
The Panasonic Group values a culture of autonomy for each business company and division. We believe that by maintaining a common foundation for customer data while leveraging that strength, we can generate greater value across the entire group.

Tahara

Now that we have successfully organized our master data, we believe the possibilities for AI utilization are expanding, such as summarizing transaction statuses and project details, and verifying consistency with sales proposals. We look forward to uSonar further enhancing the quality of LBC data and evolving its data provision and integration capabilities with a focus on AI and agent utilization.
Having an accurate customer master is the prerequisite for realizing data utilization that supports sales activities and management decision-making. We look forward to continuing our partnership in building that foundation.