Quadruple the number of potential customers. Speeda has realized the active development of the Chinese market!
Triple or quadruple the number of customer lists! "Speeda is a powerful engine", the import case of KOA Electronics (Hong Kong) Co., Ltd.
Resistors are embedded in the electronic circuits of all kinds of products, from home appliances to communications equipment to cars. KOA Company is a Japanese company with a global share in the field of resistance. KOA Electronics (H. K.) Ltd., headquartered in Hong Kong, is actively expanding its sales in order to expand into the Chinese market.
Speeda is an economic information platform used to create customer lists that are critical to a company's sales expansion strategy. We spoke to Mr. RYOUTA SHIRAIWA, the Business Manager, and Mr. YUUSUKE SHIMOZONO, the Sales Manager, to find out the background and issues surrounding the introduction of the system, as well as the business scenarios that are now using the system.
Q: Please tell me something about your business.
Mr. RYOUTA SHIRAIWA(hereinafter referred to as Mr. SHIRAIWA): Our Hong Kong base sells electronic parts to customers with a base in China. Our main products are resistors used in various electronic devices such as laptops and automobiles. We have a leading share in the resistors field.
Q: How many people work in Hong Kong Base?
Mr. YUUSUKE SHIMOZONO(hereinafter referred to as Mr. SHIMOZUNO): There are 34 employees in the Hong Kong base, about 20 of whom are in sales. Based mainly in Hong Kong and mainland China, there are also four Japanese employees.
Q: How do you position yourself in the Chinese market?
Mr. SHIRAIWA: In the past, we did a lot of business in China with Japanese, European and American companies, but now it is important to build business with local Chinese companies, which is the key to the success of our business.
Before 2009, the South China region operated by our company was the so-called "factory of the world", the production base for Japanese and European and American enterprises. However, as the technological strength of Chinese companies continues to improve and world leading companies such as Huawei and Haier begin to emerge, I feel that supporting these companies will bring business opportunities. Tactics have also changed.
As a result of changing market conditions, our KFS has also changed. In previous scale-up campaigns, it was important to run the operation in order to deliver orders within a specified lead time for products that had already been designed. What is important now is that we provide solutions to help our customers move from design to mass production, which is called demand creation.
With these changes, our overall sales mix is changing. The share of sales to Chinese companies was about 28 percent in 2015, but increased to 50 percent in 2019. From 2015 to 2019, sales to Chinese companies have grown to 240 percent.
Q: What kind of tasks do you have when conducting sales activities in local areas?
Mr. SHIRAIWA: After reaching the target of expanding sales to key leading companies, continue to look for the next target customer that can grow into a pillar of growth. On the marketing side, the Chinese language barrier makes it difficult to find Chinese companies to target and inefficient. In addition, the recent maker movement, centered in Shenzhen, has produced many manufacturing start-ups, but it has not been easy to get close because it has not disclosed much information to the outside world.
Q: Tell me about your first opportunity to learn about "Speeda".
Mr. SHIRAIWA: I have been a reader of News Picks for a long time and have a general idea of the service called Speeda. We heard about Speeda from the new business development team at head office and asked if we could solve our problem.
Q: What competing services did you compare to?
Mr. SHIRAIWA: When "Speeda" was introduced, we conducted a comparative study on the business information provision services of Japanese enterprises and the membership business information provision services. We not only conducted our own research, but also listened to and discussed with our head office and other companies in the industry. After comparison and discussion, we tried "Speeda" for a week and decided to introduce it for the reasons of easy operation interface and cost performance.
Q: What was your first impression of "Speeda"?
Mr. SHIRAIWA: Very easy to search interface. In addition, I find industry reports that aggregate industry trends and insights very easy to understand. It is also easy to use a UI that displays customers' financial statements without having to click on the name of the company when making a customer list.
Q: Please tell me the process of importing Speeda in Hong Kong base.
Mr. SHIRAIWA: Based on the experience of importing a number of tools to date, consider how "Speeda" can be anchored in an organization, creating an environment that employees can take advantage of by integrating it into the application architecture and business processes.
First, each salesperson uses the "keyword login" function to send news and release information of target customers and markets to their own emails. And set rules for sharing the latest information on the company's internal groups.
Another approach is to be sure to use "Speeda" in regular target business analysis. As a result, exposure to "Speeda" increases.
In the process of promoting the import, we invited the user center leaders to hold a study session and made suggestions on the framework of the research and the formats that could be used in the market analysis.
In addition, a Chinese version learning session was also held for local employees. As the courses and daily support are so extensive, I'm not worried about being able to use "Speeda" proficiently, because the local staff also commented that the information was very informative.
Q: How do you use "Speeda" in business situations?
Mr. SHIMOZONO: The most common use case is to create a list of leads. For example, when creating a new list, if you search by market, you will see a list of companies that are active in the market. Also, if you search for a leading company in the industry, you can look up the company's competitors, you can list from different perspectives, so it's highly rated, it covers all the companies that we need to reach out to. The lists we create are shared with our distributors, and their requests are sometimes reflected in the lists.
In the past, we would get a lot of advice from distributors, but with Speeda, we can now actively promote our products. In addition, it is also used for market research and reporting.
Q: What has been achieved since the introduction of Speeda?
Mr. SHIRAIWA: It used to target just a few customers in each market, but the introduction of Speeda has increased the number of target customers nearly three to four times. In addition, the number of hours spent producing market reports has fallen sharply. It used to be late into the night, but with Speeda's industry reports and insights, I spent my time thinking about how the market will change and what our company should do.
Q: Please talk about the change in cost.
Mr. SHIRAIWA: In the past, we have signed contracts with many information services, such as those related to China, and paid business media. Speeda can now be used to unify a large amount of information, and the cost of using Speeda has not increased significantly due to the cancellation of the previous information service.
Q: Please talk about your future prospects.
Mr. SHIRAIWA: In addition to expanding our existing business, it is also important to invest in new businesses in order to achieve sustainable growth. We also use Speeda to carry out the necessary market research to speed up the launch of new businesses. Speeda is a powerful engine for our sales campaign. Speed is a very important factor in our business development and we will continue to work together as a strong partner to accelerate our business development.
Thank you!
KOA Electronics (H.K.) Ltd.
(Head office: KOA Group Investment Co., Ltd.)
www.koaglobal.com
Features
KOA Investment Co., Ltd., a Japanese company with global market share, is in the field of resistors used in electronic circuits of household appliances, communication equipment, automobiles and other products. KOA Electronics (Hong Kong) Co., Ltd., as the Hong Kong stronghold of the company, undertakes the expansion activities in the Chinese market, and is actively implementing the expansion activities in order to explore the Chinese market.
Type of industry
Maker
Sector, branch of service
Business
Main usage scenarios
Establish customer list in the sales department
KOA Electronics (H.K.) Ltd.
(Head office: KOA Group Investment Co., Ltd.)
Managing Director
Mr. RYOUTA SHIRAIWA
Sales Manager
Mr. YUUSUKE SHIMOZONO
Uzabase China Limited
Room 770, No. 968 West Beijing Rd., Jingan District
Shanghai, China
TEL:(86)021-60191590
Email:info.china@uzabase.com