Case Study｜Cookdeli, Inc.

- What is the nature of your business?

Yokoyama:
Cookdeli is a manufacturer that provides fully-prepared products mainly to elderly care facilities. Cookdeli develops its products under the supervision of cookery researchers. By providing these products along with menus that take into account nutritional value and other factors, we deliver safe, secure, and delicious meals.
As you know, Japan's population is rapidly aging, and the number of nursing homes for the elderly is increasing. At the same time, however, there is a shortage of labor. This shortage is particularly acute in rural areas, where it is often impossible to find people to cook at the facilities in the first place. Even if they are lucky enough to hire someone, the quality of the food may not be satisfactory to the users.
In such a situation, CookDeli's fully prepared meals can provide high quality meals with a small number of employees. This allows the elderly to enjoy delicious meals while at the same time relieving labor shortages at the facility.  

-I just had the actual meal that was served and it was delicious.

Yokoyama:
Thank you. Meals for the elderly are also limited in salt content, and there is a strong impression that they are light in flavor. At Cook Deli, we are developing products through a variety of trial and error processes to ensure that our customers can enjoy the taste of our products while taking salt content into consideration. One such effort is the joint development of "dashi" in collaboration with a ryotei restaurant in the Kansai region. By using this "dashi" in chikuzen-ni (stewed vegetables) and chikuzen (meat and potatoes), we were able to create a sufficient flavor even with a small amount of salt.  

- How do you provide customers with the products you have developed?　What is the specific flow of your sales activities?

Yamaguchi:
For sales to acquire new customers, we conduct business meetings with the goal of having them actually try our meals at tasting events. This is because the probability of a contract is greatly improved once the customer has tasted our products. The typical pattern for acquiring new customers is to have them try our products at a tasting event and then conclude a contract with them after being convinced of their quality.
In parallel, we also follow up with existing customers every day, so-called after-sales follow-up. Our sales staff may check on usage and satisfaction levels, such as "How are your meals?", and we also make visits as needed for the purpose of horizontal development.  

The issue is lack of input into Salesforce. Reporting after sales activities was burdensome for sales members.

- What challenges did your company face in its sales activities prior to the introduction of UPWARD?

Yokoyama:
Lack of input into Salesforce was a major issue. Even when we wanted to check the status of sales activities or ongoing negotiations, the information was not being entered into Salesforce in the first place, and it was impossible to know who was doing what and where.
Salesforce was also used as a tool for sharing customer information, but here, too, lack of input sometimes caused problems. For example, a customer may contact the customer center to inquire about a sales action. At this time, if the necessary information is not in Salesforce, the response to the customer will be delayed, causing distrust.
However, sales members also returned to the office at 5:00 or 6:00 p.m. from outside the office and had to work overtime to input the information into Salesforce. Some employees even took the information home and input it, making activity reporting a burden.  

Mr. Sugaya :
‍In the area I am in charge of, we aim to visit a total of six customers, and that means I have to report on the activities of six customers per day. Even if I try to remember the first business meeting in the morning before leaving work, it takes a long time to input the information because my memory has faded. Furthermore, if I have two or three days' worth of activity reports stored up, it takes even more time, and the quality of the reports goes down as well. To be honest, there were probably many business meetings where even the activity reports were forgotten.  

The map functionality that is in line with the field of sales was the deciding factor in the introduction of the system. Multiple maps to manage customers by phase

- What made you consider introducing UPWARD?

Yamaguchi:
I asked the person in charge of Salesforce, "We are not utilizing it well, what should we do?" I asked the Salesforce representative frankly, "We are not making good use of it, so what should we do? He then introduced us to UPWARD, saying, "There is a good tool for door-to-door sales.  

- What attracted you to UPWARD?  

Yamaguchi:
I felt that this would reduce the burden on sales members because they could easily report their activities from their smartphones. I thought this would allow them to make effective use of their spare time without having to return to the office.
Another deciding factor was the map function. I thought it was wonderful that customers could be visualized on a map for each phase.
With UPWARD, all sales members can see and move around on the same map, which I thought would make our sales activities more effective. I felt that UPWARD would enable us to conduct more effective sales activities.
We also expected UPWARD to improve the efficiency of support for existing customers, and we thought that if we could input activity reports in a timely and simple manner while on the road, we would be able to ensure information sharing and provide higher quality customer support.  

- How exactly do you use the map function?

Yamaguchi:
UPWARD allows us to create multiple maps for different purposes, so we manage customers separately for each phase of sales. Specifically, there are three maps: "map for new business meetings," "map of business meeting progress," and "map of existing activities.
The "Map for New Opportunities" allows sales members to easily check how many customers they have not yet contacted in their area of responsibility for each type of business. The number and location of customers can be visualized on the map, making it easier to plan visits.
The map function is also helping with behavior management. Until now, we had to rely on the memory of our sales team members to approach customers who had stopped at the tasting phase. We were unable to immediately confirm when we visited the facility and what kind of response we received. Therefore, we decided to use UPWARD to create a map of business meetings with customers who were still in the tasting phase. After approaching a new customer, we would check this map to see if there were any customers in the vicinity who were still in the tasting phase, and if there were any customers in the vicinity who had not held a tasting event two years earlier, we could easily make a plan to go back and try again soon.

- Please tell us about any other functions that you often use in the sales field.  

Mr. Sugaya:
I personally use the function to search for customers near my current location based on GPS. Even when I finish a meeting early and have some free time, or when I have a whole afternoon free because I can't make an appointment, UPWARD allows me to find customers near my current location, so I can schedule a sales visit more promptly.

- What are you doing to expand the use of UPWARD?

Yamaguchi:
We are very particular about how we show the map. New business sales tends to be a bit tragic, so we wanted to give it a bit of a game-like feel. We customized the map display to make uncontacted customers into treasure chests.
A completely new customer who has never been contacted before is a green treasure chest. When it becomes a potential customer, it turns into a red treasure chest, and when it turns into an existing customer, it becomes a diamond. By incorporating elements of a role-playing game, such as opening treasure chests to obtain treasures and experience, we try to make sales activities fun and game-like.

Issue entry time is reduced to nearly 1/10. Input can be completed in the gap time before and after the visit!

- Has the input of information into Salesforce improved since the introduction of UPWARD?　

Mr. Sugaya:
Yes, it is much easier than before we introduced UPWARD.
We are now using UPWARD to schedule our activities before conducting sales activities. Then, when I open UPWARD appon my smartphone, the activity report screen for each customer I visit appears immediately. I receive a notification when each visit is over, so I no longer forget to enter information. I can also enter information in my car or while waiting at a convenience store, so I have more opportunities to go directly home instead of returning to the office.  

Yamaguchi:
Another useful feature in terms of input is logfor following up with customers by phone. Until now, we had to manually input the information into Salesforce after the call was over, so there were many omissions. However, when we make a call via UPWARD or respond to a call we receive, a screen appears where we can input the activity report immediately after the call is over. We are now able to get them to fill out the support by phone as well.
It is a great benefit to be able to visualize these sales activities and let the company know that we are doing our best.

- New tools have been introduced, but are veterans taking advantage of them?

Yamaguchi:
There is a good example. We have a veteran sales person in Nagoya who is over 50 years old, and he used to say to me, "Where are you doing? He was not very good with computers, and the reason was that he was not able to keep a record of his activities log. However, after we introduced UPWARD, he was able to keep a good activity report, and it became visible that he was making top-class visits and conducting a number of business negotiations.
Naturally, the eyes of those around us changed, and younger employees and other members of the team were stimulated. I strongly felt the benefit of having our activities visualized and logas quantitative information.  

Because we solved the superficial issues with UPWARD, we were able to face the real issues with digital transformation

- Please give a message to other companies that are involved in DX in the future.

Yokoyama:
When the lack of input for activity reports was becoming serious, there was some talk within the company about whether we should quit using Salesforce. But by introducing UPWARD and solving superficial issues such as "It takes too much time, so we can't do it," or "It's a hassle because we have to do it later," we were able to see the issues that really needed to be solved for the first time.
In the case of Cookdeli, after removing the issue of "insufficient activity reporting," analyzing the data again in Salesforce revealed the true issue of "inefficient sales activities. From there, we were able to look at how to select the right people to approach and how to make effective proposals. I don't think we would have realized this had we made the decision to "stop using Salesforce." I believe that the introduction of UPWARD reduced the burden on our sales members, which led to an increase in activity reporting, which in turn allowed us to demonstrate the true value of digital transformationand Salesforce for the first time.
I would like to tell companies that are struggling with the implementation of UPWARD that "the sooner you implement UPWARD, the sooner you will be able to solve your real problems.

*The names of organizations and positions in the article are as of May 2023.