The 'iPhone' in Japan and how 'i' see it...

Well, as another week starts off so does another addition to this running mobile CRM blog. In this post I would like to get back to some more specific and timely issues relating to mobile CRM. I had a look through some of my most trusted sites for ideas and found an interesting piece from one of my favorite sites covering the mobile industry in Japan Wireless Watch Japan. The article covers Apple’s potential failure to reach it’s target of 1,000,000 iPhones sold in Japan. At present Mr. Job’s company is on pace to record less than 500,000 units sold according to market research firm MM Market Research. As the articles notes these assumptions were built on one year’s full sales coupled with competitive pricing centering on package price, handset and monthly fees. What gives you might ask? All of the above seem to be in line with what is being offered by Japanese competitors in terms of pricing.

Well, the possible explanations as in most cases are not found by analyzing surface based facts or assumptions. We need to dig a little deeper. The WWJ article notes the challenges any foreign mobile company faces here in Japan which is the maturity of the market within Japan in terms high end technology already being offered by most manufacturers. As I thought about this longer, I came back to some of my Japanese business cultural studies I have been formally embarking on these past couple months and one point flashed through my mind. It was a point regarding keys to success in Japan and it stated that whatever product or service a foreign company is attempting to offer it must research and produce the ‘right’ product for Japan.

Now here we have the iPhone selling nearly 200,000 units in the first two months and suddenly deadpanning to an averaged pace of approximately 30,000 units a month sold for the remaining ten months. I might add that this assessment is a positive one according to some. We clearly have some forces at work which are undermining the iPhone’s success. Could they lie within this notion of Apple underestimating the distinct tastes Japanese consumers have versus American’s? I am confident that this is part of it but a lot of it surely centers on the market and how advanced it already is. Sure, the iPhone has the touch screen and an interesting presentation which is a novelty and something new for consumers here, however notions of surfing the net, listening to music, playing games, checking weather and other useful functions the iPhone offers are all somewhat stale mobile CRM applications offerings for the average keitai user here.

Beyond this, I have read and also heard first hand grumblings from people over somewhat minor issues relating to no attachment loop for mobile straps, to the necessity of changing of one’s mobile email address despite already being a Softbank user. These issues I understand, are just a sampling and in no way can be thought of as the chief deficiencies relating to the poor sales forecasts, however collectively they offer a sampling of potential shortcomings.

To me, these issues add up to a particular company not providing a unique enough device for a truly unique market. The units sold speak for themselves thus far, illustrating that even huge conglomerates are no less insulated from simple market principles than any of us. And this folks, returns us to one of the keys to success here in Japan or any global market, which is researching and manufacturing the right product for the consumer. As always, comments would be appreciated!

Canadian Chris

4 Critical Factors....

With a a high number of the workforce on the road or working from home, the ability to extend applications and Web content to mobile phones has become essential to business. So what's the key to making mobile CRM pay off for your business?

The following are four critical factors for a successful and effective mobile CRM solution that I have compiled from my research:

1. Off-line functionality. Sales professionals will use a mobile application only if they can reliably depend on it -- and that means every time. To ensure that the mobile application and CRM data is always available when they need it, mobile applications must support off-line functionality.

2. A platform with open standards. Field professionals don't just need access to customer information in the field; they also need information on promotions, products, competitors, service requests or order status. Therefore, a platform with open standards is highly important.

3. Ease-of-use. Mobile application performance and ease of use are vital for field professional effectiveness. To be effective, mobile CRM systems must be instant-on, easy to navigate and require little or no training.

4. Timely information. Features such as alerts and schedules should accelerate communication, decision-making and customer responsiveness by keeping users in touch.

Using mobile technology, companies are now getting more out of existing systems by delivering these applications and content directly into the hands of users whenever and wherever they do business.

Now, the question lies....are the customers getting more out of the systems??

Australian Chris

A Continued Cultural Kick!

Well upon re-reading couple of my last posts I see that I have been on a bit of a cultural kick as of late. Illustrating ideas relating to Japanese culture more so than the strictly mobile CRM related issues. I had a momentary thought which said balance, balance, balance. I should get back to the nuts and bolts of this blog which is mobile CRM related content. However, I took a moment, looked over this ‘illustrious’ blog explanation and re-thought this logic. Aside from being a take on mobile CRM issues, these posts are also about examining the cultural business issues here in Japan. That aspect unto itself deserves an extended examination. If one cannot understand the social or ethnic factors at play here, one most certainly cannot put quality CRM business management systems or decisions for that matter into play. With that, I will turn towards this week’s topic of looking at what some feel it takes to make it here in the Japanese market.

Lately, I have been reading up on a number of books specifically relating to the examination of Japanese culture and more specifically business practices. I am sure this is where a lot of these thoughts and feelings have been deriving from as of late. One particular book entitled Cracking the Japanese Market by James C. Morgan and J. Jeffery Morgan examines these issues and more. There has been one particular section which has stood out for me thus far. It centers on understanding the rules at play. The authors argue that you must develop a philosophical foundation upon which to base your strategy. These components include:

-Presence
-People
-Pioneering
-Piggybacking
-Partnering
-Persistence

Now for the sake of simplicity and ease I will not elaborate upon each point into any great detail for the sake of keeping your attention, however I do wish to add a few points which I feel are pertinent to this blog and this post in particular.

Presence: It is incredibly important for your organization to have a physical presence in the Japanese market. I might add that this is specifically important when relating to the mobile CRM market. This is where you stand the best chance to gain invaluable information about first understanding distinctly Japanese customer needs as well as their ever changing desires.

People: This simply relates to localized hiring and it is important for two reasons. One it shows commitment to the market and two it opens doors with other Japanese companies in terms of building and nurturing both supplier and customer relationships.

Pioneering: Japan is renown for companies which will jump on popular ideas and re-create the service or product with its own twist. Therefore, it should be expected that your product or service will never be alone long. These companies include both large and small with the big companies coming first and the second wave of small to mid-size companies following. Obvious counter strategies include patent protection as well as constant innovation.

Piggybacking: Due to Japan’s long history of complex relationships it has been difficult for foreigners to enter and or build network distribution systems. However, one way to by-pass this obstacle is to engage in ‘piggybacking’ companies with similar products or services with already established distribution networks. The key according to Morgan and Morgan is to leverage people rich companies and existing structures, many of which hungrily need new product and ideas.

Partnering: The notion of partnering with an established Japanese company is an obvious method to gain access to customers, suppliers and buyers. Trust and relationship building which are ever so important to the Japanese way of business can then be forged. Of course one must be sharp in the structuring of the partnership so that theorized advantages stand the chance of becoming a reality.

Persistence: This concept is particularly important in that it shows commitment. Japanese business ethics highly value trust and commitment. Results are often examined with the long view in mind rather than the short. One way to show this is the ‘sticking it out’ mentality within the market. This mettle goes along way in terms of showing the Japanese your particular company or personal traits. It goes even further if your product has any type of CRM twist to it!

Now, if you are still here with me I hope these points do strike a cord for some of you whether you are already in the market or are curious about it. These ideas are of course simply jumping off points to further research however I hope that they have been of some genuine assistance.

Canadian Chris

Leveraging your CRM system

I came across an interesting article by Ronald Lang, the CEO of Majestic Consulting Group, where he offers readers an insight to and offers recommendations for leveraging your company's CRM system to maximize your client base. What Ronald Lang touches upon in the article are often key points that early-stage companies overlook and sacrifice in order to gain and further develop market share or mind share (a common term these days).

.........New customers come at an extreme premium today, so focusing on existing clients is more cost-effective and are often more receptive to hearing your offerings, especially if it can be a positive impact to their business.

If your business is primarily a product-based sales operation, Lang offers these 3 recommendations:

1. Are there products you have sold to a client in the last three years that have new accessories or a new model (or discontinuation of the current model)? – if so, this is a golden opportunity to setup a presentation with the client.
2. Reinforce your support commitment, response time and quality assurance.
3. Have you done well selling into one or more areas of the organization? If so, it is time to map out the rest of the organization and key contacts with each division. Connect with each of them and/or get referrals and introductions.

If your business is primarily a service-based sales operation, Lang offers these 3 recommendations:

1. Have you done a customer survey lately? If not, put together a survey that should take no more than 5 minutes to complete. The questions should focus on the quality of service you are providing. Its also a good opportunity to inquire about other services they may require or would perceive to be of value-adding to their business operations.
2. Are your customers using competitive services along with yours? If so, find out how happy they are with them and see if there is an opportunity to add greater value to their business.
3. If you offer services that your clients use frequently look to offer them a services agreement for a year at a discounted rate. This will provide you predictability and consistency over the next 12 months.

These are just a few simple recommendations to leverage your CRM system to maximize your client base. But, just a few simple steps to further leverage your CRM system can make a profound impact on your sales.

Australian Chris

Revisiting the Roots...

Recently I went on a ten day trip back home to Canada and as usual was reverse culture shocked by a number of different things extending from extreme customer service standards ranging from exemplary to downright poor. A lot of this stems from Canadian culture being a lot more direct with actions often seeming dependant on the mood of the service provider. This mind you is on the micro scale and relating to services at or within restaurants, gas stations, ticket kiosks, clothing stores etc. These interactions contrast highly with that of Japan in that these low level service opportunities are almost always at an extremely high level of service. To make this point simpler to understand, just walk into a MacDonald’s here in Japan and do a mental comparison about how that situation would differ in your home country. This notion is not something new and is a point I touched upon in an earlier blog upon reading Tim Clark and Carl Kay’s book Saying Yes to Japan. I suppose that visiting one’s home and experiencing it yet again one is struck by how true this.

These thoughts led me to the other points Clark and Kay drive home of which they state the higher end services are usually at a much higher level outside of Japan. It seems that as the transaction values go up along with the customer’s stake in the transaction the service levels go south. This is where the opportunities lie for those willing to dig below the surface. A few more interesting points that were raised in the book mention that successful foreign entrepreneurs exhibited five traits that seemed to give them an edge within Japan. These included:

1) propensity for risk taking
2) flexibility
3) customer focus
4) tech driven speed
5) professionalism

As you can see these points are not rocket science or difficult to build CRM systems around however for many Japanese businesses certain aspects are inherently difficult to master just as it would be within say America to replicate distinctly Japanese traits. In particular the propensity for risk taking would certainly be a major obstacle for a number of Japanese.

My point thus far centers on this notion of recognizing these differences and what that can mean for you or your business whether or not it is mobile related. The challenge of course is the recognition of POG/SOG’s –product/service opportunity gaps—and in order to do this one must routinely be questioning commonly accepted practices as to whether or not true value is being delivered to the end user.

I understand that these points about finding gaps and delivering value, customer focus etc. which I raised in this particular blog are not new or particularly flashy. They are the crux of basic business study and central themes of a myriad of books put out each year. My point and one that I strongly feel should not be lost is that these basic points need to be acknowledged at all times and how context or culture, to be more specific can really rattle these notions thus creating opportunities for those on the look out. As always I invite comments or thoughts!

Canadian Chris

“To be On-deck or Off-deck? That is the question…”

Recently I have been pondering the exponential growth of the mobile market here in Japan. It’s one of those things that if you think about for too long it can really excite you or scare you depending on your nature and your inherent love or hate towards technology. The number of changes on the way in terms of the way we currently live and structure our lives are undoubtedly many. I personally get very excited by this and the opportunities that are surely to abound. As do a number of mobile support marketing and mobile CRM software/application companies I am sure. To get a good taste of this, one need not look much further than what is happening on the streets of Seoul or Tokyo. Those two particular cities have their fair share of early adopters which are leading the way towards what you and I may soon be doing with our keitai’s in a new way a year from now.
As I thought about this topic a little more and here in Japan in particular I was struck by a bit of a dilemma for new start-up mobile application based companies who wish to tap this market and enter this frenzied game with a mobile based website. Those companies have a big decision to make between creating a site on-deck versus off-deck. For those of you unfamiliar with the terminology, on-deck simply refers to registering one’s site with an official carrier and having the site listed as part of their official line up. Off-deck site creation is the foregoing of this formal registration and simply creating your site on the mobile web. The differences are huge and something I would like to partially explore in this blog entry.
From past research and calls made to both carriers and companies specializing in the creation of off-deck sites I came across a number of distinguishing differences. Below are some of the highlighted differences:

Time and Costs: On deck sites require individual formal registration across each operator with separate fees. These costs on the cheaper end can run upwards of 3 to 5 million yen for a basic mobile site along with the formal registration costs. Not to mention the lengthy time needed for the site to be evaluated and approved. Off-deck on the other hand can be thrown up as fast as you can put it together for as cheap as you wish pending your site development needs.

PV`s: At this point according to calls made to leading mobile site development companies like Infinitia on deck sites offer high reliability and thus higher PV`s due to the inherent formalities of registering the site. Also if your company requires formal payment and bill collection the carriers can also do this for you. That aspect alone definitely makes a difference and knocks down a huge barrier between you and your customer. As we all know trust issues are huge in business however I would like to add that this factor can be especially important here in Japan.

On the other hand, nowadays the youth in Japan are beginning to initiate their searches off deck and by-passing the operators. Already, Japanese teens 13-19 prefer searching using mobile search in 70.1% of cases versus official mobile carrier listings in 47.1%. (Source: CNET Japan, May 2007) One can only assume that this trend will accelerate with internet search engine giant Google entering the mobile world here in Japan recently.

Future Trends: With the sheer numbers of off-deck sites versus on-deck one is inclined to think that the future of these walled gardens offered by operators will soon be a thing of the past. Looking at Docomo's i-Mode and we are already seeing a shift. Roughly 70% of the traffic is moving off-deck with 30% staying on. (Source: Infinitia--Japan Case Study: Mobile 2.0 and the Next Generation of of Mobile Appplications) Now If history has much to say about this along with current trends on both the web and mobile web this is a distinct possibility. The question for many is when of course.

So looking at but a few of these comparisons, one can see that there are distinct structural, technical and operational differences between both on and off deck sites. It must be noted that the list I have created here is certainly not exhaustive as issues of operator filtering amongst other key issues are not examined. But for the purpose of this exercise I thought those highlighted points I noted do illustrate some fairly major issues faced by start-ups who wish to enhance or add a layer to their CRM image or best practices.

The questions I suppose for a lot of these start-ups are what are their goals? What type of site is needed? Who is the site targeted at? How long will their site take to develop a loyal following? These answers which can be garnered from one’s business plan can go along ways towards really simplifying and making seemingly difficult dilemmas very straightforward. I invite others thoughts on this topic!

Canadian Chris

A path of Business Education

Over the countless months I have been on a path of education....a path of business education. Well, better put a path of reading numerous and various business books in order to expand and further develop my business understanding and thought process. Upon reading these books I came across a number of "must reads"....

• E Myth Mastery by Michael E. Gerber

"What every successful entrepreneur does".....focuses on the seven disciplines that provide the key to unlocking success in leadership, marketing, money, management, fulfillment, lead conversion, and lead generation. Definitely an excellent read that requires you and challenges you to be involved in the reading and thought development process.

• The New Business Road Test by John W. Mullins

Ever had an idea you thought would be successful and be the next big thing? Well, why not take it for a "test drive" or better yet run it through the seven domains of attractive opportunities

1. Market attractiveness (Market domain/Macro-level)

2. Industry attractiveness (Industry domain/Macro-level)

3. Target segment benefits and attractiveness (Market domain/Micro-level)

4. Sustainable advantage (Industry domain/Micro-level)

5. Mission, aspirations, propensity for risk

6. Connectedness up, down, across value chain

7. Ability to execute on CSFs (critical success factors)

Most new businesses fail, despite how much capital they have, or how talented they are, or how good the business plan is. If a 'lousy business' or flawed opportunity is being pursued its destined to head down the road to failure. A nice wake up to due diligence!

• Doing Business With The New Japan by James D. Hodgson, Yoshihiro Sano, John L. Graham

Despite today's markets being fairly global and borderless, boundaries and invisible communication bridges are prevalent and at times down right difficult to encounter and comprehend. Japan provides a fruitful market of opportunities and is a fascinating land with "ancient cultural roots and the most modern capabilities", but at times you may ponder if you are welcome and if so how do you maneuver through the intricate and distinct business culture of Japan.

'Doing business with the new japan' provides grand insight and helpful advice for any foreigner daring to do business in Japan and touches upon negotiation styles and tactics, key cultural differences and speculates on future relationships.

• The New Rules of Marketing & PR by David Meerman Scott

The days of exclusively using TV, radio, newspaper, and magazine media forms for sending your message to your target audience are pretty much obsolete...not obsolete but pretty much. Now, leading companies no longer use one or two media forms but now use a package ranging from news releases, blogs, podcasting, vidcasting, viral marketing and online media to reach buyers directly.

David Meerman Scott provides a great learning curve on how you can reach and speak directly to consumers and niche buyers with targeted messages that cost a fraction of traditional means.

• Mobile Advertising - Supercharge your brand in the exploding wireless market by Chetan Sharma, Joe Herzog, and Victor Melfi

With the emergence of the internet people thought brick-and-mortar stores would slowly decrease in numbers. Now, with the emergence and rapid development of mobile phone use in people's lives, does this mean PCs will become useless pieces of equipment merely taking up desk space? Highly unlikely, but the buzz of mobile advertising is certainly becoming an exciting topic of conversations.

'Mobile Advertising' transforms that buzz by covering "the conceptual, analytical, and practical applications of mobile advertising, giving marketers, service providers, and investors in-depth guidance on tapping the full potential of mobile advertising". A definite read for anyone on the technical or marketing side of the mobile advertising equation.

Australian Chris