Mitsubishi UFJ Bank Selects UPWARD as Its AX Partner for Business Operations

UPWARD Co., Ltd. (Headquarters: Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo; Representative Director and CEO: Ryusuke Kaneki; hereinafter “UPWARD”), a provider of AI agents for field sales, announces that it has entered into an AX (AI Transformation) consulting agreement with Mitsubishi UFJ Bank, Ltd. (Headquarters: Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo; President and CEO: Masakazu Osawa; hereinafter “Mitsubishi UFJ Bank”) to support the bank’s AX initiatives in its sales operations.

Through this partnership, we will advance the sophistication of field sales—which primarily involve face-to-face interactions—and build a strategic sales structure based on data and AI. As an initial project, we will use “UPWARD Geo AI Scheduler” to automatically optimize the extensive task of creating visit schedules during personnel transfers, with the goal of reducing annual man-hours by approximately 10,000.

Background to the Signing of the AX Consulting Agreement

In the financial industry, as the sector transitions to a “world with interest rates” (the environment following the Bank of Japan’s lifting of its negative interest rate policy), there is a growing need to shift from offering one-size-fits-all products to providing personalized, supportive guidance tailored to individual customers. Against this backdrop, face-to-face client engagement plays a central role in building trust with customers and has become a critical factor in differentiating the company from its competitors.At the same time, frontline staff face serious resource shortages and the challenge of work being overly dependent on individual employees’ “instinct and experience.” Structural reforms focused on “how to transform face-to-face interactions into corporate assets” are urgently needed.

Based on its proprietary, patented presence detection technology, UPWARD offers a variety of AI solutions that combine mapping and AI. We help convert the close communication unique to face-to-face interactions into data, thereby supporting sales activities to achieve tangible results.

In this partnership with Mitsubishi UFJ Bank, UPWARD will go beyond simply providing services; as an AX consultant, we will draw on our deep understanding of the complex business practices, on-site operations, and security requirements unique to the banking industry to provide hands-on support for the implementation and adoption of AI tailored to the bank’s specific circumstances.

Optimizing "Handover Greetings" Using "Geo AI Scheduler" (Pilot Project)

A key pillar of this partnership is the automation of visit planning and strategic reform through the use of UPWARD’s “Geo AI Scheduler.”The “Geo AI Scheduler” is a feature that uses AI to automatically create visit plans by factoring in visit priorities—based on activity histories and sales opportunity data stored in the CRM—along with customer location information. This enables sales teams to “focus visits on customers with a high probability of closing a deal” and “optimize travel efficiency,” thereby helping to maximize sales results.

As a pilot project, we will promote the streamlining and optimization of “handover visits”—visits conducted in conjunction with personnel transfers that are critical for maintaining customer relationships—specifically focusing on the so-called “logistics planning” (preparatory tasks such as selecting visit locations, determining the order of visits, and adjusting routes).For example, when a branch manager’s replacement is decided, visits to hundreds of client companies are conducted during the one-month period between the preliminary notification of the transfer and the official announcement. In such cases, the staff responsible for “logistics planning” would manually adjust schedules by switching back and forth between Excel and maps, which took a significant amount of time to finalize and was a highly inefficient process. 

By automating this process with “Geo AI Scheduler,” the following benefits are expected. 

• Reduction in Planning Workload: We have reduced the “logistics planning” tasks, which previously took approximately 15 hours per employee transfer. With approximately 700 transfers per year, we expect to reduce the workload by over 10,000 hours.
• Maximizing the Number of Visits: As the "logistics planning" period is shortened, we expect an increase in both the number of actual visit days and the number of visits.
• Improved Planning Quality: Prevents human errors such as oversights and duplicate entries, and devises rational travel routes that do not rely on “gut feeling and experience.” Furthermore, even in the event of a last-minute cancellation, the AI immediately selects an alternative optimal destination.

Furthermore, rather than leaving all scheduling to AI, account managers individually select top-priority customers and enter them into the schedule. We have implemented a “hybrid approach” in which the AI efficiently fills in the remaining time slots. This allows us to ensure visits to key customers while maximizing overall travel efficiency.

*You can watch the video below for an overview of “UPWARD Geo AI Scheduler.”

UPWARD" INNOVATES THE LAST MILE IN THE FIELD

"UPWARD" is an AI-powered sales support service specialized for field sales and customer visits. It logcustomer touchpointlog its patented "Advanced Geofencing" technology, as well as logcustomer touchpointlog. It has been adopted by approximately 450 companies, primarily large enterprises that rely on face-to-face interactions with customers as their primary sales channel.
Service Website: https://upward.jp/
“UPWARD” Brochure: https://upward.jp/downloads/allservicematerials/