executive impact

May the salesforce be with you

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By Chris Betros

Salesforce.com Japan has come a long way since it opened for business in a one-room office in Shibuya in 2000. Today, the company has around 500 employees, works out of the upscale Mori Tower at Roppongi Hills, but will move to an even more impressive location in the new JP Tower opposite Tokyo Station in August.

The success of salesforce.com, a global cloud computing company founded by American Marc Benioff in 1999, is a story of challenging new frontiers in customer relationship management (CRM) through sales force automation (SFA). However, it has gone beyond that, forging partnerships with the Japanese government and companies such as NTT and Toyota. The company’s list of big clients includes Japan Post, Rakuten and Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi, among others. Salesforce.com is currently ranked the most innovative company in America by Forbes magazine and has more than 100,000 customers worldwide.

Overseeing the company’s operations in Japan is Eiji Uda, who joined salesforce.com in 2004 after 20 years with IBM and SoftBank. He had the task of trying to convince prospective clients to embrace cloud computing and the company’s CRM product that uses technology to organize, automate and synchronize sales, marketing and customer service.

“Timing was an important factor in our success,” said Uda, speaking in English. “I had experienced the broadband boom at Softbank and I was looking ahead to the post-broadband era. I could see many possibilities for salesforce.com’s model to work for enterprises in Japan.”

The company started out with small and medium-size enterprises in Japan and then got its big break by landing Japan Post which had just been privatized. “It wasn’t easy but we persisted,” said Uda. “I think I approached them about 20 times. It took about two years to get their trust … and today, Japan Post is our biggest customer.”

Getting Japan Post on board opened the door to other blue-ribbon clients. Though salesforce’s data center was still in the U.S. at that time (now it is in Japan), Uda said it wasn’t a security issue. “We got Japan Post and several big government deals through our sales effort, using the U.S. data center.”

One of the company’s strengths is the fact that its business model is the same for Japan as in other countries. “We didn’t have to change anything to allow for cultural factors,” Uda said. “While each country has its own accounting rules and regulations, our SFA (sales force automation) is something that can be applied anywhere.”

While the company made its name with customer relationship management, Uda said the trend now is for customers to use the SFA platform to develop their own applications on the cloud. “I’d say more than 50% are doing that. Many companies want to utilize apps at the front end,” Uda said.

One of Salesforce’s most productive partnerships in Japan is Toyota. In 2011, the companies signed an agreement to build Toyota Friend, a private social network for Toyota customers and their cars. Toyota Friend is powered by Salesforce Chatter, a private social network used by businesses. It connects Toyota customers with their cars, their dealership, and with Toyota.

The idea is to provide a variety of product and service information as well as essential maintenance tips, creating a rich car ownership experience. Customers can choose to extend their communication to family, friends, and others through public social networks such as Twitter and Facebook. The service is also accessible through smartphones, tablet PCs, and other advanced mobile devices.

“Toyota is a long-term strategy for us,” said Uda. “They have around 20 million cars in Japan. We are starting to see a big change in customer interface approach. The whole idea of Chatter is to allow Toyota to get closer to customers. For them, it is more effective than the billions they spend on advertising on TV, for example. Nowadays, many people have DVD recorders that just skip over commercials anyway.”

Another pillar of salesforce’s strategy in Japan has been mergers and acquisitions, but Uda said, “I am not thinking of aggressively doing M&As this year. When you do that, you run the risk of losing talented people who tend to leave. We want to keep talented people, so I think it is better to invest in companies, such as small and medium-sized IT businesses with cutting-edge technology. We don’t invest to get capital gain, but to add value to those companies.”

Uda’s next big move will be to the new JP Tower (and not just because Japan Post is his biggest customer). “Roppongi Hills is comfortable for consumer business but Marunouchi is a great brand and is better for our B2B business,” he explained.

On a typical day, Uda said he usually shows up at the office between 7 a.m. and 8 a.m. “Before that, I do emails from home. Sometimes I go out to meet clients. I don’t do much wining and dining and I try to encourage a work-life balance among staff, though I don’t always do it myself. Everytime I get set to leave early, someone always asks me to just wait a minute for something.”

When he is not working, Uda likes to go driving. In his office, he has a short putting mat to enjoy himself with. Once, he even played the part of Santa Claus – with disastrous consequences. “In 2011, I went to give presents at a Christmas orphanage party in Tohoku. I was in my Santa costume and was supposed to come down this long, steep slide but I crushed my spine and was out of action for four months. In the U.S., all the execs wondered what I was doing.”

© Japan Today

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Salesforce is best CRM tool and best cloud based platform for customer relationship management.

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