Japanese manufacturers using tonari to expand into Asia

For decades, the shrinking domestic market has made small-to-medium-sized Japanese companies work harder than ever to become true international businesses with offices overseas. While some efforts aim to serve international customers, there is also a significant domestic labor crunch that can be addressed by overseas expansion. Japan doesn’t have all the IT workers it needs for an economy undergoing “digital transformation.” Outsourcing to overseas offices is crucial for achieving future goals and optimizing current operations.

However, establishing offices overseas is only the first step. Next, there are many pain points that Japanese SMEs experience: communication challenges, high turnover rates, cultural misunderstandings, and feelings of separation.

tonari helps workers overcome language and cultural barriers to unite workers across borders

tonari portals are floor-to-ceiling, always-on video screens with extremely low latency that allow people in separate remote spaces to feel like they are together in the same space.

tonari solves the problems faced by many ASEAN companies that want to expand offshore development by better connecting them to their remote offices. Non-verbal information accounts for 93% of communication, and facial expressions and gestures can be more accurately conveyed through tonari's life-size screen and high-quality, low-latency video and audio over typical video conferencing technology. tonari more easily conveys both subtle and detailed instructions to co-located teams.

A reliable practice to retain talent is to increase employee engagement by sustaining a psychologically safe environment and encouraging employees to feel pride in their work. By being constantly connected, tonari can encourage communication between employees even outside of scheduled meetings. The ability to reach out spontaneously to ask questions or consult with colleagues produces a much more collaborative and cooperative dynamic. Additionally, by increasing the frequency of conversations and visualizing one another's environments and non-verbal cues, tonari helps reduce miscommunications and differences in perception. This fosters more authentic engagements, even across diverse cultures and language barriers.

New uses across Japan and Southeast Asia

In April and May of this year, we deployed tonari lite to four companies in Singapore, Malaysia, and Vietnam.

Co-located between Japan and Vietnam, OGISHI specializes in providing safe, reliable, and flexible scaffolding solutions, including frame scaffolding, wedge scaffolding, and next-generation scaffolding using their own special materials. Akira Ogishi, the President of Ogishi, which started using tonari lite in May 2024 shared his thoughts.

“Our overseas subsidiary, OGISHI VIETNAM, established in Hanoi, Vietnam in 2015, has about 20 local employees. They use CAD to create construction drawings and steel frame erection drawings, working closely with our design department in Japan through an online environment. “

“The purpose of introducing tonari is to build relationships between colleagues in Vietnam and Japan, promote understanding of each other’s cultures and values, and facilitate interaction even when direct face-to-face meetings are difficult due to geographical constraints. “

“While we can provide drawing instructions and review plans together online, it’s challenging to truly feel the enthusiasm of the person or the atmosphere of the office. I believe tonari is an excellent communication tool that allows us to sense these otherwise hard-to-convey emotions and atmospheres. By using tonari, I hope we can create a 'connected office' environment between Vietnam and Japan, deepening our understanding of each other’s situations and updates from daily interactions, and integrating that understanding into our work.”

Some companies implement tonari to enhance employee engagement, while others do so to strengthen communication and prevent misunderstandings

A listed company with over 50 years of history, Sankyo Frontier Inc. manufactures and sells construction equipment and materials, expanding both domestically and overseas, particularly in the ASEAN region. One of the challenges faced by Japanese companies are the “language and communication barriers” and “lack of information-sharing opportunities between their domestic and international branches. To address these issues, they connected their Singapore branch with their headquarters in Japan. Hiroho Suzuki, a director at the headquarters, explains,

“Due to language barriers, our operations became siloed despite being part of the same company. As a result, some functions were duplicated across departments, even though we face a labor shortage.” He adds, “If opportunities to use English increase and communication through tonari becomes the norm, we can collaborate more quickly and work on new projects.”

tonari is supporting global expansion of companies growing from and into Japan

In April and May this year, four Japanese companies with offices in Singapore, Malaysia, and Vietnam adopted tonari. We’re excited to see how more companies continue to use tonari to grow and improve their operations across Asia and worldwide.