This article reflects information as of 2020. For the latest details, please contact us.
Written by: Tomohiro Koizumi, Representative Director, tentus inc.
First of all, this case study adopted an analog, brute-force solution that is completely unbefitting of the digital age, so I apologize that it's unlikely to be much of a reference.
Since we're here anyway, I'll also summarize how, if you were to do the same thing now, there's such a simple solution.
You've all used discount coupons, right?
A certain set that's normally 700 yen for 560 yen.
These coupons are actually quite carefully thought through, decided every week through a flow like:
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Gather sales results from across the country up through the previous week and aggregate the data
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Select customer-drawing products, upsell products, and so on
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Set regional strategy products issued only in that area
The "every week" part is the crux. Suppose the coupon update day is Wednesday:
Monday: aggregate data
Tuesday: decide the coupon products
Wednesday: issue coupons
—we had to update on a very short cycle like this.
In reality, the coupon information decided from Tuesday evening into the night had to be published by early Wednesday afternoon, and there was no way we'd make it if we built things the ordinary way.
When we were asked to handle this operation, we had three possible options. Let me explain them in the order we considered them.
1. Make it possible to fully automate everything from coupon decision to issuance
From the bottom of my heart I truly wanted to go with this, but due to the client's circumstances, for some reason the material we could receive was [paper] coupon data.
At that point it makes absolutely no sense, but since we couldn't receive it as data, the path to full automation was closed off.
I truly, from the bottom of my heart, hated it, but we gave up on automation and considered the next option.
2. Use the time difference to operate through the night
10 p.m. Japan time is 3 a.m. in Hawaii. We considered a setup where the Japanese team would hand off what they'd done until 10 p.m. to a team in Hawaii to continue the work, and hand it back to the Japanese team at 9 a.m. the next morning, so we could withstand the short update cycle.
We actually secured a Hawaiian company to do it with us, but because revision requests coming from the client late Tuesday night had to be processed once on the Japanese side, we couldn't take this approach either.
Once it came to this, there was only one thing left! So, the next plan.
3. Work 24 hours
As a last resort, we built a team in Japan that could run 24 hours on a three-shift rotation.
A team reeking of sweatshop vibes.
But since it's all within the same team, handoffs go smoothly, and because the language is unified, there was no need to make documents twice.
Aside from the working conditions, it became a truly wonderful team.
We ran coupon operations with this team for about a year.
Forcibly leaping over all kinds of hurdles was our specialty, but I have nothing but memories of this project being truly grueling.
The reason we still saw it through was thanks to the team members—thanks to the team that turned into a city that never sleeps.
The story of this project ends here, but there's a hint about DX in it.
You're all thinking it, right?
1. Make it possible to fully automate everything from coupon decision to issuance
Why not just do that?
Everyone involved wished for it from the bottom of their hearts, but at the time there were various circumstances that made it impossible.
DX tends to be thought of as solving various problems with digital, but in fact, correcting those circumstances is the most important point.
In this case, unless the team making the paper coupons is digitized, the digital coupon team can't fully automate.
Furthermore, unless the client's tools are changed, full automation isn't possible.
On the client side, multiple teams—the marketing team, the store team, the product team, and so on—are involved, and unifying or changing tools isn't easy; on top of that, the systems in question are governed by yet another system team.
There are several ways to solve this as DX.
You could use OCR technology to read paper coupons and automatically digitize them, or you could use an AI-based checking tool.
But essentially, the point isn't there—the point of the DX solution is digitizing the client's teams.
In this way, DX is thinking not only about solving the challenge in front of you (coupon issuance), but about the underlying challenge in the first place (digitizing the teams).
If you're considering DX like this, please do consult us.
We'll work together with you on the root challenge.