Mitsubishi Jisho Residence Co., Ltd., Corporate Planning Department, DX Promotion Office, DX Promotion Group Manager, Toshihide Sadamitsu

The goal is to improve customer experience, and DX is merely a means to that end

■ Profile

After working in condominium sales for around 10 years, he was seconded to a condominium management company and an interior design company within the Mitsubishi Estate Group, and in April 2019 returned to Mitsubishi Estate Residences to be in charge of advertising planning. In April 2020, the DX Promotion Office DX Promotion Group was established to promote company-wide digital transformation, and he has been in charge of his current duties ever since.

When talking about DX (Digital Transformation), the focus tends to be on the introduction of digital technology, but what's important is not simply the introduction of digital technology, but the pursuit of a better customer experience and the restructuring of existing business practices. The introduction of digital technology is merely a means to that end. We spoke to the DX Promotion Office about their mission as they take on the unprecedented challenge of DX, and explore business growth and new future possibilities.

Mitsubishi Estate has had a dedicated DX department since 2018, but our company, which handles the housing business within the Mitsubishi Estate Group, has a new DX department that was just launched in April 2020. Currently, we are working on four main projects: 1) a smart home project, 2) a data utilization project, 3) online procedures for contract holders, and 4) redefining the customer experience.
With the Smart Home Project 1, we are not only able to temporarily provide customers with the convenience of being able to control IoT devices in their homes with an app or voice, but we also see it as an opportunity to further improve the customer experience by obtaining data on how customers use a home, which is an important product for our company, and using that data to plan products and propose better lifestyles after customers move in. Of course, since a home is a product in which privacy protection is important, we are not simply obtaining data on customers' living conditions, but rather understanding how home appliances are used, and using that data to understand what home appliances are valuable to customers and use that information in product planning.We also believe that in the future it may be possible to detect abnormalities in home appliances before they break down and propose repairs or replacements.
The second initiative is an effort to integrate customer data stored by each department within the company and utilize it for marketing purposes. By centralizing customer data and linking each piece of data with a customer ID, we can gain a comprehensive understanding of each customer's journey. This will enable us to understand and address the needs and concerns of each individual customer across departments, and we aim to seamlessly improve the customer experience not only in sales negotiations for condominium sales, but also in the handover of keys and after-sales service after moving in.
Number 3 is an initiative to move contracts and subsequent administrative procedures, which have previously been handled through analog methods such as paper and mail, online. This is not a transformational initiative such as digital transformation, but it is an important project to ensure that customers can complete the procedures leading up to moving in smoothly.

■DX means rethinking existing work

4 is a vision-driven approach that redefines the condominium sales we have provided to our customers to date and reconstructs what it should be. Even in today's rapidly evolving digital technology, the business flow of condominium sales has not changed much from the past. For about half a century, customers have seen an advertisement, visited a model room, and then visited several times to negotiate before signing a contract. While we have of course implemented digital technologies for online advertising, websites, and remote sales meetings, these have not been utilized to fundamentally reshape the customer experience. Therefore, with an eye on the further evolution of digital technology, we have come to the realization that we need to redefine the way condominium sales should be conducted in a way that provides the best possible customer experience. We are working on this.

■ Taking on the challenge of unknown territory where no one knows the answer

A transformation project like DX is unprecedented within the company. In other words, it's a challenge into unknown territory where no one knows the right answer, and that's what I find so appealing.
Although no one knows the correct answer, there are already many precedents in the world, and we have knowledgeable personnel within the company, so by gathering information both internally and externally, we can find clues. By further shaping these clues through external and internal information gathering, and by trying small things and quickly accumulating successful experiences, I believe that by repeating this process, we will be able to arrive at the post-DX vision.

■Message

There is an analogy that the protagonists of transformations such as digital transformation are young people/outsiders. This refers to the mindset and skills that allow them to discover and realize the vision they need without being bound by traditional values. Now that Japanese companies are being called upon to transform through digital transformation, it can be said that we are living in a world where the mindsets and skills of young people, students, should be put to good use.

Student Newspaper April 2021 Special Edition by Nao Suzuki, a fourth-year student at International Christian University