How One Person Launched His Organization's Digital Transformation

Guhring streamlined its sales, inventory, and human resources with Kintone

Leading a successful and expanding business is the dream of a lot of business owners, but even success has its fair share of challenges. Guhring Philippines is one of the most trusted rotary metal-cutting tool suppliers in the country. They have sales reps that provide solutions to clients throughout the country, in a variety of industries.

Being so spread out came with its fair share of management and logistical challenges. For Guhring, three issues in particular were holding the company back:

1. How do you manage a growing list of projects with various clients when all you have are Excel spreadsheets?
2. Trial tools are one of the reasons for Guhring Philippines’ success; how do you trace the countless trial tools across various clients and have full accountability and transparency on each tool?
3. How do you manage internal processes such as leave requests and expenses reports?

The answer for all three came in the form of one centralized online platform: Kintone. And at Guhring, the entire digital transformation journey started with a single employee named Allen.

All your digital solutions in one place

Allen Empinado was one of the sales employees but was also charged of handling basic IT matters at Guhring Philippines. Coming from a non-IT background, he had limited experience with coding and structures. He knew of the problems the company was facing, but had no idea where to start looking for a solution. A lightbulb moment happened when they got a tip from the Managing Director of Guhring Japan.

Kintone, an all-in-one virtual workspace, could help him create databases and workflows with nothing more than simple logic and a little imagination. No coding required. Using the drag-and-drop interface, Allen started creating solutions to his three major problems:

1. A database to manage client lists and contacts where his colleagues could initiate any process related to them such as projects, Trial Tool requests, quotation requests, complaints, and so on.
2. A Trial Tool Management app where everything is monitored; from the requests going to customers, to the delivery documents, to the closure of the trial tools including all costs involved.
3. A Leave Request app with an embedded permissions structure, so that employees could request and get their leave approved directly through Kintone, as well as a Weekly Expense app, where employees can upload their receipts online, have all costs tabulated and computed, and with a similar permissions structure, have their expenses reimbursed faster.

Throughout the process, any time Allen had doubts, he reached out to Tom, one of Kintone’s partners. All the solutions he needed were only a Viber message away. The result was a resounding success, fundamentally changing how Guhring operates its business.

A big leap into digitalization

Moving from Excel spreadsheets and paper processes to Kintone was what Allen called “a big leap.” For weekly expense reports, receipts no longer had to be mailed from Cebu to Manila, and could instead be managed through the platform. Not only did doing so save time, postage money, and administrative resources, but it also enabled new types of data analysis. Guhring was now able to easily track how much each sales rep was spending on things like fuel.

Guhring previously had up to 50 pieces of various Trial Tools per sales employee which they had trouble tracking and ended up costing the company a lot of money. With Kintone, they knew exactly where everything was in real time. Additionally, thanks to Kintone’s data analysis tools, they also became able to create easy graphics to visualize closed deals and sales figures resulting from each Trial Tool.

For leave, Guhring set up Kintone’s calendar display to see exactly who is away and for how long. Leave requests are filed directly through the appropriate app, which also categorizes types of leave.

Solving their three initial issues was only the beginning for Guhring. They have since expanded to more than 20 apps in total, allowing them to manage everything from purchase requests and sales monitoring to expense tracking and quotations. Allen has received app creation requests from colleagues across the company. With Kintone, the team at Guhring was able to come up with own custom cost and resource-saving measures that benefit the entire company.

Kintone is a solution designed for citizen developers. We’re committed to giving everyone the tools they need to simplify and streamline their work. Allen is a prime example of how, with the right tools and mindset, as well as buy-in and support from colleagues and management, a single person can bring their entire company into the modern era of digitalized work.