1. Introduction of Salesforce

Introducing Salesforce

Okafoods introduced Salesforce in May 2017, right around the same time as the start of its FISH activities (business improvement activities). At the time, Okafoods had been steadily building the foundations every day through environmental improvements that began in 2011 to establish what they call an "adult axis" (fostering a mindset of empathy with Okafoods' philosophy and policies as an employee of the company), as the term "adult professional." This culture was gradually beginning to take root, and it was time to step up to the next stage.

Before the introduction, Okafoods' sales and marketing activities mainly involved sharing contact history with customers through presentations by sales representatives at sales meetings, and customer information was also managed on an Excel-based basis. This resulted in some issues, such as important information not being transferred when the person in charge changed.

Regarding raw material procurement activities, the company made purchasing decisions by making full use of an original system built with Microsoft Access, but there were concerns that maintenance would not be possible if a system problem occurred, and the company felt that there was an issue with the lack of progress in accumulating, visualizing, analyzing, and utilizing data in both sales and procurement.

Therefore, we started selecting tools, focusing on CRM (sales support tools). After the decision was made to introduce SFA, we expanded the scope of development to maximize the use of the SFA environment based on the following three pillars, taking into account ease of development and the issues we had at the time.

Management contents

To make the most of the environment

sample

Sample Management

quality

Quality Defect Management

material

Raw material management

Contents 01: Sample Management

CONTENTS 01: About sample management

Regarding quality defect management and sample management, which will be discussed later, President Oka had a strong desire to somehow put them into practice, as his predecessor, Chairman Oka, had said, "A company that can do these two things is first-class."

A request for a sample is a great opportunity for a user to express interest in trying Okafoods' products, and there's no reason not to take advantage of it. We listen to why users use Okafoods' products, what improvements would make them want to use them more, and how Okafoods' products are specifically useful. We then collect, visualize, analyze, and utilize the data, and then manage it all. We believe this is an important element in further realizing our management philosophy of "being useful to stakeholders."

CONTENTS 02: Quality defect management

CONTENTS 02: About quality defect management

Responding to quality defects requires the involvement of many departments across the company, including the Sales Department and Customer Assistance Department, which are the customer contact points, as well as the Purchasing Headquarters and Quality Control Office. Cooperation and collaboration between the various departments is essential to respond quickly. Previously, dedicated posters were posted within the company, and each department wrote down their progress by hand, but this was insufficient for sales representatives on the go to understand progress in real time.

The same data was also transferred to Excel and shared with suppliers and cooperating factories via email and fax, but this required compiling and analyzing the data in Excel every time. We felt that by accumulating, visualizing, analyzing and utilizing data for quality defect management in the same way as sample management, we could improve both the level of customer response and the level of recurrence prevention activities with cooperating factories.

CONTENTS 03: Raw material management

CONTENTS 03: About raw material management

President Oka had previously served as the general manager of the product department, and even after becoming Representative Director and President, he was in charge of procuring ingredients for almost all types of fish. Balancing his duties as president and ingredient procurement within a limited time frame was extremely difficult, and he felt that he had to hand over ingredient procurement to someone else and focus on his duties as president. He wanted to somehow accumulate, visualize, analyze, and utilize data on the know-how and skills of ingredient procurement so that he could take over ingredient management that is not based on intuition or craftsmanship.

2. SFA utilization status after implementation

SFA utilization status after introduction

The respective departments in charge of ① to ③ took the lead in proactively building the foundation. After about three years, the habit of storing the various information generated daily in SFA had taken root, and it became possible to review and analyze past data.

On the other hand, with regard to sample management, we were thorough in interviewing and accumulating information about the samples we received from customers on a daily basis, but there was still room for improvement in terms of whether this information was enough to grasp their true issues and needs. Furthermore, to truly be "useful to stakeholders," we needed to know the voices of many users, and in the future we needed to increase the number of points of contact with such users, but there were limits to our resources. We felt that the challenge was how to use digital technology to increase points of contact with users.

Regarding raw material management, although we were able to see the procurement situation and progress of consumption, we wanted to take it a step further and consistently "visualize" the profit and loss of procured raw materials.

Progress has certainly not come to a halt, but I felt that we were not yet using it to the level we had envisioned. We were accumulating data every day, but I wondered if we were actually using it to do anything useful.

3. "TRAILBLAZER" and the creation of a new environment

"TRAIL BLAZER" and to build a new environment

At that time, President Oka read "TRAILBLAZER," a book by Marc Benioff, the founder of Salesforce, and felt that "this service is provided by a company with such aspirations (core values), so it should be able to be used in even more innovative ways...!" Activities began to build a new environment (salesforcelitning), based on the old environment (salesforceclassic), with the aim of achieving overwhelmingly innovative use.

Before actually starting the project, we first began by getting Salesforce to understand Okafoods' corporate philosophy, policies, culture, actual sales activities, etc. We then explained in detail the current usage situation, the issues they faced, and their "ideas" for how they would like to use the system in the future. President Oka himself met with Salesforce for three hours every week for over a month to prepare for the creation of the new environment.

After that, we were introduced to Thomas, who is currently supporting us in building and utilizing the new environment, and the three companies shared and discussed the vision for the future they want to achieve.

Click here to see our collaboration with Thomas⇒https://www.okafoods.jp/blogs/useful/shinka48

The transition to the new environment was completed in November 2021, approximately six months after the project kicked off.

4. DX policy for the 48th fiscal year: "Make full use of SFA!"

DX policy for the 48th term "Thorough utilization of SFA!"

After moving to the new environment, we first helped employees become familiar with how to use the screen and made minor adjustments. From now on, as stated in the DX policy for the 48th term, we will promote the full utilization of this environment across the entire company, making "thorough use of SFA."

In the new environment, we have focused particularly on creating a place to collect contact points with users and the specific issues and concerns that users have that we have heard about at those points. We work backwards from our goal of how we want to help them, and plot what data items we should collect.

By accumulating data in the SFA on a daily basis, we are not only able to help users who actually use our products by resolving their problems and concerns, but we also have the potential to help our partner food wholesalers with their sales activities.

We have also introduced Tableau (a BI tool) to enable advanced analysis of the accumulated data.

Furthermore, unlike start-from-scratch systems, SFA is a cloud-based subscription service, meaning that standard functions are updated two to three times a year, giving users the advantage of being able to use the latest services. It is also possible to link with a variety of external systems and tools, so we are proactively incorporating new services and tools, and hope to accelerate the use of digital technology to increase our points of contact with users, including sample management. Stay tuned for more SHINKA-related uses of SFA from Okafoods!