Learning Best Practice from the Japanese

Written by Roy Hasson, Director of Sales Engineering, APAC

A little more than a year ago, I moved to Japan after spending nearly three years in the UK. A complete change of culture and a whole new professional world. The coronavirus outbreak continues to affect us all, but we are trying to stay positive. Seeing the cherry blossom last month reminded us that Spring is a time of renewal. Let’s hope that this difficult period passes quickly for everyone here, and around the world. In the meantime, I would like to share my experience dealing with Japanese video market requirements since moving here.

As much as I loved London, and found it hard to leave, I’m happy to say that I love living and working here too. Tokyo is an amazing vibrant city with so much to offer and the country is beautiful to tour around.

Working in Japan is a great experience, giving me the opportunity to be in direct touch with our Japanese customers and learn more about the video market requirements, while developing new solutions specifically required for this market.

I’m learning so much from our customers and believe that Japanese working practices are helping us, as a company, to be “even better”.

Here are my key insights why:

1) Quality and reliability – attributes that have always been a priority for LiveU and essential for all Japanese products. We’re proud to have received the stamp of approval for our technology from Japan’s leading broadcasters, meeting their stringent requirements. Quality and reliability remain our paramount considerations as we roll-out our newest product offerings.

2) Continuous improvement – as we learn from the Japanese experience, improving our documentation and processing is allowing us to drill down and make our own processes even more efficient. Maybe the process takes longer, but the result helps us to optimize our working practices in general.

3) Service first – we’ve always been proud of our service and support worldwide. Here more than ever, it’s been essential to adopt ourselves to the needs of the Japanese customers, shortening our response time. We decided to expand our local team in Japan, with local reps, sales engineers, and a country manager. We’ve also benefited from working alongside our longstanding Japanese partner Sanshin Electronics Co., Ltd., due to their commitment to excellence and service.

To sum up, I’m glad to have this opportunity to work closely with our excellent local team comprising LiveU Japan and our partners, engaging closely with our Japanese customers so we can increase our value to them. During these difficult times, we’re seeing more than ever how hard everyone is working together. The cancellation of the Tokyo Summer Games was, of course, a big disappointment, but we are more committed than ever to next year’s games! Here’s hoping that we can all go back to our regular lives – both personal and business – very soon.
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Just as an aside, I’m proud to say that I recently passed the JLPT N5 exam in spoken and written Japanese. Although there’s a long way to improve, the learning process has been highly fulfilling and I can say that the Japanese value of “continuous improvement” has had a positive effect on my personal success too.

LiveU provide live video transmission and video streaming solutions.