Interview｜The Future of the New Coronavirus Pandemic for Corporate Sales

New Coronavirus Transforms the World and Begins a Rethinking of "Essential Values

The way of doing business and work styles in Japan are expected to change dramatically in the wake of the Corona Shock.

Shift from office-based work to balanced work with remote work
・Corporate assets are digitized and networked, accessible from outside the office
・Shift from in-person sales in stores to online sales and non-in-person stores

Changes will occur in all kinds of areas, and a reevaluation of "intrinsic value" will begin. In the future, greater emphasis will be placed on efficiency and inevitability.
Of course, the world of corporate sales is no exception.

Shift to mobile work moves to "quantitative-centric" evaluation

Until now, Japan has been very slow to shift to telework and mobile work compared to Europe and the United States. One of the reasons why Japan has been a cloud and digital transformation(digital transformation) backward country is that many Japanese people still had the preconceived notion that people need to go to the office to work, and that the office is a place to work and home is a private space.
However, telework and mobile work rapidly spread as people were forced to refrain from going to work to prevent the spread of the new coronavirus. With technologies such as the Internet, PCs, mobile devices, and the cloud already playing a role in Japan's business infrastructure, it is only natural that telework and mobile work will become mainstream.
As we shift from physical work to telework and mobile work-centered work styles, we need to change the way we work based on true productivity and efficiency improvement.
What will be important in this context is a shift from the "labor-intensive" sales model of the past to a "knowledge-intensive" and "digital communication" model that effectively utilizes information and mechanisms.

To realize these goals, it will be essential to design and work with clear "KPIs (Key Performance Indicators)," something the Japanese have not been very good at in the past.
With the shift to telework and mobile work, communication between people and evaluation of people will have to shift from a "qualitative focus" to a "quantitative focus. As Western countries increase their labor productivity through this telework and mobile work, Japan must transform itself into an organization that pursues productivity in the true sense of the word in order to survive in the global market.
Until now, the term "increasing productivity" has strongly implied efficiency and elimination of waste, but I believe that the true "increase in productivity" is about "releasing the creativity and originality that people inherently possess," which goes beyond improving work efficiency.
Companies are expected to make efforts to increase the labor productivity and creativity of businesspersons, and achieving this will lead to an increase in the corporate value of that company.

In times of shortage
How should sales organizations respond?

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Importance of field workers to receive information that cannot be digitized.

On the other hand, I believe that physical, face-to-face communication, which adds significant value to a company, will be reevaluated in terms of its necessity and importance in the balance with digital communication.

I believe that many people will realize the importance and creativity of physical communication as they feel a certain limit to their work style of digital communication only. When people talk with others, they will realize that they send and receive each other many signals (information) other than words, i.e., facial expressions, gestures, tone of voice, and other signals that appeal to emotions that are difficult to digitize.
We believe that the activity of receiving this information from customers is extremely important for business.
Physical, face-to-face communication, offline customer touchpoint, creates "new customer relationships and value" for the company, and by maintaining stable contact with these customers, the company can differentiate itself from its competitors and maximize its value.
In the case of fieldworkers, who work in a "people-to-people" environment, digital transformationwill standardize, standardize, and quantify the routine tasks that have been performed by individuals in the past. And I believe that "telework" and "mobile work" based on direct return will become the mainstream for many field workers, and will continue to be important as the last mile of a company's customer touchpoint.

(Kaneki being interviewed via videoconference)
We at UPWARD are committed to supporting safe and smart business by combining CRM (Customer Relationship Management) information, location information, and mobile technology to thoroughly streamline this indispensable and important "physical communication" customer touchpoint. We will support the last mile of safe and smart business.