How a Filipino company developed its own digital transformation path

MAXIMUM Solutions Corp. (MS Corp.), an IT/Manpower Solutions company based in Manila, was established in 2001 as a two-person company. From its humble beginnings, the company has grown into a complete outsourcing business with a team of over 200 professionals.

Like many other long-established businesses, MS Corp. had operations and infrastructure largely based on offline systems, such as paper and spreadsheet printouts which were handed out physically to managers and the accounting team. They were able to get by until the pandemic when the time had come for them to look for digital solutions to update the obsolete workflow management styles. Unfortunately, the available solutions were either too costly or had too steep a learning curve for their employees to quickly learn and deploy.

Enter Kintone whose low-code workflow platform allowed MS Corp. to develop its own solution, automating much of the work it had to do manually before. In an online discussion with The Manila Times,

Yoshihisa Aono, chief executive of Cybozu, the parent company of Kintone, and Paolo Alcantara, sales and account manager at MS Corp. explained the keys to a better and quicker digital transformation.

The Manila Times (TMT): What is the business of MS Corp.? Who are your major clients?

Paolo Alcantara: Maximum Solutions Corp. is an IT/Manpower Solutions company. We provide end-to-end permanent or temporary staffing and provide you with the latest advancements in technology for both hardware and software. We have been in the industry for over 20 years, and we have been growing year on year. What started out as a two-person company became a team composed of 200+ professionals over the years.

TMT: What were the challenges to the business during the pandemic?

Alcantara: We continued with this paper-based workflow management because we believed it worked for us and there was no reason to change. However, when Covid hit, and we were all required to work from home, numerous challenges started presenting themselves.

For example, we would be sending emails to our manager, who would then send them on to the accounting department. This works fine with a small team that is working together in an office, but with everyone spread around working from home in different locations, there were just too many emails flying around. This is a typical challenge that we would face. Additionally, with emails, it was hard to go back and see what changes people have made, comments, time stamps, etc.

TMT: How did you address those challenges? How did Kintone help in your digital transformation journey?

Alcantara: My team (Sales) was one of the first to deploy Kintone. We needed to be in constant contact with each other and I, as the manager, needed to be in contact with all my representatives around the country. Kintone has helped us do this and essentially replaced our old process with a completely new, more efficient one.

The Kintone platform has a number of features that work well for my team. It has an instant communication capability that allows us all to communicate in a clear and organized manner. The dashboard provides us all with an overview of what is going on, the status of tasks, etc., and this really helps management keep things under control and moving forward.

There is also a digitized approval process, which allows us to submit documents for approval which could then be done digitally — instead of manually signing forms as we did previously. There are more examples, but this gives you an idea of how many mundane, repetitive, rulesbased tasks have been automated and it has made our life significantly easier and more productive.

TMT: What is the business of Kintone?

Yoshihisa Aono: Kintone is a customizable workplace platform that organizes your team’s data, workflows and conversations in one centralized place for a more streamlined work experience. Leveraging a proprietary software that requires no coding, which means users do not need a deep tech background, Kintone is set to grant organizations the flexibility and agility needed in today’s digital age to manage their workflows.

TMT: How do you manage customer relationships, and how do your consultants work with customers to understand their pain points and craft workflow solutions?

Aono: Our consultants have been selected and trained to gain a deep understanding of client needs. They have in-depth knowledge of the clients’ products and could walk our clients through customized solutions. We also select consultants to be geographically diverse, able to speak local languages and understand local customs, so the client feels a greater sense of connection and could discuss pain points freely.

Finally, because our consultants already work in a given region, they have experience rolling out solutions for businesses facing similar problems, giving them a wealth of experience to use in providing high-quality service.

TMT: How were you able to quickly develop workable solutions for MS Corp. which was forced to work remotely in a short period of lead time, whilst also “providing cost-effective, flexible, agile and timely responses”?

Aono: We started providing our solution to the sales team, as they were the ones in greatest need at that time given their requirement to communicate and coordinate with each other. We were quickly able to replace their current paper-based system with our digital platform and connect their sales consultants in the field. We then helped create customized apps that enabled them to have a digital workplace that maximized their team’s performance with increased transparency, as well as facilitated communication.

Our dashboard even made it possible for their management team to approve necessary documents digitally, rather than spending time on manual signatures as had been done previously.