In the first year of using CET, KOKUYO employees reduced time spent creating estimations by 40 percent. Horiuchi also noticed employees started enjoying their work even more because CET is innovative and fun to use. Horiuchi says employees now see their work as a creation rather than simply writing numbers.

“The first day we introduced CET to KOKUYO, the change was obvious. CET gave us a really good opportunity to think about our process and make it better too,” Horiuchi said. “CET is a super cool tool that helps us do our work faster and more creative than before.”

Before the global pandemic, many meetings with customers happened in person. Having CET allowed KOKUYO to continue meeting with customers using web-based communications and even connect with more customers outside of Japan.

“With CET, the physical distance doesn’t matter. We can now communicate with customers overseas which has broadened the possibilities for KOKUYO,” Horiuchi said.

Tomohiro Akashi, GRIP product expert, also says that CET made a positive difference in meeting with customers.

“Before CET, I needed to bring catalog books, PDFs and estimations and my bag was always so heavy,” Akashi said. “Now I only need a laptop with CET which is really helpful for the salesperson and gives us an advantage over other competitors.”

One of the more surprising results was more of KOKUYO’s salespeople started using CET to communicate with customers. KOKUYO’s salespeople started using CET to show products and layouts to the customer and capture a project’s vision before it’s handed off to design.

“It’s also making salespeople more like designers now,” Horiuchi said. “They previously didn’t want to think about colors but now they can create the layout in 3D and see it. CET was a good change and offers more inspiration for our team.”