"At other trading companies, overseas industrial park businesses are undertaken by real estate divisions. But at Sumitomo Corporation, when the industrial park team was first launched in the early 1990s, none of us were real estate experts. Instead, most of us had a mechanical or electronic background, which was why we felt we had to thoroughly analyze what clients require of industrial parks from the clients’ point of view," says Katsuya Okihiro, the General Manager of Overseas Industrial Park Dept., who himself used to belong to the automobile business section. When Okihiro was an expatriate in Indonesia, he was transferred from the automobile business to work on a new industrial park in Indonesia, Sumitomo's first. Since then, he has been involved in the industrial park business for more than 15 years.
As a result of such team efforts, the business concept, "Our relationships with our clients begin when contracts are concluded," came to be practiced by the Overseas Industrial Park Dept.
"We focus on the frontline. Even the young employees are sent to an industrial park at the earliest possible opportunity so they can see for themselves how our staff responds to the requirements of the clients and what kind of needs the clients have. Seeing the frontline in person will help them understand, more than any words, what is really meant by our concept, 'Our relationships with our clients begin when contracts are concluded,'" says Okihiro.
"In the industrial park business, we need firsthand knowledge of what is taking place on the frontline. That's why I want to know more and more about Vietnam," says Junko Sasaki, currently working in Tokyo as a member of the team. When a prospective client visits the site, for example, confusion will arise if the staff in Tokyo and the local staff in Vietnam lack a shared perception. "Even the slightest gap in perception will lead to frustration on the part of our customers." So Sasaki is committed to sharing information with the staff in Vietnam by speaking with them on the phone, sometimes as often as several times a day. She says that by doing so, she can become much more persuasive when she deals with clients.
TLIP team members still have a host of issues to tackle—those related to employment, public safety, shortages in water and electricity supplies, and fostering Vietnamese team members who can take on operational and business management responsibilities—and these are not issues that will be solved easily. The team members, however, continue to press forward.
Masuoka says, "When I joined the company, I wanted to create something in a developing country for the benefit of the people there. I didn't know about industrial parks until I started working for this company. Although I rarely look back to those early days of my career, when I do so, I realize that what I am doing now is actually quite close to what I wanted to do."
And the secret to the project's steady growth? "The fact that our members will go to any length and extent for our clients," says Okihiro. According to him, the evident proactive attitude toward work is not something that was taught directly, but rather, a DNA-like feature passed on from senior members of the team.
Okihiro explains the satisfaction of being involved in the project: "We take care of and help solve a range of problems that occur day to day, and the clients thank us for doing so. When employment is generated, the Vietnamese government, as well as the local people who have been employed, thanks us. The local residents also thank us for the crayons and scholarships. —We are always thanked for doing our work, and this makes us grateful for being engaged in the TLIP business."
The members are driven by the notion that when the project succeeds, everyone involved will be happy. They are by no means approaching the end of their work; rather, their work has just begun.
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