Yuki Sakate

Leveraging Our Strengths to Take on New Challenges

I currently work in the Strategic Marketing Department of Kravis Company, where I handle marketing, but immediately after joining the company, I provided technical support for products from an American semiconductor manufacturer as a field application engineer (FAE). I decided to join Macnica because I was attracted to the FAE's position of ``connecting people and technology'' on the global stage, but the work was much harder than I expected (lol). Macnica 's culture of delegation of authority is not a lie, and people are entrusted with big tasks from a young age, but the level of technical ability required is also high, and I felt sorry for my inexperienced self and ran into the company bathroom in tears, telling my classmates. I was often comforted. Still, after three years of hard work, I finally thought I was able to stand on my own as an engineer, when my boss at the time called out to me. "Sakate-san, would you like to try marketing?" Up until then, as part of my work, I had been compiling answers to customer questions and creating manuals, but my boss recognized that my strength was my ability to convey information to customers in an easy-to-understand manner. He gave me a new path and suggested that I could make the most of my strengths if I worked in a marketing position. I was very happy that my boss had been paying close attention to the efforts I was making.

For this reason, I was put in charge of marketing the products handled by the Kravis Company. Generally speaking, marketing is about creating a system in which products sell naturally. I'm working to create a place to receive. This is the job of "creating points of contact" between so-called customer needs and the products, solutions, and services of Kravis Company. In normal sales activities and technical support, we explain the strengths of the products we propose and how to use them. How can we solve the problem?”, it is important to transmit information in an easy-to-understand manner. As recommended by my boss, my strengths are often utilized, and I feel that this is a position that suits me.

Connecting the Needs of Both Customers and Suppliers

The work of the Kravis Company's marketing team is always challenging, and demands are high from within the company and from suppliers, but it is also very rewarding. In the past, we received a request from a supplier manufacturer in the United States, saying, ``We would like you to raise awareness of our products in any way you like.'' The supplier's product is a product that realizes facial recognition and attribute analysis using AI, and has an overwhelming performance advantage compared to competing products, and although its use was expanding overseas at the time, it was As there are only a limited number of examples of its use, both as a supplier manufacturer and as Kravis Company, we needed to carry out effective sales promotion activities. Therefore, we have decided that our target market is the manufacturing industry, where there is a growing need to utilize AI to improve the efficiency of factory line inspection processes and Macnica worker work management. We planned an AI utilization seminar. What I was conscious of when holding a seminar was to make it an attractive and fruitful event for our customers. To that end, although it was a short period of two and a half months, we would like to hear about implementation examples that our customers may find useful.We would like to hear from companies that have actually introduced AI within their own companies and are starting to see results. We have also arranged to have speakers from companies that are developing AI solutions for the manufacturing industry. As a result, we were able to create an event packed with information that was appealing to our customers, and we were able to have more than 300 people participate. Approaching so many customers during normal sales activities requires a great deal of resources and time, so we are very satisfied that we were able to provide information to as many as 300 customers. We were also able to obtain lead information from participants (information about customers who are interested in our company's products and services and may purchase in the near future), which can be effectively utilized in future sales activities. However, I believe that I was able to make a significant contribution to the company and to our suppliers. Through this event, I received words of gratitude from many customers, supplier manufacturers, and internal team members, and I will never forget the great sense of accomplishment I felt.

Because we, the marketing team, do not have regular and fixed tasks, we need to set our own goals, think about how we can achieve them, and put them into practice. It's a difficult job, but it's interesting because it's fumbling.

Work That Continues to Sow and Nurture the Seeds Beneath Our Feet.

We handle the world's most advanced technology that domestic customers do not yet know about. That is why it is necessary to first look at the "market reaction" to the technology. We also predict that the need for this technology will increase in the future, so we have concluded a transaction contract with the supplier manufacturer. It is necessary to look for reactions such as "Is the solution suitable for the customer?" and "Is the price appropriate for the customer?" It is marketing that can effectively confirm the reaction. This is an important role that cannot be fulfilled with limited sales resources.

I also feel that marketing work is an important job that aligns with Our Group's Purpose that defines Macnica 's existence. Macnica 's Our Group's Purpose includes the following phrase: ``Explore the world's skills: cutting-edge technology and knowledge: intelligence, and continue to sow the seeds at your feet, nurture them, connect them, and weave them.'' Our marketing team is responsible for continuing to sow and nurturing these seeds. Marketing is aimed not only at the "clear segment" who have a high need for the product and are aware of the product, or the "obvious segment" who are considering purchasing the product, but also from those who do not have clear needs and are interested in the product. We will also disseminate information to customers in the ``latent layer'' who have a low level of satisfaction.

In addition, based on the lead information obtained when providing information, we regularly distribute information to customers to arouse customer interest, nurture them into "clear layers" and "revealed layers", and I will do it until the engineer makes a conductor until the approach. I would like to continue to work hard every day so that our sales and engineers can ultimately help solve our customers' problems.