Standardize pipeline management and strengthen customer touch points with the Fujitsu OneCRM project

Under the OneFujitsu program, Fujitsu is working on the OneCRM project to standardize pipeline management and strengthen customer touch points globally.

Due to rapid changes in the global situation, extreme weather conditions, and COVID-19 response, businesses must adapt to situations that threaten corporate continuity. A surefire way to stay afloat is through data collection. This includes data on sales, costs, changing customer needs, raw material procurement, and other factors to visualize the business situation and take the next step in response to changes.

Fujitsu itself must also change to fulfill its role as a partner in issue-solving initiatives and co-creation. In 2020, they launched Fujitra, a company-wide DX project. This initiative transforms Fujitsu from an IT services company into a DX navigator. Committed to making the world more sustainable by building trust in society through innovation, the company will work on resolving such issues as restructuring global business strategies and strengthening data-driven management.

While all employees join Fujitra and take on challenges, the Fujitsu OneFujitsu Program is a specific initiative. This initiative aims to standardize the company’s management, operations, and IT, and to evolve into a data-driven company. The goal is to standardize all major operations as “one system for one function” globally, realizing the “One” in OneFujitsu.

Moreover, the OneFujitsu program “is moving forward with globalization, standardization, and core value considerations, all at the same time,” according to Shunsuke Baba, EVP, Chief Data & Process Officer. “If we were to do things in order, as we have done in the past, and say, ‘Let’s start from this region’, the situation would change by the time the standardization was completed in one region, and we might have to rethink the project from scratch. We are working on a much shorter time frame than before,” says Baba.

Pipeline management, one of the initiatives in the OneCRM project, promotes visualizing the status and progress of business opportunities on a more global level. Ayako Tanaka, Senior Manager, Chief Data & Process Officer Division, Corporate Executive Office, recalls, “in the past, definition of pipeline stages differed in each country or region, making it difficult to accurately grasp the status and progress of opportunities on a global basis. In addition, in many cases, the staff member in charge had to interpret the data based on the manual to ensure consistency. For example, ‘this stage of the pipeline in this country corresponds to this stage in another country’, which required human judgement and work."

The company has faced many difficulties in introducing inside sales as part of their efforts to strengthen customer touch point. One objective of the pivot from data-based division to a one-business-producer approach is to standardize and share knowledge across different departments. To make inside sales a bridge between the marketing and sales departments, the OneCRM team would repeatedly brief the relevant departments within the company while ensuring close communication with the business producers (BPs) in charge.

Following these collaborations, information would then be retained on OneCRM. This may be accessed through a dashboard through which the status could be checked any time. Progress meetings are held every two weeks to further ensure that each department gains sufficient knowledge on inside sales.

OneCRM’s objective is to strengthen customer touch points to resolve apparent problems and implement the necessary IT systems as determined by a consultation session with the customer. This can be seen as a passive style of waiting for consultation from the customer. Fujitsu’s inside sale activities focus on identifying the latent needs of the customer.

Keiji Tomohiro, VP, Head of Digital Sales Division, Global Marketing Unit, explains, “the sales style that will be required in the future is to identify potential issues before customers are aware of them and propose solutions to them. We believe that inside sales is essential to find clues to solve these potential problems.”

Fujitsu has identified several areas for improvement since the launch of OneCRM in April 2022. In order to standardize pipeline management globally, the data from each BP must utilize effective data entry globally. It is equally important to consider how various departments and divisions can utilize customers’ data from OneCRM and enhance their response abilities. This can be strengthened if the needs, issues, and progress of business opportunities are properly understood based on customer data.

According to Keiji Tomohiro, “currently, customers who are highly sensitive to areas such as digital sales and DX are interested in Fujitsu’s initiatives. I feel that the OneCRM project needs to evolve so that it becomes an indespensable mechanism that many companies would be unable to survive without”, On the other hand, Masayuki Kita, Senior Director, Chief Data & Process Officer, remarks that “the next step would be how to enhance our ability to respond to customers by utilizing globally standardized data. I want to show that Fujitsu’s business is improving as a result of implementing the OneFujitsu program, including the OneCRM project”