Nippon Rent-A-Car is boasted with various types of automobiles , and also has top-level sales offices among the nation. We interviewed Yamazaki Takashi, a manager from Production System Department, who helped integrating LINE WORKS to the company about how they introduced LINE WORKS and its overall effects on their work process. Further, we interviewed Shimomura Ishki, a staff from Tsunashima-ekimae office in Yokohama in Kanagawa prefecture, about the changes they felt at the field after integration.

Tell us about your company and individual roles

Mr. Yamazaki  :

Our company is operating 166 Nippon Rent-A-Car sales offices located in both Tokyo metropolis and Kanagawa prefecture. Currently, we have about 2,000 employees including part-time job staffs working in the company. Also, we are managing about 10,000 cars including lease cars.

Further, System department is in charge of general management and support for the office systems including the ones from the headquarters and all the sales offices.

Mr. Shimomura :

I am responsible for customers and vehicle inspections as well as dispatch requests.

How did your company share the information before LINE WORKS implementation? Also, What were the issues then?

Mr. Yamazaki :

“The major risk factor that we found when using email as our communication tool was that there was a high possibility of being attacked by ransomwares.”

Previously, we have been utilizing email to contact the partners outside the office. At the same time, we integrated groupware for office communication. When communicating with the parters about renting or borrowing the cars they own , we emailed them with the accounts provided for each office.

Tell us about your company and individual roles

We were aware of the internet-related malware and threats such as ransomware that are widely reported these days. And, since we were receiving the vast amount of emails every day, we were fully aware of the fact that ransomware scenario could be happen to us as well. In fact, we have been actually receiving emails with the ransomware secretly attached as well as the malware mixed with the office communication. To reduce the risk of clicking such dangerous messages, we had to be really serious about the issue and find the solution to it as soon as possible.

_{(* Ransomware: a type of computer virus. It is also called “Ransom Virus” in Japan.) Once infected by the virus, the computer either automatically locked or files and data are encrypted, and eventually become unusable. In order to restore the data, the owner is asked to pay for “Ransom”.)}

Specifically, the sales offices have been collaborating with the staffs using emails and share a number of emails every day. Among those email contacts, most of them was held in-office. For this reason, our company started to look for another way to both reduce the number of emails shared and hedge against the unwanted malicious emails.

We can divide the office communication into two ways. One is brief and one-time communication, such as checking the situation of moving vehicles or finding the available vehicles. The other is important and needs to be saved, such as work alerts. We used emails for both types of communication. That means, we received more than 50 emails related to the issues about moving the vehicle.

How we communicate was that we share emails using the accounts given for each sales office, since there were sharable PC installed on each office. Important and work-related emails were often mixed with the emails regarding minor and brief issues. Due to this, we had to search out for the work-related emails when needed. Also, if the other staff check the work-related email first, the other staff, especially for those who needs to read the message, cannot find the email easily, since it is already mixed with all the unimportant emails.

Furthermore, in order to protect ourselves from ransomware, we have been prohibiting the part-time job workers from using the emails and even not letting them use the computer during the specific time frame. Downside of this decision was that work-related communication could not be well reached out to them, and eventually fail to send the right information to them. We have a number of part-time workers at the sales office. But, when they are out of office, we did not have a comfortable tool to continue communication with them.

To solve this, we brought up with an idea that if we change the email, the current office communication tool that takes about 90% of our entire communication, to the other collaboration tool, we could be more freed from ransomware. At the end of this thinking, we started to look out for the business chatting tools.

What was the decisive reason that drove you to turn to LINE WORKS?

Mr. Yamazaki :

One of the many reasons why we implement LINE WORKS as our new communication tool is that the application operation method was similar to that of LINE. Further, it is easy to be notified by the LINE WORKS notification, and PC version would also allow us to receive notifications on the PC. We further expected that LINE WORKS stickers would allow us to foster both quality and quantity of our communication. That is, when thinking about integrating another tool, we figured out that it could be better for us to have the collaboration tool that reinforces our communication more enjoyable and positive using the stickers provided.

How was your LINE WORKS introduction?

Mr. Yamazaki :

Our primary mission was to realign the damage prevention measure with regards to ransomware attacks. On that account, overall process, from decision making to actual introduction, only took 3 weeks to finish. Publishing a few pages of simple manuals on initial settings of LINE WORKS was enough.

 

As we are fully accustomed to email communication, I thought that changing the way of office communication used to held would evoke resistance feeling toward newly introduced tool. However, the rate of the inquiries received on the LINE WORKS usage was lower than we initially expected. After LINE WORKS integration, we monitored the volume of emails shared, and prohibited staffs from using emails for office communication purpose. Instead, we highly recommended the employees to use LINE WORKS.

How exactly LINE WORKS is being used?

Mr. Shimomura :

We are well utilizing LINE WORKS as a tool to share information and current status of the vehicles and offices located nearby in real-time. We also use LINE WORKS when does the vehicle returns to our office sooner than expected.

What are the effects after the introduction of LINE WORKS?

Mr. Yamazaki :

After LINE WORKS introduction, the number of emails we received has reduced drastically. The number has reduced so much that we could even distinguish ransomware emails immediately these days. Establishing ransomware measures, what was our company-level of challenge, has also accomplished successfully. We are expecting to have feel the synergy effects from other field as well.

Mr. Shimomura :

“We can handle the customer inquiries faster and properly than before.”

With LINE WORKS, we gained an outstanding merit, which is an ability to immediately make responses to the inquiries received from other offices. It becomes easier for us to find out the availability of the vehicles located in other offices, and this helps us with estimating the arrival time of the vehicles once rented.

We are really thankful with the fact that we can solve the issues, without causing any difficulties to our clients. Along with that, we are also grateful for the increased number of customers using our service.

 

It is almost impossible to handle all the client inquiries with the available vehicles at the office. For this reason, it is natural for the sales offices to share vehicles with the other offices to fulfill the requests from the customers. However, there is no meaning of sharing if the office cannot provide immediate and proper answer to those clients who visited the office. With LINE WORKS, we can both send and receive responses to the inquiries shared between offices immediately. That is, the possibilities of our customers to leave the office with the faults that our company made has decreased. Specifically, the clients no longer have to suffer from the late countermeasure on their inquiries or worry about ruining their entire trip schedule by not having the suitable rental car options. What we found most intriguing was that LINE WORKS enables us to have flawless real-time communication.

Tell us specific use cases for LINE WORKS

Mr. Yamazaki :

We have been sending email for work-related contacts. Just by using Home feature, however, we are now enabled to send work notifications simultaneously to our entire employees. This definitely helps us to have better search and notification system.

 

We are also posting notices on maintenance information like regular inspections of the vehicles, list of newly introduced vehicles, monthly meeting schedules, recall guideline, customer survey results, and advice on the client reception.

How does the internal communication at your company changed after LINE WORKS integration?

Mr. Yamazaki :

Office communication has changed in a good way. Generally, communication can be more casually made than before. When using email, for example, we had to send ‘Thank you for your efforts’ when initiating conversation and send ‘I look forward to your cooperation’ at the end of the sentences. Unlike email-like communication, we can simply share messages using LINE WORKS messenger. That means, we no longer have to be overly formal on our office communication, and this definitely makes us all convenient.

 

Mr. Shimomura :

It has become easier for us to have interoffice communication. Added to this, the volume of the communication made not only with the other offices, but also with the staffs whom we have never contacted before increased after LINE WORKS integration.

How do you want to utilize LINE WORKS in the future?

Mr. Yamazaki :

We would love to utilize LINE WORKS Drive feature near in the future. Particularly, we would like to use Drive feature as a backup storage space for ransomware measures.

※ All details, affiliations, and positions specified were gathered at the time of interview.