A common aim
Background
Hitachi Capital (recently re-branded as Novuna) are a major player in the asset management and vehicle finance sector in the UK. Headquartered in Japan they were looking to invest and grow their vehicle leasing & finance investments in the UK.
This created several challenges – they didn’t understand the nuances of the market and wanted to share their cultural passion for making things less complex in a sector where regulation restricts messaging.
Overall Impact
Hitachi Capital’s new approach led not only to a record number of enquiries – most notably a 75% increase in the driving instructor vehicle business. It also helped cement the new cultural approach well across 8 other core finance businesses cementing the common new strapline – Unjumble the Next (a play on words of their corporate value to Inspire the Next).
So what was done:
Understand the cultural elements
Ben and his team conducted a review of the internal drive to simplify the process – they looked at cultural differences and attitudes between Japan and the UK and proposed how this ethos could adapt best to the UK market.
Ignore what others do – create simple
Here the challenge was to think about what the barriers were to customers with present finance experiences and how to make this better – bearing in mind regulatory restrictions. We also evaluated how other leading businesses innovated a traditional and complex sector like Hippo did in the waste space.
Roll out to other businesses
Once we had developed a new approach and worked with internal teams to develop this new approach & train people we trialled it on a new business – Hitachi Capital Driving Instructor Finance – with a major increase in sales (75%). This was then rolled out across 8 other businesses.
Conclusion
Cultural change can work well across borders to delight customers where the cultural nuances are considered and you don’t need to tweak what your competition does to get more attention – this shows that it can be best to be different when you want to game-change your marketplace.