Six chapters from the counter to the technology division

Mandate

Build an internal technology function able to specify, test and decide, and modernise store, payment, pharmacy and member systems without losing trading days.

Outcomes

• Kept medicines and 41 sensitive product groups out of a supplier data service launched in September 2025
• Moved 58 per cent of daily-food items to automatic ordering after a year of staff-confirmed forecasts
• Grew the internal division from 38 to 71 employees and brought acceptance testing in-house
• Began replacing in-store servers in all 214 stores while retaining a full day of offline trading

Decisions in context

I lead technology for a chain whose stores are pharmacies, grocers and, after a typhoon, sometimes the only shop open in a town. My division works through five department heads covering store and payment systems, pharmacy systems, members and data, infrastructure and information security. About 120 engineers from partner companies work with us on contract. I report to the president and present to the board each quarter as an executive officer, without a director's appointment. The decisions on this site from my present role concern forecasting and customer data. Each involved a smaller or slower benefit than a colleague wanted, and I have tried to report those costs alongside the results. The server replacement will run until 2028, and my priority is that every store, including the 78 with pharmacies, keeps a full day of offline trading throughout it.

Reason for the move

Current appointment; seeking one compatible outside directorship with the president's consent.

Mandate

Run tills, payments and the points programme as one area, and prepare every store for the 2019 consumption-tax change.

Outcomes

• Delivered the October 2019 two-rate tax change in 196 stores
• Launched code payments through the tills in February 2020 with refunds reconciled by tax rate
• Raised cashless transactions from 23 to 37 per cent between September 2019 and June 2020
• Launched the points app in 2020 while keeping the plastic card for members who preferred it

Decisions in context

This role put the tills, payments and points programme under one manager for the first time. The 2019 tax change dominated its middle years: two rates on almost every basket, new receipts, new price labels and training for about 1,900 checkout staff. Postponing code payments until they ran through the tills was the most contested decision of the period, and I had to defend it to a sales director with a strong case. The points app, launched in 2020, was my other main project. I kept the plastic card alongside it, which marketing considered an expensive compromise. It meant that members in our rural stores, many of them over seventy, kept their points without being pushed onto a phone. When the company separated technology from general affairs in 2021, I was asked to lead the new division.

Reason for the move

Appointed the company's first chief technology officer when technology was separated from general affairs.

Mandate

Replace ageing tills and back-office systems and connect the dispensing pharmacies to the store network.

Outcomes

• Replaced tills and back-office systems in 152 stores between 2013 and 2015 without losing a trading day
• Connected 41 dispensing pharmacies to the store network for stock and staffing data
• Introduced store acceptance tests run by a manager, a pharmacist and a checkout supervisor

Decisions in context

I returned to Kusunomi Drug when it was adding food to its stores faster than its systems could absorb. The tills were eleven years old, and the back-office system handled date-coded chilled products badly. Between 2013 and 2015 we replaced both in 152 stores, converting each store overnight with a pharmacist, a manager and a checkout supervisor testing before opening. No store lost a trading day, though four opened late. I also connected 41 dispensing pharmacies to the store network so that their stock and staffing data sat alongside the rest of the store. My team was small, and partner engineers joined us for each conversion wave. The habit of testing with three store roles on an ordinary day began here, and it remains our rule for anything that reaches a store, from a price-label change to a new payment terminal.

Reason for the move

Promoted to run payment and member systems as cashless payments and the points programme grew.

Mandate

Turn pharmacy customers' requests into planned releases and reduce faults after each release.

Outcomes

• Moved the product from irregular releases to four planned releases a year
• Roughly halved the faults reported in the month after a release over three years
• Declined a large chain's custom screen that would have complicated work in several hundred small pharmacies

Decisions in context

I joined Sawarabe Pharmacy Systems to learn how software for pharmacists is built, not merely specified. As product manager for its dispensing software, I served roughly 900 pharmacies across western Japan. Releases had been irregular and often followed whichever customer complained loudest. We moved to four planned releases a year and roughly halved the faults reported in the month after a release over three years. The hardest decision was declining a screen that one large chain wanted, because it would have complicated work for several hundred independent pharmacies. The chain stayed, unhappily, for two more years. I learnt how a supplier sees its customers, which has made me a more exact customer since. When Kusunomi Drug asked me back to lead store systems, I accepted, and I took the release calendar, and a sharper sense of what suppliers hear, with me.

Reason for the move

Returned to Kusunomi Drug to lead store systems as the chain expanded its food range.

Mandate

Represent pharmacists while the dispensing system was introduced at new pharmacy counters.

Outcomes

• Wrote dispensing requirements tested by working pharmacists before each rollout
• Supported introduction at 28 new dispensing pharmacies
• Kept a second check on high-risk medicines despite its time cost

Decisions in context

I remained a pharmacist in this role but spent most of my week with the systems section and the software supplier. The company was adding dispensing counters quickly, and the new system had to work for pharmacists who had trained on paper records. I wrote requirements, tested each release with working pharmacists before it reached a counter and supported introduction at 28 new pharmacies. I argued successfully to keep a second check on high-risk medicines, although it added about a minute to those prescriptions. I had no direct reports. My authority came from knowing the dispensing process and from being willing to stand at a new counter on its first morning. Studying part-time for a master's degree in informatics from 2005 gave me the vocabulary to discuss design with engineers rather than only describe problems to them.

Reason for the move

Joined a pharmacy-software company to learn how such products are built and released.

Mandate

Dispense prescriptions safely and advise customers on non-prescription medicines.

Outcomes

• Dispensed and checked prescriptions at two Kagoshima city stores
• Led a dispensing counter of three pharmacists from 2002
• Recorded label and medicine-history mismatches that later informed the systems project

Decisions in context

I began as a pharmacist in two Kagoshima city stores, dispensing and checking prescriptions and advising customers on non-prescription medicines. On busy afternoons I worked a till like everyone else, which taught me more about queues than any later report. From 2002 I led a dispensing counter of three pharmacists. The work was clinical and practical, and I had no responsibility for systems. I did, however, keep a notebook of every mismatch between a printed label, a medicine-history record and the stock on the shelf. Most were harmless, but each cost a pharmacist time and attention while a customer waited. When the company asked for a pharmacist to join its dispensing-system project in 2003, my head of pharmacy operations showed that notebook to the systems manager and suggested that I should go.

Reason for the move

Volunteered to represent pharmacists on the company's dispensing-system project.