The Challenge: kintone License Costs and Heavy Traffic
Sharing kintone® data with external members raises two issues: license costs and heavy traffic.
Using guest users for external members drives monthly license fees up sharply. And if you publish information through an external service that connects to kintone, it must keep running smoothly even when large numbers of users access it at the same time.
"How can large numbers of users interact through a My Page while still taking advantage of kintone's convenience?"
This case study features Anchor Co., Ltd., which solved this challenge with Kanal-WEB, a service we developed in-house.
The Solution: A B2B Member Site Connecting the Secretariat, Supporters, and Companies
Seamlessly connecting the secretariat, supporters, and companies
This project involved building a platform for a public-sector program that promotes digitalization. Using kintone and Kanal-WEB, we created a space where the program's stakeholders could communicate with one another.
The program itself only began this fiscal year. "Everything was new, including the program itself. We developed the system while searching for the best way to design it," says Yusuke Koyama of Anchor's Sales Department, who is in charge of announcements, PR, and systems. His role is to support the company serving as the program secretariat.
Under the program, companies with relevant expertise ("navigators") make proposals to companies that want to go digital. In addition to making proposals, navigators must visit each company they support a set number of times and submit a report after every visit. In other words, each visit generates a "notice of the planned support date," a "report submission," and a "report review." Communication among the three parties (the secretariat, the navigators, and the supported companies) is frequent, and all of it has to be managed on the platform.
"Our goal was to support 700 companies. With five visits each, for example, that simply works out to 3,500 exchanges among the three parties. But the secretariat staff told us it would be impossible to manage this with their existing system, and that's how the decision to build a new system was made," says Koyama.
kintone was the choice, but the number of members was a bottleneck
What the secretariat needed was "a simple setup that's easy to learn." One reason the existing system was hard to manage with was that it "had too many features for anyone to use it effectively."
So, first and foremost for its ease of use, kintone became one of the requirements. But this raised a cost problem. Every company needed its own My Page where it could also enter information, which meant issuing a license to every company, and that turned out to be very difficult to afford. While searching for a way to solve this, they happened to come across us.
There were less than three months to go before the program launched, and this is where our in-house service Kanal-WEB proved its worth. Because it is a package dedicated to building member sites, we could build the member site in a short time while also setting up the kintone side.
First, we built the kintone environment ahead of time to coincide with the start of recruitment for the program, and began collecting information from companies wishing to participate. Then, when the program got underway, each company's My Page was launched successfully.
"A reliable partner with strong proposal skills"
"Since it was the program's first year, the system requirements kept changing. But bitRiver came up with practical solutions every time and responded flexibly. That was a huge help," he recalls.
One thing that left a particularly strong impression was the user orientation session for the secretariat, held just before launch. The secretariat had been busy right up to the last minute with other tasks, such as finalizing specifications and operating processes, and some attendees were hearing the name kintone for the first time at the session.
"Despite a very tight schedule that ran through the Golden Week holidays, they backed us up not only by building the system but also by sharing the support work, such as explaining how to use it. As a result, when the My Pages went live, both the system and the secretariat staff were ready to go," says Koyama.
Several months after going live, the system is still running without any problems and is helping many companies go digital.
"Beyond their knowledge of kintone, their ability to propose solutions was a huge help," says Koyama. In a public-sector project with tight budget and requirement constraints, the question is how to make what the secretariat wants to do a reality. Describing his company's role, Koyama explains: "We're there to support the secretariat. When they have a need, we can't just say 'That's not possible.' We need to propose, 'If we do it this way, we can solve it.'"
"bitRiver was a great strength in specialized areas we couldn't handle ourselves. Not only do they know kintone inside out, they were flexible enough to work alongside us as fellow members of the support team. We could really rely on them," says Koyama.
(Interviewed in September 2023)
Kanal-WEB: Making the Most of Your Customer Management
Kanal-WEB, the service used in this Anchor case study, is a service for building My Pages integrated with kintone. It integrates your existing kintone member management apps so you can build a new My Page (member site). It is a system developed specifically for building My Pages, designed to deliver convenience that makes the most of what a My Page offers, along with simple, easy operation.
You can add member services while making full use of the data you have accumulated, without the headache of managing member information in two places or integrating separate systems.
With a highly usable design and navigation that anyone with basic PC skills can handle, Kanal-WEB lets you introduce and run a My Page smoothly at a relatively low cost and in a short time compared with developing a system from scratch.
Kanal-WEB comes with essential features as standard, and you can build an even more capable member site by adding optional features to suit your needs. For product details and pricing, click here.
For a more detailed explanation or a quote for your specific project, feel free to contact us. Below, you'll also find information on our online demo and trial.
[B2B Demo] Try a Business-Matching Member Site
Online demo and 30-day free trial now available
In addition to an online demo loaded with sample data, Kanal-WEB offers a 30-day free trial that lets you test it with your own data. Feel free to start by trying Kanal-WEB for yourself.
Online Demo
The demo is loaded with sample data, so you can get a feel for how it works in practice. Just set a login ID and password to start using the online demo right away.
30-Day Free Trial
Test it with your own data. You will not be charged automatically after the trial ends, so you can evaluate whether it is right for you with complete peace of mind.
