As creative company, TRIGGER inc. deals with various problems of brands and companies in marketing field. The company handles a lot of projects regarding web, digital, visual advertisement, event, and campaign-related works. After the introduction of LINE WORKS, overall working including employees’ schedule checking, information sharing, and product checking has become efficiently processed. With this, communication through email has decreased. Further, the company could actually experience its effects, such as overall productivity of the company has increased and more. We interviewed Mr. Shou, President and Creative director, and Producer Mr. Kazuo about the changes made after the LINE WORKS introduction and how they utilize the tool.
Tell us about your company and individual roles
Mr. Shou :
Our company is a creative company, centering client works. We are in charge of consulting services such as analysis, strategy design and planning in marketing and communication that companies and administrative organizations, brands and products require. And, we are also in charge of production works, actually produce and deploy works according to the plan. In the marketing or creative field, It is common to divide into two types of companies. There are companies only taking responsible for strategy and planning, while some other companies are dealing with production solely. Unlike this, our company deals with both, and therefore one-stop operation is one of our company’s characteristics.
What were the issues before the introduction of LINE WORKS?
Mr. Shou :
In the past, there was a lot of communication held via email, SNS messenger, and phone calls. Basically, checking the document and its data has been carried out by attaching to mail or SNS. Except for some projects, schedules were managed in a very analog way, such as checking at the meeting or filling out the whiteboard.
First of all, the first problems was that it took significant amount of time when confirming various types of information. To take our company as an example, either the designs or products can be opened to the public only after the president confirmed to be okay.
Even though we strived to received confirmation from our boss, we could not receive the feedback instantly from our boss via email and phone calls as well. If we were not to receive a confirmation until our president return to the office, the manager who referred had to remain in the company for minor changes. The president also had to come back to the office from outside working on a deliberately late hour to check the product. Secondly, we spent too much time during the meeting. We had to wait for all the participants to be present at the meeting. Or even when the information that was shared in advance the meeting was not well unified, we even had to explain the purpose of the meeting and further goal of the meeting. With this, we felt that we were wasting the time needed to be spent reasonably.
Mr. Kazuo :
In terms of scheduling, each employee was managing its own schedule with individual tool. Because of this, when one of the mandatory meeting participants could not attend the meeting, we should check schedules of other participants individually and re-schedule the meeting. And, this was burdening and inefficient. Also, even if we send the emails to the other employees, we could not find out whether the recipients checked the email. Therefore, we had to call back to figure out whether the recipients actually receive and checked the email sent. I am spending most of time working outside these days. It was burdening to work outside since I could not check the issues if not turning on the laptop and connecting to the Wi-Fi. Due to this, I had to come back to office to deal with the issues. I believe this contributed to the delay in making responses.
What was the decisive reason that drove you to turn to LINE WORKS?
Mr. Shou :
We already acknowledged about LINE WORKS since February, 2017 through news report. Since our company acquires the P mark (Privacy mark system) and ISMS (Information Security Management System), so we need to protect privacy and security thoroughly. We have considered introducing other groupware tools for several times in the past. In cost-related perspective as well too many features, however, found to be mismatch to our company. For this reason, we ended up not using any of them. Unlike other groupware, LINE WORKS has benefits of customizing its tool to make it fit to our company style and also has simple and clear UI which enables us to easily accustomed to the tool. There was no extra feature too. Because we did not find any issue with related to security, we decided to introduce the tool to our company.
How exactly LINE WORKS is being used? Also, what are the effects after the introduction of LINE WORKS?
Mr. Kazuo :
Modifying schedules and information sharing has become convenient. Since we now can see the schedules of all the employees, it is very helpful when scheduling. We can simply modify the schedule just by sending ‘Are you available at this time?’. Also, when holding a meeting, we can share the agenda through Home function and make sure all the meeting participants check, bring idea and opinion about the agenda and even think of the result in advance. By doing so, we found that the time we spent on the meeting have decreased than the past.
In the past, there were a few employees too busy reading the email with the agenda. Due to ‘Read’ notification, however, we can assure ourselves that all the employees have read the email. LINE WORKS is currently used for company communication, while email is used for communication outside the company. This method has been established and settled as official communication. As a result to this, the number of shared emails that were previously close to 100 to 200 per day has dropped to less than half.
Mr. Shou :
What has changed the most is that we now rarely use email or SNS for company communication. We did not force to quit using such tool. Instead, it vanished naturally, and started to use LINE WORKS as an alternatives. We encouraged employees to make chatting room per each project. This way, we can follow up the overall process of project simply by checking the messages inside the chatting room. This is very efficient way of working. When sharing information or document, we are also attaching the files to the chatting room. It also possible to instantly check the attached files at the chatting room using LINE WORKS viewer.
After that, we can either send comments on the documents or just simply send okay sticker to the chatting room when there is no extra issues to be discussed. Like this, remote communication gets faster than before. We no longer have to wait for our president to come back to the office for the confirmation. And, this led all the employees to process and finish their work faster. Similar to this, it was general to make comments like ‘Let’s talk about this after returning to the office’ or ‘Let’s share this agenda at the office’. Just by using chatting room, however, we can immediately have conversation. With this, we rarely hold quick face-to-face meeting, standing in the corner of the office. In fact, in the field of creative works, efficiency and short working time cannot go along with quality. I used to work at the office until late night during peak season. But after the introduction of LINE WORKS, the finishing time has shortened overwhelmingly. I felt that as more spare time the employees have, the better productivity the entire company have.
Our company also schedule and operate events. From the preparation and installation of the equipment to the actual events, there are times when we communicate to all employees of the company on the date of the event. This way, we can show all the employees how to prepare for the installation or how the booth is being completed. That is, we can show whole company about the overall operation process, including employees who are not directly involved in the event. As a result to this, employees, even if they were not originally participated in the event operation, could easily feel as if it is their own work and even appreciate one another for the accomplishments. We definitely think that it has heightened the sense of unity among employees.
※ All details, affiliations, and positions specified were gathered at the time of interview.
