Top Message
Creating New Standards
A wide variety of employees work at the DIGI/TERAOKA Group. Engineers devoted to development, encouraged by seeing their customers' excitement. Sales people who passionately speak of how they envision the complete makeover of a customer’s shop. And careful, considerate support staff who visualize a workplace where their colleagues can truly enjoy their work, and then strive to create it. Of course, each of their roles is different, but what these employees share is the pleasure of working innovatively.
Our innovation begins with rethinking our customer's objective from scratch. First, we listen to our customer's concerns. Then, as we learn by observing our customer's worksite, we repeatedly contemplate their objective, sometimes calling that very objective into question. This approach of trying to get at the true nature of the customer’s objective is what we refer to as breaking through existing standards.
This steady advance toward reaching the true objective also reveals customer needs that have remained hidden. We then make a large leap forward by combining these essential needs with the potential of our technology. And, we create a new standard, as a result. This is the innovation that we practice, and the delight that we create.
We hear a lot about market maturity and economic stagnation, but we do not subscribe to such commentary. The stricter the market conditions, the more acutely our customers need a new solution. We break through established market standards and create new ones. And when those standards become commonplace, we break through them again and take up the challenge of creating the next new standard. As a professional solution provider, we will continue to pursue the path of creating new solutions that continue to exceed our customers’ expectations.
Chairman and CEO
Kazuharu Teraoka
Sharing a Vision of the Future Through Innovation
“Show gratitude! We can do it! Let’s create what others can’t!” This is our corporate philosophy, which was created by Takeharu Teraoka, our second president, in 1935; one year after the company was established. And as this philosophy states, the development of groundbreaking products driven by the gratitude we feel for our customers is in our company's DNA and has been handed down since the company’s founding. However, even if we think our products are innovative, we cannot consider a product to be a market innovation unless a great number of customers use it and appreciate it. It is precisely because of this unforgiving reality and the difficulties in creating new markets that we continue to strive in meeting this challenge.
For example, consider the semi-self-checkout system we released in 2010. Although our product was revolutionary, with the cashier doing the product scanning and the shopper doing the payment, we were told by many that it would never succeed. However, our persistent efforts in conveying the message that the system could reduce shopper checkout waiting times by one-half and help resolve staff shortages in stores resulted in the system still being used across Japan today, with countless satisfied customers and our company being hailed as the semi-self-checkout pioneer. It was our dedication to sharing this message with our customers that allowed us to create the new standard of semi-self-checkout. We envisioned how our innovation could work in our customer’s stores and the benefits it could provide and then energetically communicated this vision to our customers. And, we are proud to say that it was through these steady and unrelenting communication efforts that we were able to open up a new market.
The DIGI/TERAOKA Group has been taking on the challenge of creating new standards since its founding in 1934. We have set a new goal for the medium to long term – achieving consolidated sales of 200 billion yen by fiscal 2034, which is the year that marks the 100th anniversary of our company’s founding. With gratitude to our customers as our driving force, we will unite our entire group to strengthen our capacity for groundbreaking innovation and compelling communication. Through this we will reinforce our potential and presence in our four main business fields of retail, food industry, logistics, and hospitality. This is the goal that we, by all means, want to realize.
However, you cannot realize that which you cannot envision. And that is why we are envisioning the excitement and delight that our groundbreaking innovation can bring to our customers and then sharing this vision with them through compelling communication, to make it a reality. We will continue to build on the trust our customers have in us and inspire confidence that DIGI will continue to create new standards into the future.
President and COO
Kosuke Yamamoto
