Large-scale system development lacked the human resources on the halfway because of the sudden separation of staff in the IT section so that we needed a person with enough knowledge about IT in haste. That's why we decided to ask Arcadia. In this interview, we asked the three persons in charge " Why did Shochiku choose Arcadia from among the consulting firm?
Nobuaki Aihara: Image headquarters image generalization director
Yoshinori Yamashita: Management headquarters system department general manager (right on the photo)
Kosaku Igawa: Management headquarters system (left on the photo)
Q. Please tell us what Shochiku Co., Ltd do in your business.
A. Director Aihara: The main business is 1. the movie and 2, the play and 3. The business (business and real estate). We have been doing business for 113 years this year. Besides that we have the management department as a back office.
Q. Please tell the scale of your company in the figure.
A. General manager Yamashita: Sales amount ( including consolidated companies) is 100 billion and the number of employees is about 1,300 people.
Q. To come straight to the point, we would like to hear the relation with Arcadia. Why did you decide to ask them at the first time?
A. Director Aihara: It was about one and half year ago when we talked first time. Though we were on a system developing project, at that time, we needed to request an expert from outside to participate into our project because the staff in our system department suddenly could not keep working on it. Arcadia was one of some companies introduced to us, and this was how our relationships started.
Q. When you hire an expert from outside, of course, it costs. Did you really need to ask the specialist from outside?
A. Director Aihara: In advancing the system development, we users have to understand and judge about the system development with venders (= Systems Development Corporation) properly. Thatﾕs why it is indispensable for us to have an expert to manage the vendors. Therefore, it was a necessary cost to hire a specialist from the outside if we had no such experts inside.
Q. How did you know Arcadia?
A. Director Aihara: A person in our personnel division introduced to us.
Q. Did you think about any other company except for Arcadia?
A. Director Aihara: Yes, we did. However, we comparatively asked Arcadia at an early stage because the schedule was greatly late, and we urgently needed an expert
However, we decided to ask Arcadia for some advice with having help from a major company. We expected to get the proposal and the solution that are more suitable for us from Arcadia than a major company.
A. General manager Yamashita: Let me give some comments about that, there is a way of asking a big and reliable company for the safe support. However, like time, what kind of person who comes is very important in case we use such an outsourcing service, not a name of company. The reason we made a contract with Arcadia at earlier stage was not saving time but the person coming was so nice. Thatﾕs why we didnﾕt need to ask other company.
"Honestly speaking, we did not trust them completely from the beginning so that we were trying to see how they work with a short-term contract."
Q. Arcadia established in 2005, so they don't have a long history yet. Didn't you have any worries about it?
A. Mr. Igawa: Honestly, we did not trust them completely from the beginning. We did not make one-year-contract, a big investment, from the first and we tried to see how they worked by working together for a while. Therefore, the contract had started a three months-term contract as a trial.
A. Director Aihara: Finally we had made a contract again after the trail because we found that they were reliable and also itt was an important phase.
Q. What kind of feeling s do you have when you decided to make a continuous contract?
A. Director Aihara: I still remember that they discussed with the vendors as an expert when we had a meeting with the vendors for the first time. After that Arcadia came to join the meeting on the system development officially, we got great supports as we expected with working tother, like ﾒhow we should understand the meetingﾓ andﾓ how we should facilitate the meetingﾓ and so on.
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We appreciated them that they gave us support on our desire very sincerely.
Q. Generally, speaking of a consultant, people say that they only direct bumptiously and irresponsibly without doing any action, I think." So wasn't there any resistance from the staff?
A. Mr. Igawa: No, there was no resistance there. Because we felt like that we hired them as a par-time expert not an outside consultant. Some seemed to be dissatisfied about the cost, though. However, because of their integrity that they worked on so hard even on a tiny work and their great performance made them all satisfied. And now, we all want them stay in our company as long as they can. I guess the point we all appreciate them is that they work together with us like a good business partner not like a Sparta consultant. I think they are much more flexible than other consultants.
"An important thing is not to stick to the name of the company when you ask a consultant forma consulting firm. A company name doesnﾕt work."
Q. Finally, please give some advice to the companies which are considering introduce an IT consultant in the future.
A. Mr. Igawa: To the companies wondering that they should hire Arcadia or not?
Q. No, not only Arcadia but also some other companies. I would like you to get a neutral advice, please.
A. Mr. Igawa: I recommend you that you should put emphasis on the person who comes not on the name of the company because the name doesnﾕt work for you. Also the consultant fee changes according to the name of the company so that we cannot say it is a good idea to try to choose a consultant only among famous consulting companies. Moreover, we might say that we user-side have to do some more study and research to improve ourselves in order to avoid the situations such as we easily buy an too much expensive system without enough knowledge.
Q. Would you tell us what kind of things do users have to study, and what kinds of aspect s do they have to have when they try to hire an expert form a consulting firm?
A. General manager Yamashita: I would recommend that you should make a short-term contract at the begging to check how they work. Also donﾕt forget to tell what your objective is with accuracy. As failure example of us, when we asked a certain big consulting firm to help us with developing a system some years ago, we were expecting them that they would do everything we hope and everything would go right. However, in fact, only lots of consultants came up and left only one blue print. For us, we thought we had cost the paper ten millions yen and they didnﾕt do anything for us, though, they might thought that they did a great job. Thatﾕs why it is very important to chick if their service matches with your requirement in order to avoid such mismatch cases.
Mr. Igawa: It is not good to depend on venders perfectly. I think it is important to think that it is only you that work on the project until end as getting some help form a consultant. These kinds of attitude is necessary to work with consulting firms, I think .
General manager Yamashita: Though,maybe, you might thought that working with consulting firms is a bit troublesome through our stories, I believe that it is a great idea to work with them like Arcadia in case you need a expert. So here remember that donﾕt forget the reason why you need to hire a consultant from outside and donﾕt be confused with the name of the company and you will obtain more profit as you invest. We would truly like to work with Arcadia for a while in the future (laugh) .
Interview execution on June 5, 2008
Interviewer / composition / text: 3Way Ltd.
