Comment: I have to say that SASUGA is a great company that always works on the cutting edge of technology and does not give priority to technical support, but rather clarifies the customer's problems and concerns, searches for solutions together, and prioritizes the world's needs and demands. I would like to thank Mr. Masahiro Ishizuka, Web Programmer & IT Consulting, Representative of Aon.
What are the conditions for a SIer that customers continue to choose?
LAC Corporation
2022/03/03 Published
Rack verifies foreign-made tools that are indispensable for cloud operations and proposes their use as solutions to customers in Japan. As a means of expanding its SIS (System Integration Services) business, Rack is also taking on the challenge of marketing automation, from digital marketing to digital selling. We interviewed a member of Rack's SIS Business Management Department, which is taking on the challenge of structural reform of the business.
Terraform Salesforce Marketing Automation Security DX
Providing new knowledge and technology beyond the "man-month business
Like other SIers, LAC's SIS business has provided value to customers by listening to their system issues, defining requirements, developing systems according to those specifications, and performing maintenance and operation. However, in an era of rapid change, it is difficult to continue to deliver business results with such a "passive" approach alone.
System development (SI) is not the only way to solve customers' problems. A single tool or a combination of several existing services can solve a customer's problems.
We need a team that can look three to five years into the future and try out new approaches while presenting a vision for the future of the SIS business," said Atsuyuki Yamazaki, General Manager of SIS Business at LAC.
The SIS Business Management Division is responsible for providing lateral support to each business unit. That is not all. The SIS Division also has the role of foreseeing how the SIer business will change in this era when the promotion of digital transformation (DX) is being called for not only by the SIer industry, but also by general business companies.
The SIS Division has a strong image of LAC as a security services company. We have a strong image as a security services company, and that is certainly one of our strengths, but I have felt for some time that it is difficult to explain our strengths to customers on that basis alone. For example, how many Java engineers we have, or how many agile development projects we have carried out. These are not strengths that only Rack can demonstrate," said Yamazaki.
Atsuyuki Yamazaki, General Manager of SIS Business and General Manager of Data Management Department, LAC Corporation
Mr. Yamazaki has over 20 years of sales experience in IT companies. Moved to Rack at the timing of the absorption of his previous system development company. In 2020, he started to specialize in SIS business and assumed his current position.
Mr. Yamazaki emphasizes that the "number of people x number of months" is used as an indicator of project estimates and workload, but it only explains the labor-intensive situation and does not necessarily indicate LAC's technical capabilities. He believes that the service should be changed to one that provides the knowledge and technology of LAC itself, rather than in the form of labor.
To achieve this, we need to make LAC's unique strengths visible," he said. "In order to do so, we must make our unique strengths visible, and through digital marketing, we must make them widely known to the public. Through the accumulation of such efforts, we aim to be chosen by customers in the future," said Yamazaki.
However, these efforts are not as easy as they sound. It is a process of creating something that does not exist, and trial-and-error is essential to "take on challenges ahead of time and make many mistakes.
We must discover new solutions and incorporate new marketing methods into our business. I think it is very important for us to show results by trying things out ourselves first, and to have people understand the process," said Mr. Yamazaki.
Trial and Error: Cutting into Untapped Markets with Cloud Essential Tools
One member of the SIS Business Management Department who continues to go through this process of trial and error is Yuuki Maeno, a member of the Solutions Group of the Business Promotion Department.
HashiCorp is a fast-growing company known for its open-source tools that automate the management and operation of IT infrastructure, driven by multi-cloud, DevOps, and DX. Its products can automate infrastructure tasks such as building resources and changing network configurations to optimize operational costs and workflows for cloud operations that require dynamic operations.
Rack has been in a partnership with HashiCorp Japan since 2018, and will be certified as a Hyper Specialized partner in 2021.
The cloud environment is currently being adopted for a variety of services. On the other hand, management complexity is becoming an issue. If management becomes cumbersome, the speed of service expansion and application development slows down, which has a significant impact on business progress. HashiCorp products are useful in eliminating such complexity," said Maeno.
Mr. Yuki Maeno, Solutions Group, Business Promotion Department, LAC Corporation
After completing a graduate degree in humanities, Mr. Maeno joined the company as a new graduate in 2016. While working as an application engineer stationed at customer sites, he became interested in infrastructure and cloud computing, and moved to the Agile Development Center. Currently, he is in charge of verifying and selling cloud operation tools as a pre-sales engineer.
For example, Terraform, one of these tools, automates cloud configuration management by simply tapping code, reducing operational costs and human error. It is a so-called Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tool, and more than 100,000 are downloaded every week worldwide.
HashiCorp products have become indispensable tools for companies that have completely migrated to the cloud," said Mr. Kurokawa, "while those that have not yet made the shift to the cloud have yet to adopt them. How to break into such an untapped market is my challenge at the moment.
Mr. Maeno is originally an application engineer. Although he was not familiar with infrastructure or cloud computing, he was exposed to HashiCorp's products at the Agile Development Center in his previous department and was attracted by the ease of learning and the potential of the products.
His motivation to expand sales is based on his conviction that this tool is indispensable for developing applications in the cloud. However, there were many trials and errors in developing the market.
In the beginning, when we held webinars, we tried to push the product and its features to the forefront to appeal to customers. But that alone was not enough to get a reaction from customers. So we changed our perspective and started focusing on customer issues rather than technology and products," said Maeno.
In shifting to the cloud, what are the customer issues? In shifting to the cloud, we first tried to emphasize what the customer's issues were and what tools were needed to solve them, and we even removed the product name from the webinar title. As a result, the number of webinar attendees increased by a factor of three to four.
We knew that the product was excellent, but that alone was not enough to drive adoption. But that alone is not enough to drive adoption. Many customers were at a loss as to how to proceed with implementation within their organizations.
We then carefully explained case studies of companies that had already implemented the system and provided PoC support. One of LAC's strengths is that it has many SI case studies in all industries in which it is involved. We tried to apply this knowledge to the sales of HashiCorp products. As a result of these efforts, the number of customers who entered the negotiation phase gradually increased," said Maeno.
Urgent shift to digital marketing to prevent the use of human resources
Many members of the SIS Business Management Department come from various backgrounds, such as former engineers, sales and marketing staff, and so on. All of them have front-line experience in dealing with customers and providing SI services to them. Having firsthand knowledge of what it is like to be on the front lines, they have come to think about what is needed to make SI services more advanced in the future.
Haruna Matsumura is one such person; before moving to the SIS Business Management Division, she worked mainly with financial institution clients as a sales representative, and since moving to the SIS Business Management Division, she has been exploring new sales methods utilizing marketing automation (MA), including digital marketing and digital selling.
Haruna Matsumura, Digital Group, Data Management Department, LAC Inc.
Haruna Matsumura joined LAC as a new graduate in 2012. In 2020, she moved to the marketing organization, where she has been working on the implementation of marketing automation since last year.
Until now, the SI business at Rack has often relied on personal experience to connect with specific customers, and I have not really felt the need for digital marketing. In the future, however, marketing knowledge will be essential for both sales and technical staff. We need to introduce digital marketing throughout the company and improve its effectiveness and reproducibility. Matsumura is taking the lead in this effort," said Yamazaki.
Mr. Matsumura will introduce Salesforce's Sales Cloud and Pardot, a B2B MA tool, as digital marketing tools in the company from spring 2021.
The company will gather prospects (leads) through webinars, campaigns, or white paper downloads, and then smartly communicate the information necessary to close the deal to its sales staff. At the same time, they follow up on qualified leads to nurture the customer. The idea is to automate as much of this process as possible.
We are in a position to advance what no one else in the company is doing yet. That's why everyone will be disappointed if we don't see results after implementing MA. I am anxious about how we can continue to produce results, but that is the interesting part," says Matsumura.
Currently, the company is accumulating information on customers who are watching webinars and other events, and is promoting measures such as the continuous distribution of LAC's information via e-mail. We are also actively communicating articles that may be of interest to customers on our technology blog, "LAC WATCH," which provides the latest security and IT information. This has led to an increase in the number of customers who have started product trials.
We have been able to create points of contact with customers we had not previously had contact with. If we improve the linkage between webinars and MA, we can touch even more customers at the same time. I think it is helping to improve our sales efficiency," said Matsumura.
Mr. Matsumura began to consciously study digital marketing, including MA tools, after moving to the SIS Business Management Department.
When I was in charge of sales, I would make appointments with customers by e-mail or phone, explain to them in person, and sell products. I am currently in charge of MA with a team of three members, and we are discussing and learning a lot together. I am grateful that this kind of challenge can only be undertaken by the SIS Business Management Department, which is willing to try out new technologies through trial and error.
Before the Corona disaster, not many companies in the SIer industry, not just Rack, held webinars. The same was true for Rack, and it was only recently that the SIS Business Management Division obtained a license for the webinar tool.
Now, we are gradually receiving requests from each business unit to conduct webinars on their products, or to email this kind of content to their customers. Each division is now more willing than before to develop their own solutions. I feel that our trial-and-error efforts are gradually taking shape and bearing fruit," said Yamazaki.
The challenge that Yamazaki mentioned at the beginning of this article, "The members of the SIS Business Management Department will first try it out and show the process of achieving results," is now underway.
The Challenge of Fostering a Sense of Customer Confidence
Finally, we asked him to reiterate what he finds interesting about his job at the SIS Business Management Department.
Mr. Maeno said, "I think the interesting thing about the SIS Division is that we can propose not only technologies that our customers use on a daily basis, but also cutting-edge technologies in the IT industry, trends overseas, and other technologies that we have not yet tackled.
Digital marketing does not end when it is implemented; we need to think about how it can be used to deliver results for our clients. I would like to work with people who have that kind of passion, and I would like to strengthen information dissemination for that purpose" (Mr. Matsumura).
Following their discussion, Mr. Yamazaki spoke about the future of LAC's business.
In terms of our business, we have two areas of expertise, security and SI, but from the customer's point of view, there are no barriers between the two. If you ask Rack, you can rest assured that they will provide you with the right technology and knowledge, and that they will put your business first. The deciding factor is whether or not we have that kind of relationship of trust. Our goal for the future is to be chosen as such a partner and continue to be needed by society. To achieve this, we ourselves will continue to take on new challenges.
In the previous issue, we reported on the new technology initiatives of LAC's Financial Business Division and the challenges of providing new value in the Enterprise Business Division.
＜The company's financial services division is working on new technologies, while the enterprise division is taking on the challenge of providing new value.
The new technology is a combination of the "financial services" and "security" fields, which LAC's engineers are taking on as their "plus one" challenge.
What is "proposal-based development at a SIer"? Behind the Scenes of LAC's Internal Projects that Transcend the Boundaries of SE and Sales
The SIS Business Management Division is exploring new ways to solve customers' problems that go beyond system development. What all divisions have in common is an attitude of taking on new challenges. New things always come with risks, but the top management of each division is willing to take risks.
Lack is about to challenge a new stage of creating SI business as a single cyber security company, transcending the boundaries of security and SI in order to solve problems. Salespeople and engineers who want to explore new things will find a place where they can play an active role.
LAC Corporation
https://www.lac.co.jp/
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