Akinori Arai has earned the faithful confidence of customers to the degree that they have said, "If you explain five things, he understands ten, always responding to requests with proposals that are 120%."
In this profile, we introduce his path to working as a "business partner" exceeding the typical borders of "Sales."
Akinori Arai
Senior Engineer
Platform Services Business Promotion Center
Business Services Division
Business Cloud Services Group
Arai started at Hitachi Systems in 2005 and was responsible for sales of network security services to the manufacturing industry. From his second year, he was involved in launching new business in international network services and visited overseas production sites, through which he gained an awareness of the importance of understanding real market and customer needs. From 2013, he was responsible for the wholesaling and retailing industry where he established sales approach methods originating from customer business issues as opposed to focusing on simply selling products. In 2016, Arai garnered a great deal of attention both within and outside the company for successfully reconstructing the large-scale IT infrastructure of a major apparel company, and is currently active as an IT infrastructure sales specialist.
These are the words of Akinori Arai who is specializing in sales of IT infrastructure construction and operation solutions to support customer operations, and his activities have exceeded that narrow role and earned respect from both within and outside of the company.
He took his first step towards such noteworthy activities in his second year after joining the company. While creating proposals of network products for manufacturing industry customers, he became involved with the new business startup project of international network services. As a great number of manufacturing companies were rapidly expanding overseas, Arai seized the opportunity to visit China, Thailand, and other countries in order to respond to this overseas expansion, allowing him to personally experience differences between the local culture and customs and those of Japan. Moreover, he realized that, given the great diversity of local needs, "We can't resolve their issues with only the services that we provide." He fed this information back into the project, and was able to set the foundation for his own unique sales style of "Visit the actual production site to ascertain the actual issues of the site" while partially being responsible for "quality improvement" and "domain expansion" of new business.
Amidst all this, Arai faced a great ordeal. Upon being made responsible for the wholesaling and retailing industry, he was immediately faced with a difficult situation as there had been no new orders for several months. Previously, he had provided manufacturing customers with a steady stream of advanced proposals to meet network product needs but, at that time, he did not have success with proposals of network products only for the distribution industry.
"The approaches I had previously used in my work stopped functioning." Arai was troubled and his confidence was shaken. At the time, he was surprised when a superior asked him, "Have you sincerely engaged with the customer?" At some point, he had stopped engaging the customer and fell into the mindset of simply selling "Network Services". This caused Arai to review his sales style and change from focusing on the products to, firstly, trying to understand something about the business issues facing the entire industry and our customers, and the optimal approaches to resolve these. His success in this regard was a proposal made to a customer for "Work style reforms to maintain human resources". The first step was planning of a fact-finding tour of the company's offices where work style reform was already being practiced in order to specifically define the optimal approaches to the customer's management layer, human resources and general affairs departments, and information systems departments. Moreover, Arai offered complex proposals that exceeded the borders of the products and specialized domain for which he was responsible, which proved to be successful in using IT to help resolve customer business problems. Use of free address offices and establishment of a work-at-home environment, together with the use of IT to reform work styles resulted in a massive improvement in productivity and employee satisfaction. Arai's sales style was highly praised and he was able to recapture his confidence. This work style reform was also a factor in being able to continue to perform work duties even during a state of emergency due to COVID-19.
Arai, who continued to grow by focusing primarily on engaging with customers, before long grows to support customers as a "business partner" with sales that exceed conventional borders. He was given the opportunity to propose a multi-cloud solution to connect the more than 1,300 Japanese and overseas production bases and stores of the major apparel company. Arai used his knowledge and experience gained from directly engaging with the actual issues of production sites he personally visited while abroad to propose a multi-cloud environment that provides the required functions Arai has earned the praise of customers to the degree that they have said, "If you explain five things, he understands ten, always responding to requests with proposals that are 120%", and he is currently attending internal company meetings related to business policy and supports business operations as a genuine business partner.
Arai passionately stated, "I want to continue to sincerely engage our customers and use the capabilities of a team that concentrates a variety of services and specialists to support the resolution of customer business issues. I also believe that we, thanks to being a part of Hitachi Systems, will be able to provide excellent successful experiences to our customer." Arai will continue to work earnestly in helping to resolve the business issues of our customers.
The demand for solutions using Arai's know-how increased due to the great results from implementing a leading-edge optimally equipped multi-cloud environment for the major apparel company. His know-how and efforts have been communicated within and outside the company through company seminars for the wholesaling and retailing industry, and published interviews, resulting in not only more customers but also the desire to use the capabilities of Hitachi Systems to resolve overall industry issues.
After implementing a large-scale multi-cloud environment, Arai became a "business partner" of the customer. He also participates in company meetings as he continues to provide support beyond the traditional borders of sales. He is also working on rejuvenating stores in accordance with the current issue of the "New Normal". Although faced with immense pressures to meet customer expectations, he enjoys doing work that is challenging and personally satisfying.
Working in sales, Arai has acquired AWS* certification, which requires learning specialized knowledge about cloud computing and is currently working hard to acquire qualifications related to information security. This is based on his "desire to be useful in resolving customer issues", which increased his interest in technology and makes such efforts enjoyable. Others have seen his stellar example, resulting in even more sales personnel in our company acquiring technical qualifications. "I want to spread the attitude of taking on challenges regardless of the limits of the business domain to everyone around me in order to rejuvenate the organization!"
Information contained in the articles are as of the date of publication, but may be subject to change without prior notice.
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