Objective

Achieve our management philosophy “Realizing Health Society” through DX

—Public Relations Department (hereafter, P): First of all, what is your corporate vision?

EWEL Inc., Mr. Hamada (hereafter, H): Our goal is “Realization of a health society, (*1)” which is also our management philosophy.

Specifically, we are aiming for a society in which all of our clients, such as corporations, employers, and organizations, as well as the employees and members of associations who use our services, are healthy both physically and mentally, and are socially fulfilled and well-being.

(*1): “Health Society” is a registered trademark of EWEL,Inc.

—P: Could you tell me about your definition of “well-being”?

H: At EWEL,Inc., we advocate that a “Well-being” is a state in which five elements, (1) private life, (2) mind and body, (3) lifestyle, (4) work, and (5) economic situation, are fulfilled based on the officially established theories published by domestic and international public organizations such as WHO and the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, and on the results of joint research with academic institutions. Specifically, (1)In their private life, people should be satisfied with both the length and quality of their leisure time and are fulfilled with family and life events.(2) In terms of the mind and body, people should be physically and mentally healthy with enough energy to act as they wish every day.(3) In terms of lifestyle, a well-balanced diet, adequate exercise, sufficient sleep, etc. should be available.(4)In terms of work, people should be satisfied with building a career at work and their personal life.(5)In terms of economic situation, people have the means to earn rewards, be satisfied with their rewards, and be able to manage their assets.

—P: What are you working on to achieve “well-being”？

H: In order to realize individual and organizational “Well-being”, which will be the future of health, we started the service concept of “WEL-UP (*2)” with the keyword “well-being for both people and corporates.” Until now, we have introduced our services such as WELBOX and KENPOS to customers on a service-by-service basis, but recently, under the concept “WEL-UP”, we are developing various services, providing platforms for customers, and promoting well-being.

(*2): “WEL-UP” represents the improvement of each “WEL” which is “Wellness”, “Welfare”, and “Well-being”. It is a registered trademark of EWEL,Inc.

—P: What kind of services does EWEL Inc. provide?

H: We provide employee benefits and health support services.

—P: Could you tell me specifically what your “employee benefits services” are?

H: The main product we are now offering is WELBOX.WELBOX is a comprehensive discount service designed to meet a variety of needs, such as chance to travel and other initiatives to enhance leisure time, encourage self-development, nursing care, childcare, and women’s activities.

Since this service is introduced to a wide range of companies, we customize our products according to the characteristics and requirements of customers.

We also offer a service called “Cafeteria Plan”. This is a service in which customers give points to their employees as a benefit expense, and employees can use them to meet their own needs.

In addition, we also provide operational support for property saving, employee stock ownership association, and matching contributions. Through our BPO services, we help clients to reduce and streamline business processes that would otherwise be labor-intensive to manage on their own.

—P: Is WELBOX, your company’s main “employee benefit service” product, in the form of “BtoBtoC”?

H: Yes. WELBOX is in the form of “BtoBtoC” with corporations as the direct customers and individual services are used by the corporate employees.

—P: Could you also tell us some specifics about “Health Support Service”?

H: As the “Health Support Service”, we provide a health checkup office service on behalf of our clients. We have established partnerships with approximately 3,000 health checkup institutions nationwide, offering services to undertake the entire process of health checkups.

we also provide a service called “Everybody’s Health Support Site: KENPOS,” which is used by C users of “BtoBtoC”. This is a service that allows users to record their daily activities, and points are awarded according to the results of their activities. For example, we ask each organization to conduct a walking campaign, visualize the ranking, and award points according to their performance, thereby supporting their daily health promotion activities. The accumulated points can then be redeemed for products.

For B, we provide supporting services for the promotion of health management (*3). We support the promotion of health management by creating an action plan that implements the PDCA cycle.

Furthermore, we provide consulting services for establishment of corporate health insurance society.

(*3):”Health Management” is registered trade mark of Nonprofit Organaization Kenkokeiei

—P: What would you like your customers to have or become through your “employee benefits services” and “health support services”?

H: We aim to make our clients’ employees healthy and the company as a whole to be healthy and excellent. In addition, we hope that the local community, and by extension, Japanese society as a whole, will become healthy.

—P: Could you tell me the reason you aim to make your customers become healthy and excellent individuals and organizations, and to improve Japan as a whole?

H: Since we believe that we can get closer to achieving our management philosophy and well-being.

Based on our philosophy of realizing a healthy society, we continue to earnestly address the themes of “people’s health drives companies” and “corporate health drives the future”.
Through EWEL,Inc. “welfare services” and “health support services,” we hope to play a role in helping our customers to realize people’s health and well-being, and to make this sustainable.

—P: What issues did you face in achieving your management philosophy, “Well-being”, etc.?

H: There were systemic issues. Therefore, we needed to improve user convenience through DX and revamp our services. And we aimed to provide new added value to our customers using IT and AI technologies to achieve our management philosophy.

Photo: (Left) Mr. Koji Hamada, General Manager, Ewel,Inc. (Right) Mr. Shusuke Tomoeda, Consulting Department, Vision Consulting, Inc.

Request

Challenges to Service Renewal

—P: Could you tell me about the situation at the time of your request to our company?

H: At the time of our request to your company, there were about five issues.

The first point is the method of suggestion. Simply describing how Ewel,Inc.’s solutions would help the customer’s issues and their effects would only be a partial story. Therefore, in addition to this, it was necessary to create an overall story in accordance with what the customer considered important. This is where we are still working on through trial-and-error process.

The second point is the systemic issues. Naturally, as time goes by, systemic issues are bound to arise, so it was necessary to revamp the service and improve user convenience in line with the current era.

The third point is the issue in plan making process. Although various ideas had been proposed, the implementation policy and target values were not clear, making it extremely difficult to discuss the plan making process.

The fourth point was the lack of personnel with both IT and business perspectives. There were members with IT knowledge and those with business perspectives, but no one had both of them there were not anybody to bridge the gap between the two. As a result, there was a gap between those with a business perspective and those with an IT perspective, and this sometimes affected the deliverables.

The fifth issue is the difficulty to differentiate ourselves from other companies. Instead of competing with other companies on price, we needed to include services that others do not offer in order to compete on the service side.

—P: Could you tell me why you asked us to solve these issues?

H: There are three reasons.
The first reason was that Vision Consulting, Inc. has a track record in upstream consulting support in the IT Planning Division. Based on the results at that time, we asked Vision Consulting, Inc. to solve our issues.
The second reason is that when we consulted with Vision Consulting, Inc., we received the most appropriate response to our request.
The third reason is that an expert with both IT and business perspectives, who could support our activities, was introduced to us. With other firms, we would have needed to bring in two people, one who could solve system issues and the other who could organize business requirements and sort out issues. Vision Consulting, Inc. was the only one who said you could do both of these simultaneously, so we decided to request you.

—P: When did you join EWEL,Inc.?

Vision Consulting, Inc.,Mr. Tomoeda (hereafter, T): I joined EWEL,Inc in 2020.

H: In 2020, the Grand Design Project, which we had originally been working on as a project, was organized and worked to speed up the process of revamping the WELBOX service.

However, there were issues, such as the difficulty to put it into practice and the lack of people with both IT and business perspectives, so Mr. Tomoeda has been a member of the project since 2020.

—P: What expectations does EWEL,Inc.’s have for you?

T: The most sought after was to provide support with both IT and business expertise.

Generally, IT consultants plan system development. In the case of EWEL,Inc., however, system development was included in the planning of the WELBOX service. Therefore, I was expected to give out an answer to the question, “What kind of system service would provide the best return on investment? “,”clarify specific implementation policies and targets from both IT and business perspectives and formulate plans,” and “bridge the gap by acting as a bridge between IT experts and engineers,”etc.

Present

Support utilizing both IT and business perspectives

—P: Could you tell me what support our member Mr. Tomoeda, provided?

H: Mr. Tomoeda provided support by utilizing both IT and business perspectives. Specifically, he was in charge of supporting the formulation of a grand design and roadmap, defining database concepts and development plans, organizing requirements and supporting the examination on how to proceed, making the revenue and expenditure plans necessary for service planning operations, and creating documents for higher levels.
He also served as a link between us and the system development side. This enabled us to judge whether what the system developer was saying was correct, and we were able to communicate well with the system developer as we execute the project.

—P: Could you tell me about the support that Mr. Tomoeda is currently providing?

H: Currently, we are executing the project so that the plan can be proceeded based on the grand design and roadmap that we formulated with Mr. Tomoeda. We are also having the plan reexamined according to the status of the project, as fine adjustments will be necessary due to various factors. Now, we are discussing specific plans on how to utilize the accumulated data. In addition, we are also planning individual projects and supporting the implementation of various projects that have been launched.

Advantages

Good things gained from asking Vision Consulting, Inc. to help us.

—P: Could you tell me any positive aspects of the actual request?

H: There are four good points.

First, he provided support based on his knowledge of both IT and business. Second, he supported clarifying the methods to implement the measures. Third, he adapted to changes in the environment and policy. Fourth, he delivered results beyond what we had expected. In fact, there should be times when he thinks, “Do this too?” but we were able to have all of our requests done and receive extensive support. He has provided us with one-stop service, from “proposals” on what to do for the platform to “implementation support” for the projects that have launched. He provided us outputs and other services that we could not have done on our own. In particular, Vision Consulting, Inc.’s output is something that everyone could say, “This is well done.” As a result of having Mr. Tomoeda added as a member, highly effective measures were implemented.

Also, I was also surprised to see that even outside of practical work, there have been additional results that have never been expected in terms of human resource development, even if not directly. Mr. Tomoeda shows us various models, and our members can learn the ways of completing tasks from them, leading to an educational effect.

T: Thank you very much.

I have been making a conscious effort to do the human resource development point. I am not an employee, so I cannot stay forever. Therefore, I work every day with the hope that a positive legacy will remain in your company after I am gone. For this reason, I make it a point to talk to new graduate employees, and put into writing so that they know what to do.

In fact, I was pleased to see that the model schedule I created had appeared in other departments and was being utilized.

H: The good thing is that we can use it in other departments as well, which is really helpful.

—P: Is there anything you keep in mind when you work?

T: Taking advantage of the fact that I am not an EWEL,Inc. employee, I try to provide information based on the various experiences I have gained at other companies and in other industries. By providing information, EWEL,Inc. can simulate experiences, and they can check whether they are doing tasks correctly. I can also suggest better ways of doing things, and as a result, they can move the project forward in the right direction. I believe it is also my role to help them broaden their horizons through providing them with information.

Even though I am not employees of EWEL,Inc., I am always conscious of EWEL,Inc.’s vision in providing support. Specifically, I am careful not to get too carried away by immediate budgets or development expediency, always thinking about what we can do to realize our goals. What is expected may be “how,” but I am always conscious of providing support in a way that always considers “why” and in which “how” realize “why”.

—P:Mr. Tomoeda as a Vision Consulting, Inc. employee, could you tell us any aspects, you think are advantageous, of contributing to EWEL,Inc.?

T:  I find it very rewarding to be able to help EWEL,Inc. while utilizing my own knowledge.

Future Prospects

Toward the realization of ”Well-being”

—P:What is the future outlook for EWEL,Inc.?

H: In the future, we would like to expand our services so that people will think “Well-being is about EWEL,Inc.,” and provide services that users would want to use.

Toward our management philosophy, “Realization of a healthy society,” we will support all users so that we can eventually go from “nice to have” to “indispensable”.

We also hope to contribute to the health maintenance and improvement of people working for companies around the world.

—P: Finally, Mr. Tomoeda, could you tell us about your future aspirations?

T: In addition to creating value in terms of operation, I would like to contribute to the “work well-being” for the members I work with.
Since I think well-being is a good thoughts, I would like to do my best to achieve the well-being of the people involved in working with EWEL,Inc.