Q. What kind of business are you using Questetra for?
TMJ Inc. is an outsourcing company that provides BPO services such as contact centres.
Originally, it was created as a spin-off from the in-house call centre of Fukutake Publishing Co. Ltd. (now Benesse Corporation). We are now responding to outsourcing needs in a wide range of fields from manufacturing to public organizations.
We use approximately 200 Questetra business flows (as of March 2018) for various internal decisions, applications and reporting, from requests for certification stamping or authority setting applications for the information system to the general affairs. In addition to regular employees, some contractors and part-time workers were also given accounts so that approximately 2000 people currently use it.
Q. Please tell us how you utilize it specifically
The reason we introduced Questetra was the migration of groupware, so we initially used it for routine tasks that had been operated in the former groupware.
The Workflow in the groupware was functionally simple, so there were only about 10 types of routine tasks. We selected Questetra as a platform which would enable us to visualize and standardize our business, not only to simply migrate but also to allow cross-divisional improvements including other tasks. Then, we added Questetra Apps to organize and standardize similar tasks which had been operated in different.
We have resolved our issues with certification stamping requests for example, which used to be done by email or on the phone, with the following measures:
- The general affairs staff who receives the request checks the contents and asks for any missing information
- Now the form that accepts the request must be submitted with all the required contents
- Delays occurring depending on the person in charge of the processing
- Now anyone can take over the task even if the person in charge changes
- The frequency of request occurrences/progress status/the current person in charge was unknown
- Now all these can be understood easily
As a result, we have shortened the processing time for this request which occurred about 300 times a month by about 40%. Besides, we use it in various administrative tasks such as in-house purchasing approval, certificate issuance application, decision-making in human resources, and IT management tasks such as requesting system account applications and authority settings.
Q. I heard that work improvement is promoted also at each site
Currently there are 19 sites in Japan including offices and centres, and each branch has people in charge of business improvement, designing and operating Questetra Apps.
In the centre in Sapporo city for example, they are using Questetra for the following tasks:
- Administrator overtime work request
- Error reporting
- Standard email guidance for meeting coordination
We believe that improvement should be promoted by the workers themselves at each site, since many of the problems at the work site are understood by the people there. Within TMJ Inc. there is a system for promoting business improvement and employees are acutely aware of this, so for them Questetra is an easy-to-use improvement tool.
Q. Please tell us about your plans for future expansion
The first year was used for doing grass-roots improvement activities and it was successful enough. From the second year onward, we set specific improvement targets numerically and are making further improvements. Moreover, we have not granted a Questetra account to everyone in the company yet. We hope to expand the scope to make the environment more user-friendly for improving business operations.
