What are the necessary components to supporting Mercari’s long-term growth?

While there are a multitude of indispensable components to this, there is no doubt about the importance of upgrading our IT service infrastructure and operations. As a tech company aiming for the global stage, the shift to a new enterprise architecture is crucial. The reasons behind this are explained in the conversation between our CIO Hiroaki Shintani and CISO Naohisa Ichihara published on Mercan a few months ago.

In their conversation, they talk about the Corporate Engineering Team’s mission and roadmap for the next three years. In line with the Corporate Engineering Team’s newly set mission to unleash Mercari’s potential through technology and implementation, the team is currently working to upgrade three areas: IT service infrastructure and operations, application infrastructure and corporate systems, and the organization and its operations.

Now, to hear the specifics of how we are going about these upgrades and the thought processes behind them, we ask Hiroyuki Tanaka (@hiro), manager of the Digital Center of Excellence Team, about the work that has been done around this in recent years and his outlook on the future.

Maximizing members’ performance

—First, please tell us about the role of the Digital Center of Excellence Team.

@hiro: The role of the Digital Center of Excellence Team is to move forward projects that span across the corporate and engineering sides of the Corporate Engineering Team.

From revolutionizing work processes and implementing the latest IT tools to creating standardized manuals and guidelines, our team is responsible for communicating with people inside and outside of the company to gather and organize information and guide the company toward business solutions.

That’s why, in order to cover the wide range of domains involved from the upstream processes of system development all the way to release, our team is composed of members of diverse backgrounds, from business and IT consultants to corporate engineers.

—And what issues are you tackling at the moment?

@hiro: Until recently we had been putting forth our best efforts in focusing on tasks that prioritized business, but we’ve reached a point where it’s now important to build more advanced work structures and conduct more advanced analyses. We realized that our IT infrastructure was still weak, and to strengthen it we needed to revolutionize our work processes and make systematic changes.

To make our IT infrastructure stronger, I believe we need to adopt a total optimization mindset and create work processes and systems from end to end. If, let’s say, the Legal Team requests improvements to the process for legal checks, that should simply serve as the opportunity for us to look into the entire flow. When improvements are requested, we need to look at what comes before and after that particular process. For instance, after the legal check is completed, there may be other contract-related checks and processes that follow, or perhaps the legal check was text for a risk check. These workflows can easily become silos, and rather than creating processes in a waterfall style, it’s important to design the processes with an awareness of the context. To achieve this, we had to create hypotheses and test each of them one at a time.

In addition, with the introduction of Mercari’s Your Choice policy in 2021, members have an even wider range of work style options. As the team in charge of advancing digital transformation, I believe it is our responsibility to make arrangements for members’ work environments and enhance engagement between members, creating the mechanisms and providing the platforms to maximize the employee experience.

Hiroyuki Tanaka (@hiro)

—What exactly does digital transformation entail?

@hiro: Similar to how we develop the Mercari marketplace app with the aim of maximizing user experience, our team works to digitize the workflow for internal processes and incorporate AI with the aim of maximizing employee experience.

From around the end of 2021, we have been gradually making progress in automating workflows and visualizing various processes, allowing us to formulate not just short-term but long-term measures, and we’re beginning to see the possibilities that continuous improvement and the use of advanced technology can bring. Today, we continue to consider what needs to be done to maximize members’ performance and are working daily on automation and integrating the latest technologies.

Creating a “human-centric” state in pursuit of end-to-end system automation

—Could you tell us about specific things the team is working on around automation and integrating the latest technology?

@hiro: Until now, systems had been created as silos for individual divisions, and we can’t deny that it has limited the way Mercari members work. That’s why I would like to create a human-centric state in which members are placed in the center and systems are built around them. To do this, we must pursue the end-to-end automation of our systems. Automating only portions of the system will still result in manual tasks remaining.

Most recently, specific things we’ve been working on include creating digital workflows using ServiceNow. When I joined in 2021, the company was already at a scale of over 2,000 members, and there was a basic system in place for the process of requesting approval for signing contracts. However, while features such as a portal page, requests, and inquiries existed, they were fragmented, and the lack of system integration caused various complications and inefficiencies. This got in the way of improving the engagement and productivity of Mercari members.

We worked with the various teams connected to contract approvals (legal, governance, security, risk, compliance, etc.) to visualize the processes, identify the issues, and organize the whole thing.

In order to integrate processes that existed separately, we used ServiceNow’s digital workflows to rebuild processes and connect systems. We’ve created seamless automation by integrating our system with the system for digital signatures, and recently, following the introduction of the invoice system, the National Tax Agency’s API for referencing corporate registration numbers.

Digital workflow built using ServiceNow

Presenting at World Forum: Tokyo 2023, an event hosted by ServiceNow

Moving forward, we will continue to build end-to-end digital workflows and make continuous improvements that increase members’ productivity.

Painting a picture from proposal to implementation and leading the execution with a total optimization mindset

—What is the most rewarding aspect of working as part of the Digital Center of Excellence Team?

@hiro: The ability to experience the power of implementing new technology to make something a reality. In this case, to make mechanisms that enhance work productivity a reality. I think it’s rare to see a company of this scale invest this much in its systems.

However, a desire to implement new systems alone is not enough to work on the Digital Center of Excellence Team. Our team’s job is to achieve work efficiency and the build centralized platforms to increase the engagement of each individual member. To accomplish this, we must negotiate with stakeholders across multiple departments (especially our internal corporate departments, such as HR, finance, legal, governance, and risk), always maintain a total optimization mindset in pursuit of the best experience for our members, paint the entire picture from the proposal to the implementation of solutions, and lead the execution.

In other words, we contribute to members’ efficiency and productivity, which means we are able to be a part of creating the mechanisms that lead to the success of the business.

—I see! In other words, contributing to members’ productivity connects to contributing to the business! What sort of mindsets do you think are necessary to achieve this?

@hiro: The ability to actively communicate and exchange ideas with members inside and outside of the team, maintain a big-picture perspective, and sort issues by importance and urgency. It’s also necessary to be able to do your own research and gather information on the latest technology, and be able to paint a picture of the world with enterprise IT that will increase work efficiency and productivity.

Because our work spans an extremely broad range of domains, we have an environment in which team members can leverage each other’s strengths and cover for each other’s weaknesses. Many of our members possess a strong passion toward contributing to increasing the efficiency and productivity of Mercari Group’s members. For those interested in transforming and creating new work styles, I think you’ll be able to build a great career here.

—Finally, please tell us about any endeavors or aspirations you personally would like to work toward.

@hiro: Well, I’ve managed a lot of projects in revolutionizing work processes until now, and it’s always extremely rewarding when members adopt the new systems and features and express their gratitude.

I’ve built my career for 12 years at SoftBank Group leading the development of the customer management system for their mobile business and the planning and development of the cloud system for their robotics business. After that, I worked at KPMG Consulting and Amazon Web Services Japan as a digital transformation consultant, identifying and solving problems from both business and IT perspectives as I managed projects to design work processes and build systems. Through these experiences, I developed my skills in planning roadmaps and observed the trends and changes of digital technology. What led me to then join Mercari was the intriguing opportunity to be able to use all of the knowledge and experience I had gained until now to contribute to members, organizations, and business. I’m happy to say I made the right decision.

Personally, I would like to become an evangelist for internal work processes and IT. This would involve being a consultant who knows the most about our systems, understands how they’re being used, and is able to propose better ways to use them and resolve user pain points. I’d like to be both the IT guy and the business guy, well-versed in both domains.

We work to understand the situation at hand, start a revolution, and allow the changes to stick before you know it. I believe this helps members feel like work is easy and worth doing, and we in turn will use that as fuel to take on further challenges and innovation!