How Kobelco's HR team streamlined their operations and improved collaboration with Kintone

Simplified Workflow Using Kintone

Problems Faced Before Introduction of Kintone:

Payroll and other employee benefits related tasks were all organized using Excel. Information needed for those tasks were collected by calling and emailing employees individually by a third-party HR vendor and HQ in Japan.
The Excel files were constantly getting updated, and there were countless number of files going back and forth between all parties which caused clutter and confusion.
Also, they were calculating the renewal dates for employee visas via Excel formulas, while they used emails to announce the dates to appropriate employees.

Why Kobelco Chose Kintone:

It is amazing how people who are not tech-savvy can take part in creating Kintone applications. Kintone is a perfect tool for a project leader to create what they truly need for their daily operations by making small but effective changes.

We went over our workflows in order to standardize all tasks before putting them down into any Kintone applications. We made small, but effective changes into our Kintone applications. Kintone is a perfect tool for making that kind of changes that are gradual, but successful.
We first started to develop the simplest tasks in Kintone. From there, we began to develop more intricate applications once we got to know how to use Kintone.

Effectiveness of Kintone and How It Will Be Used in the Future:

We can assign access to each employee right from the Kintone app, which makes it easy for everybody to keep the record up to date. Depending on the date assigned for each employee, Kintone sends automated notifications. Because Kintone allowed them to simplify workflows for the HR department, they are now letting each employee to update their own information on Kintone, rather than HR contacting them individually. They eventually no longer needed the third-party HR vendor for an additional assistance.
After some time of Kintone deployment, Kobelco started to use it as a contact platform for their HR department. Depending on the types of questions they receive, they can make them private or make them public to use them as general Q&A if that questions applies to many employees. HR can set it up with a single click, which ultimately increased work efficiency of the HR.
They are looking to connect their Kintone with their cloud platforms to create even more seamless workflows. They are also planning to expanding their use of Kintone into their offices located in the US nationwide.