Maruha Nichiro Corporation

Maruha Nichiro saw an issue in the fact that its operations and customer handling were broken up by business unit. In particular, from the point of view of customers, Maruha Nichiro lacked systems for sharing information internally and frequently saw issues manifest themselves around things like duplicated proposal details and lack of synergy, despite ostensibly being the same company.

At the same time, the company’s Digital Transformation Department, which had been set up with the aim of accelerating company-wide DX efforts, conducted a DX survey to uncover the issues confronting the company. As a result, they got a large amount of feedback from sales managers saying that a lack of information sharing and recording about customers made it so that they had to do extra work as part of regular sales activities and when taking over accounts, and that this prevented them from devoting time to customer-facing proposals.

To address these issues, Maruha Nichiro chose ABeam Consulting to not only introduce SFA tools, but to work as a collaborative, problem-solving partner for the medium to long term. From December 2022, we began working on a dual project to both get quick wins by quickly introducing SFA tools based on our wealth of previous projects, and to steadily execute a suite of measures backcast from the company’s vision for the future.

Quick Implementation Using Consumer Goods Industry Templates
Leveraging templates tailored for the consumer goods industry, developed based on ABeam Consulting’s extensive experience with SFA implementations, the project launched a pilot in one business unit just three months after kickoff.
We subsequently implemented measures in parallel with this to gradually deploy such tools to other business units and to establish their use in business units where they had been deployed, taking into account the differences in business model of each business unit. Company-wide implementation is due to be completed during FY2025. Building up a store of data from the earliest stages and uncovering issues in establishing the use of these tools proved to be key to deploying the tools across all business units.

Grassroots Efforts to Promote Tool Adoption in Close Collaboration with Frontline Staff
At the same time, there was an issue in that going with just a top-down message in trying achieve transformation would fail to get across the intentions and aims of the process to sales managers on the ground.
For this reason, we recruited volunteers from each organization and launched a promotion organization, working in unison to think of ideas for how to convey and improve on ways to make use of SFA tools. Volunteers then took back the outcomes for this process to their organizations and acted as standard bearers to get these ideas across to people on the ground, helping transformation permeate organizations from the bottom up.

Beyond System Implementation: Driving Operational Standardization and Organizational Reform
ABeam went beyond merely digitalizing operations. Instead, we streamlined and standardized operations that had been scattered across business units in order to realize DX. In standardizing operations and formulating cross-business sales strategy, we also submitted reports through project communications conveying that it was essential to have organizations that would promote sales transformation based on data and across functions. As a result, from FY2025, an organization has been established within the Digital Transformation Department for promoting sales DX and data-driven approaches across business units, and we are further accelerating the speed of transformation.

Transformation Toward a Evidence-based, Data-Driven Sales Model That Wins
Transformation has also begun to extend to the sales model itself. Rather than making proposals based on what suits us at ABeam or that push our own opinions, we have begun putting in place a data platform that allows for analysis combining external and internal data, so that we can make “winning” proposals that leverage external data and have objective persuasive power.
While there remain many issues to be cleared, such as improving analytic skills and further permeating the concept of KPI management into the organization, we are making steady progress towards transformation of the sales model.

In pursuing this transformation project, ABeam Consulting worked with Maruha Nichiro to make two major “decisions.”
The first was to pursue transformation that was backcast from the company’s vision.
However, sudden change risks provoking frustrations and loss of momentum due to reactions from people on the ground. For that reason, the second decision we made was to push the idea of “cooperative transformation.” Based on where Maruha Nichiro was currently at, we sketched out a roadmap for achieving transformation and pursued the project step by step.
Based on these two decisions, we at ABeam Consulting were able to properly align ourselves with Maruha Nichiro and devote ourselves to putting ideas into practice together, rather than criticizing from a remove. By thinking about how things should ideally be, then considering practical solutions from the point of view of Maruha Nichiro, we were able to work together to create a vision that fits with the different business models of each business unit.
Going forward, Maruha Nichiro is set to accelerate its transformation towards “winning” sales models that leverage not only internal but also external data, with a view to realizing the consumer-first value cycle the company aspires to.

ABeam continues to work with Maruha Nichiro while uncovering the best path to follow. ABeam will continue the work of co-creation to realize transformation as a partner to Maruha Nichiro.