Case Study｜SophiaMedi Corporation

Customer contact data is not just a number, but a corporate asset with visible cause-and-effect relationships.

Mr. Hayakawa: SophiaMedi Corporation provides high-quality home healthcare services, mainly through our home nursing business, in which we visit the homes of people in need of nursing and rehabilitation care. As a consultant of the Community Cooperation Promotion Group, I am in charge of connecting the clients who wish to receive home nursing care with home nursing stations through referrals to local medical institutions and other organizations.

Mr. Hayakawa: Our main activities are route visits to hospitals and community support centers where we can introduce our clients. When we open a new home-visit nursing station in a new area, we also develop new contacts. While other companies in the same industry often make these visits between home nursing visits, UPWARD is unique in that our team of consultants acts as "community relationship building professionals".
UPWARD was introduced in 2018 as an add-on to Salesforce to manage and streamline these visiting activities. Prior to the implementation, we were managing the system using Google spreadsheets and Excel, which only allowed us to enter the number of visits, not the destinations, and we did not know "who went where and what they talked about".

Kudo: The only indicator I could see as a consultant was "how many requests for home nursing were received by the home nursing station I was in charge of. Since it was only about how many referrals we received, rather than whether or not we had deepened our relationship with the community, it did not motivate me.
Since UPWARD was introduced, we can now see who went to see where and what kind of activities we did, and if we receive a new request from a care manager or other person who had not previously made a request through our activities, it will lead to evaluation.

Mr. Hayakawa: I feel that one of the first major achievements is that the ability to manage data with cause-and-effect relationships has not only improved the volume of activity, but has also created a foundation for accumulating activity data that can be analyzed and utilized.

Differentiate from competitors by increasing efficiency in new development and deepening relationships in existing deepening relationships.

Mr. Hayakawa: I was in charge of new business development until last year. First, on a map of the area I was in charge of, I put up color-coded pins for each type of office, such as "home care support office," "clinic," and "hospital.
The circles for offices visited within a month are smaller, and those for offices visited more than two months after the visit are displayed in a larger circle. First of all, I made it my mission to make all of these circles smaller, and I was conscious of visiting all of them anyway.

Then, when the new development phase is over and we switch to the growth phase, we will now switch to size and color coding based on "how long it has been since the last introduction". Since a relationship has been established to some extent and loghas been obtained at the time of the first greeting, we can communicate efficiently and effectively by, for example, taking the manager of the station with us when we greet the client for the second time.

Kudo: In the area I was in charge of, most of the offices had already had a relationship with us from the time I was assigned to them, so it was important to increase the repeat business rate. In an existing area with many competitors, it is difficult to differentiate yourself from them in terms of having specialized staff for external visits. What we are challenging is to once again ensure "face-to-face relationship building" by visiting with medical staff who are actually engaged in home-visit nursing.
Since the introduction of in-home nursing care means "entrusting your life to us," it is even more important to build a relationship in which you can see the faces of not only the consultant but also the medical staff actually in charge. Ultimately, our goal is to create a relationship where we can see the faces of our clients even when their eyes are closed. UPWARD is indispensable to this foundation.

Mr. Hayakawa: Each of us is responsible for approximately 100 to 300 offices, and by the time we had introduced UPWARD four years ago, we were able to visit more than 350 offices each month, once or twice a month, thanks to the increased efficiency of visits using maps and reduced administrative workload. After all, there is a big difference in the information we can ask and the quality of the conversations we can have whether we meet with them once or twice a month.
When we first introduced UPWARD, our monthly target for the number of interviews was 250, and there were some offices that we could not visit even once a month, but by using UPWARD to make more efficient rounds, we were able to gradually increase the number of interviews to 300 or 350. I feel that the skills of the counselors and their ability to take action have improved, and the relationships with the local community have deepened.

- Maximising the quantity and quality of customer touchpoint, a more essential structure to convey the "SophiaMedi-ness".

Kudo: Actually, starting in February 2022, we are about to be reborn under a new structure for the creation of a more essential customer touchpoint. Until now, we have focused on the "number of interviews" based on the analysis of data accumulated by UPWARD and Salesforce, but from now on, we intend to shift to a direction that emphasizes the "quality" and "efficiency" of visits. Instead of saying, "I have to visit 350 offices because that is my quota," we are now setting goals that are optimized for each individual consultant, such as "In order to secure X number of referrals, I will visit X number of offices this month, focusing on these offices.
However, after analyzing the data we had collected and taking into account the improvement of our consultants' abilities, we realized that there may be a more essential and efficient way to approach the problem than continuing to do so.
Successful patterns have emerged as a result of increasing the number of interviews, so we would like to keep the good parts as they are while streamlining the areas where we can make them more efficient, customer touchpointcherishing each one and conveying SophiaMedi's unique character.

(Number of customer referrals in each area. Until now, the number of referrals has been raised by increasing the number of interviews, but in the future this data will be used to shift to a more efficient sales structure).

Mr. Hayakawa: Of course, we believe it is very important for our clients to trust SophiaMedi by communicating directly with us face-to-face to let them know our strengths.
We are also trying to change our structure to be more essential in order to convey SophiaMed's "SophiaMedi-ness" to our clients.

Mr. Kudo: Specifically, we will be dividing the new store development team for new store openings in regional areas into two teams, one for new store development and the other for the Tokyo metropolitan area. The Metropolitan area team will be divided into a new development team and an existing cultivation team, and I will be in charge of leading the new development team in the Metropolitan area.
I will be in charge of leading the new development team in the Tokyo metropolitan area. In order to realize this vision, it is very important to improve the skills of our consultants in community cooperation and to enhance the quality of each visit.
We would like to continue to utilize UPWARD to improve the quality of our visits and convey the "SophiaMedi-esque" spirit to as many people as possible so that they can live a life that is truly fulfilling.

Mr. Hayakawa: I feel the same way. Our strength is that the company's vision, mission, and spirit permeate each and every one of our staff members. Our mission is to "look after the 'living' with all our wisdom. Our home nursing staff as well as our consultants are committed to building relationships with our clients on a daily basis under the mission of "Caring for the Living with Wisdom.
My goal is to accelerate the pace of opening new regional branches in order to spread SophiaMedi's in-home care throughout Japan. To achieve this, we need to further utilize UPWARD and Salesforce, achieve early results through efficient activities, and incorporate our successful model into the mid-to-long term.
We will not only expand our business, but also improve the quality of communication and build "face-to-face relationships" involving the managers and medical staff of the home nursing stations. Our goal is to ensure both quantity and quality.
While continuing to utilize UPWARD, we will do our utmost to provide safe and warm home care to as many people as possible.