ZOSHINKAI PUBLISHERS Inc.

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Using Data on Potential Customers to Improve the Efficiency and Reduce the Costs of Direct Mail Services

This example is a translation of an article that originally appeared on Fujitsu's Japanese Web site.

ZOSHINKAI PUBLISHERS Inc. efficiently built a new system using Symfoware Server and Symfoware Navigator that searches for potential customers who are interested in online study. The purpose was to extract potential target customers accurately from huge amounts of data accumulated in the core system's database. Accurate extraction of data not only improved the efficiency of direct mail, but reduced the cost of direct mail by accurately estimating beforehand the number of copies of brochures needed.

The Correct Approach when there is a Large Number of Potential Customers

ZOSHINKAI group, publicly known by the abbreviation "ZKAI", consists of three pillars; an online study business, a face-to-face study business, and a publishing business. The online study business is the core division of the group, with almost 80% of the group's total sales. They provide detailed educational services by preparing abundant courses, meeting a variety of needs.

Mr. Masayuki Kubota, the chief of the Sales Planning Section of the Marketing Department in the Online Study High School Business Headquarters explains: "As our services are not visible, providing detailed information on brochures is indispensable." Certainly it is hard to show the content of high quality services completely and accurately with only 15 seconds in a TV commercial or in magazine advertising. Consequently various materials included in direct mail play the primary role in the sales promotion.

However, it is hard to send direct mail efficiently. Generally, you could say it would be a great success if you had a collect rate of 5%. Running an extremely precise direct mail business is a big challenge for the company.

"We had been searching for effective methods with which we can appropriately approach only highly motivated students who are seriously thinking about advancement among the students who are expected to be potential customers in the future," is the reason why they selected the solution, says Mr. Kubota.

Installing Symfoware Server and Symfoware Navigator to Create a New System

The data on potential customers is stored in the database in the core system. They used to ask for the Information System Department to refine and extract the required data as needed when refining data for direct mail.

Mr. Makoto Inaho, the chief the System Section of the Information System Department says, "The biggest problem was the processing time. It sometimes took more than ten hours to search for the data we want based on the requested search criteria. The core system also handles regular operations, which made it hard to respond to our requests immediately."

However, for accurate marketing, it is necessary to be able to fetch necessary data immediately. They decided to install the high-performance and highly-reliable RDB engine Symfoware Server and R-OLAP infrastructure product featuring a flexible multi-dimension data analysis and form creation "Symfoware Navigator" and built up the framework so that the User Division can exploit the data as they need it.

"We compared several candidates but we comprehensively evaluated Fujitsu's products from three aspects; search speed, usability, and cost-effectiveness," is why Symfoware Server and Symfoware Navigator became their choice, explains Mr. Inaho.

Unlike other products where you receive the query result in the form of the number of hits for the search keyword, Symfoware Navigator shows a variety of data on a table all at once. Moreover, as it saves the search criteria template in the form of file, they can later update or execute the file. Once they give it the conditions, you do not have to refine your search again and again in later phases. "No matter how fast a single search can be made, products that take longer total working hours were worthless," says Mr. Inaho.

In addition, products that need a respective license fee for the number of installed clients may potentially have a cost problem when the number of users increased. "In that respect, Symfoware Navigator where the license contract is made based on the number of concurrent users connected to the server, was highly appreciated because we have been able to finish installing it in all clients beforehand," emphasizes Mr. Inaho.

Task Times Reduced from Weeks to Minutes, Massive Reductions in Production Costs

After the new system was adopted, the efficiency of the business processes dramatically improved. "Previously, we had to wait for about one week until we could receive the extracted result of the target customers after we submitted a work request form, even for a periodical direct mail operation. Currently the data is ready for us in about two minutes," says Mr. Kubota voicing his satisfaction. He continues that data exploitation by the person in charge of using that data leads to the standardization and an increase in his or her skill.

Precisely refined searches have also greatly reduced the cost direct mail. "Copies of brochures to be included are neither excessive nor insufficient in number, as they used to be, because we are able to calculate the number of copies properly. As a result, we were able to make the product cost more appropriate," says Mr. Kubota.

The system is also used for purposes other than searching for potential customers. "Actually, we had been analyzing the attributes of those who signed up using statistical analysis software that required a high knowledge. However, we gradually migrated to Symfoware Navigator. Part of the system started in April, 2001," explains Mr. Kubota.

Previously, only the trained, skillful, full-time staff were able to use the statistical analysis software, but Symfoware Navigator enables everyone in the End User Division to make an analysis independently with a user-friendly GUI. "This is an epoch-making change," says Mr. Kubota.

Symfoware Navigator sends data to Excel with one click of a button and you can graph the data with operations familiar to you. Mr. Kubota says, "We're also satisfied with the easy data processing using familiar software."

Less work request forms allow the Information System Department to focus on their own tasks. The new system was extremely beneficial to both the End User Department and the Information System Department.

Toward the Creation of a Data Warehouse for Integrated Control of Customer Data

The data in the core system is sent to the server every night, using nightly batch processing. This means the most up-to-date data is available as fast as possible. This is because the data drastically changes on the enrollment application deadline date.

However, currently more than one table is created per purpose and many of them overlap. The company is trying to improve this and to consolidate the data on each customer to help the customer service expand.

"Migration from the data mart to a data warehouse is one of the biggest challenges," stresses Mr. Inaho. Mr. Kubota also hopes, "One-to-one type marketing could be possible by enhancing the packaged items in a DM if the customer is strongly expected to sign up."

Recently other divisions which happened to know the effect of installation of the system started to ask to use the system. Symfoware Server and Symfoware Navigator seem to be used more and more frequently.

Company Overview

ZOSHINKAI PUBLISHERS Inc.
Established: 1931
Capital: 264 million yen
Number of employees: 357 (as of March, 2001)
Consolidated net sales: 18.219 billion yen (actual sales in 1999)
URL: http://www.zkai.co.jp/
Overview of operations: Publishing and distributing online study, study books for elementary, junior-high and high-school students, and administering public practice examinations. A pioneering company that has been in the education service business for 70 years. Boasting its history of 40 years with its very familiar name "ZKAI". Separated the private tutoring school business and the publishing business into different companies. Exploiting the comprehensive strength of the group in management.