Thirty-one years on both sides of the gift counter

Mandate

Keep gift-season, shop and online promises reliable while reducing dependence on a 1998 merchandising system and its single vendor.

Outcomes

• Moved direct-ship gift orders to a separate platform before ochugen 2023, cutting name and address errors from 0.38% to 0.09%
• Built carrier capacity into December order intake, raising on-promise delivery to 99.4%
• Introduced reserved-production click-and-collect at all 46 shops with 0.3% cancellations
• Started the staged merchandising and production-planning replacement, due in March 2027

Decisions in context

I took this role in March 2020, weeks before department stores closed during the first state of emergency. Online gift orders rose sharply that spring, and the strain showed the board how much depended on one old system and one small vendor. My mandate since then has been to keep our customers' few critical moments reliable while that dependence is reduced in stages. I lead business systems, shop and counter support, and data exchange with department stores and carriers. I present systems investment and information-security matters to the board and report on controls to our statutory auditor. The president sets commercial priorities; my recommendations often narrow what we promise so that we can keep it at peak volume. I am an executive officer, not a director, and I describe my board exposure as presenting rather than serving.

Reason for the move

Current appointment; seeking one outside board or advisory role alongside it.

Mandate

Stabilise shop, counter and online systems and prepare them for tax and payment changes.

Outcomes

• Built the October 2019 reduced consumption-tax rate into product and channel master data
• Introduced cashless payment at every shop during 2019
• Took department-store gift-order files directly, ending address retyping at the shipping centre

Decisions in context

As general manager I inherited systems that worked but were held together by individual knowledge. My first task was to write down how gift orders, shop sales and department-store settlements actually flowed, because several steps lived only in the habits of two senior staff. We then removed the most fragile manual work. The shipping centre had been retyping recipient addresses from printed department-store lists, and we arranged to receive those lists as files instead. The 2019 consumption-tax change was the period's hardest deadline. Takeaway sweets kept the reduced rate while café service in four shops did not, and our tax advisers ruled on mixed gift sets. I insisted that the rate sit in master data set by finance rather than in till programs. Cashless payment reached every shop that year, which shortened cash handling at closing.

Reason for the move

Appointed executive officer and CIO as the board sought a single owner for systems risk.

Mandate

Bring systems management in-house after years of relying entirely on outside vendors.

Outcomes

• Automated nightly intake of department-store sales data for counters on consumption-based purchasing
• Launched the company's first online shop in 2011 on a hosted platform
• Moved backup servers away from the factory after the 2011 rolling power cuts

Decisions in context

I joined Utsugane from the integrator that had installed its shop tills, so I knew the company's systems from outside before I was responsible for them. The then president wanted someone who would own the result rather than hand it over. In my first winter I sat at the shipping centre during oseibo to see where orders slowed down, and much of my first year followed from what I saw. Department-store counter sales had been keyed in from faxed reports; we automated that intake so the factory planned from the previous day's figures. The online shop we opened in 2011 was small, about two percent of sales at first, but it taught us to handle orders arriving overnight. The spring 2011 power cuts showed how much depended on servers beside the factory, and we moved our backups to a data centre that year.

Reason for the move

Promoted to lead an enlarged systems department.

Mandate

Install and adapt packaged systems for food retailers and makers with their own shops.

Outcomes

• Delivered eleven implementations for food retailers and confectioners
• Led the 2008 replacement of Utsugane's shop tills
• Wrote the firm's testing checklist for seasonal items and gift orders

Decisions in context

Sennagare hired me when Kawatsubaki moved its systems to a contractor, and the change taught me how differently the work looks from a supplier's desk. Each client believed its business was ordinary until we tried to load its products into a package. Seasonal sweets appeared for three weeks and vanished; department stores sent gift files in layouts of their own; one shop chain closed its tills later than the overnight batch expected. I became a project manager in 2006 and led teams of up to nine engineers. My most useful contribution was a testing checklist for gift seasons, assembled from failures I had seen in earlier projects. I also learnt the limits of an outside integrator. We usually left before a system faced its first December, and someone else lived with what we had designed.

Reason for the move

Invited by Utsugane's president to lead its systems from inside the company.

Mandate

Maintain item and supplier data, including monthly settlements for brands selling on consumption-based purchasing.

Outcomes

• Maintained master data for around 60,000 items across three stores
• Reconciled monthly settlements for about 140 suppliers on consumption-based purchasing
• Prepared gift-season order files for suppliers shipping direct to recipients

Decisions in context

Moving from the gift desk into the systems office showed me what lay behind the slips I had written. The store held around 60,000 items in its merchandise master and settled monthly with about 140 suppliers selling through consumption-based purchasing, so the store recorded a purchase only when the customer paid. Confectioners were among the most demanding of those suppliers because their counters changed products with the seasons. I prepared the gift-order files sent to suppliers shipping direct to recipients, and I learnt how easily a name could be mis-keyed between the slip and the file. My manager made me check each December file against a sample of original slips, a habit I have kept. When the store moved its systems work outside in 2003, I followed the work rather than stay in a role that was disappearing.

Reason for the move

Moved to an integrator when the store transferred its systems work to an outside contractor in 2003.

Mandate

Learn the store's customers and gift-season processes before any specialist assignment.

Outcomes

• Took ochugen and oseibo orders at the gift centre for four seasons each
• Checked noshi wording and recipient details on carbon-slip orders
• Proposed numbering slips by delivery area, a change adopted across the gift centre

Decisions in context

New graduates at Kawatsubaki started on the sales floor whatever their degree, and I spent four years between the food hall and the gift centre. In July and December the centre ran on carbon slips. The customer chose a box from the catalogue, gave the recipient's details and told us the name for the noshi wrapping. I learnt to read the customer's handwriting back to them before they left. I also saw what a mistake cost. A wrong address meant a parcel returned in January; a wrong name meant an apology to a family who had already been embarrassed. My one improvement was modest: numbering slips by delivery area so the back office could batch them faster. Those years gave me the customer's view of a gift order, which I still bring to every review of a system's error log.

Reason for the move

Transferred to the systems office, in line with my engineering degree.