Calbee Food Co Ltd
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President
Mr Yasuo NAKATA |
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Once we present our purpose and goals, ITC always completes a system that fully satisfies them.
From 20th century model to 21st century model
The way of business has been changing over from a 20th century model to one more suited to the 21st century. In other words, a change from an industrial society, to an information based society. We have been forced to adapt ourselves to a “market-in” business model, we will be unable to survive without giving up the “product-out” model of earlier times. Under the market-in business model, consumers are the main players. The correct judgment on how consumers act and what they want decides our business success. Therefore, we have to make a lot of effort to maintain direct communication with each consumer. IT is the necessary tool to make it succeed. This is the reason why we, Calbee Food, place so much emphasis on the application of IT systems to our business.
“Reach” and “Richness”
The key words of the market-in model are “reach” and “richness”. Without IT, those two always create a conflict. If we concentrate on “reach”, we have to give up “richness” to some extent. On the other hand, if we try to get “richness”, we tend to loose enough “reach”. IT is the tool to make those two directions come together.
Under the products-out model, we would have had a meeting with the headquarters of each chain store. The decisions made in these meetings are passed on to each store in a top-down manner. This method does not work for the market-in model as we can't see our consumers' faces or hear their voices.
“Koten” is the Key
Please imagine that “ABC” supermarkets chain has one store in a residential area in Bunkyo-ku, and one in Hyakunintyo in Shinjuku. If you have one general marketing plan for “ABC” supermarket, it is unlikely to be able to satisfy both stores at the same time. The profiles of consumers and their buying habits at each place are quite different. Therefore, we now have direct contact with each retailer (“Koten”). Koten is the place where customers purchase our products; therefore, they are the greatest source of information about consumers and the place where we can send our messages to them.
Our sales reps visit each “Koten” once a week. They discuss business and obtain first hand information. We then analyze the information collected from all over the country, and then generate our next plan to success. We cannot keep records and timely reporting of these activities without IT systems.
IT helps internal innovation
The idea of “reach” and “richness” can be applied to the internal usage of IT. If every employee communicates with each other and has a way to express their awareness easily, we can find issues and opportunities inside our company quickly. We then can improve and innovate our business processes to make it possible to provide better services to our customers. Calbee has the “CEO Room” on our intranet and our CEO uploads a message to all employees every week. Any employee can send a message to the CEO. The CEO's commitment is to reply to every message received. Calbee also has a system where any employees can submit their suggestions and ideas to improve our business processes. We have made a commitment to answer every suggestion. IT is the tool to facilitate these activities.
New relationship with IT partners
Calbee now is building up new relationships with our IT partners. The basic idea is to separate knowledge building between the usage of IT and IT development skills. Nowadays, information technology systems are extremely complex and making rapid developmental progress. To keep our skill levels always current in IT requires a huge effort. Therefore, Calbee has decided that a core-competency important to maintain is knowledge in the usage of IT systems. We outsource IT development skills to our IT partners. Calbee now can enjoy the benefits of the latest IT development skills anytime they are required. Our IT partners can learn more from dealing with real business as a direct executor in Calbee and so can improve their development and execution skills. We have established a “win-win” relationship.
Values provided by ITC
ITC understands our concepts and strategies as mentioned above very well. Once we present our purpose and goal, ITC always complete a system that fully satisfies them. Not only having the highest quality standards in technology, ITC also has a good sense of customer service. ITC is working to provide the best service possible to a customer. It sounds too simple, but we haven't found this attitude very often in the IT business.
ITC provide the solution we need. We have a purpose. In order to realize it, we set a goal. To achieve this goal, there are issues and obstacles to overcome. We then need to resolve the issues and find a way to remove the obstacles. This is the solution we need. If the IT vender/developer misunderstands the whole picture, they cannot provide an appropriate solution. ITC is very sensitive to this. We hope ITC continue to play an important roll in our IT strategy long into the future.
www.calbee.co.jp
