Mizuho Financial Group increases operational efficiency with the Sales Cloud

Challenge

• Mizuho Financial Group, a bank holding company that operates and manages banks, specialized securities companies, and other companies, faced a 3-month deadline to establish the Mizuho Private Wealth Management Company
• Management wanted a customer relationship management (CRM) system that could be deployed quickly and would meet stringent security requirements
• Needed to link six systems to integrate customer information
• Required a flexible solution that would allow easy customization and provide a strong cost-benefit justification

Solution

• Deployed the Sales Cloud in 3 months starting in August 2005 after determining it fully complied with Mizuho's IT standards; the Sales Cloud met 295 out of 300 criteria out of the box and soon satisfied the remaining 5 criteria
• Migrated data from other Mizuho companies
• Easily configured the Sales Cloud to respond to operational and organizational changes
• Mizuho Information & Research Institute (MHIR), the IT strategy arm of the Mizuho Financial Group, then began rolling out the Sales Cloud and the Force.com platform to other parts of the group
• Mizuho Capital, another subsidiary of the Mizuho Financial Group, began using the Sales Cloud in 2006 as part of its "kaizen" effort, which focused on the continuous improvement of different processes
• In 2008, Mizuho Capital centralized data management by integrating the Sales Cloud with mission-critical systems
• Aeon Bank also began using the Sales Cloud for sales support
• In 2009, MHIR built an application on the Force.com cloud platform that screens for conflict of interest in response to amendments to the Financial Instruments and Exchange Act that took effect June 1, 2009
• Currently planning to roll out the customer portal to provide services to Mizuho Group clients

Results

• Reduced deployment time by 75% and cut costs by 80% compared to purchasing servers and developing applications in-house
• Released a system for screening conflicts of interests in response to a new banking regulation on the same day the regulation took effect; the speed of development was made possible by the Force.com cloud platform, which features a "clicks not code" approach to software development
• Automation of the document creation process meant salespeople could concentrate on sales, increasing productivity
• Improved the amount and quality of data on clients and projects
• Brought new energy and efficiency to in-house communications