The new president of NRI Holdings America Yasuki Okai talks about the company's North American push.
Nomura Research Institute (NRI), a consultancy and systems solutions provider, recently appointed Yasuki Okai as president of NRI Holdings America. For his new role Okai has relocated to the U.S., where he will be in charge of strengthening “the firm’s governance and leading the North American phase of its global expansion,” officials say. This marks the first time NRI has relocated a senior-level executive from Japan to one of its foreign subsidiaries, and NRI officials say the move “emphasizes NRI’s continued pledge to North American expansion.” To learn more FTF News spoke with Okai about his thoughts on the new role and how he plans to drive growth for NRI Holdings America.
Q: Can you elaborate on NRI’s efforts to expand the U.S. business? Why has NRI made this a priority and how will you go about achieving that goal?
A: My main responsibility to be in the U.S. is to reinforce the firm’s governance as a preparation for NRI’s global expansion across all our service areas of consulting, financial IT and retail distribution system. The governance will be a backbone for our ambitious target to increase our sales outside of Japan from $130 million up to $1 billion by 2022.
Globally, we have been expanding our network by partnering with the leaders in each region.
To name a few, we partnered with MindWave Solutions Pte.Ltd., IT solutions and services management company in Singapore in 2012, made a capital injection to Market Xcel Data Matrix Pvt. Ltd., an Indian research company in 2013, and partnered with H&Z Management Consulting, one of Europe’s leading management consulting firms in 2014
The U.S. is our next focus. The U.S. is the largest market with steady growth and is appealing to NRI who is a dominant system integrator providing the industry’s de facto standard IT platforms in Japan.
Outside of the financial IT business domain, we acquired a leading provider of loyalty and CRM [customer relationship management] services in the U.S., Brierley+Partners in March.
We will actively explore more M&A and partnership opportunities to expand our business beyond organic growth and strengthening governance at this phase is crucial for the firm.
Q: In a press release, NRI mentioned that the focus on North America is related to the “Abenomics” reforms of Prime Minister Shinzō Abe in Japan. Can you elaborate on the connection between Abenomics and the push for overseas, as opposed to domestic, expansion?
A: Regardless of the benefits Abenocmics brought to Japan’s economy, Japan remains NRI’s major source of business revenue.
NRI will benefit from growing infrastructure in Japan’s market, but our plan is beyond domestic growth. NRI is one of the largest system integrators in Japan, and over the course of the past 50 years, NRI has established itself as a leading company with dominant share in the industry.
NRI’s solutions such as The Star, I-Star and Bestway have become the industry’s de facto standard infrastructure. It’s time for us to diversify our portfolio and apply the knowledge and experience earned across all service areas of consulting, financial IT and retail distribution system in Japan to the world.
Q: What is the most exciting aspect of this new role for you? The most difficult?
A: Corporate governance has more significant meaning than ever to NRI as it is facing its new phase of robust global expansion.
As a company whose corporate culture has a heavy emphasis on quality in addition to cost and speed, governance plays an important role because it is essential to maintain the ‘quality’ of what the firm offers.
My role to maintain the balance between maintaining the quality and being innovative will be a new challenge for the whole company, but it is exciting as this marks the new phase of NRI’s history.
Q: Will NRI be making any announcements about new products or services in the near future? Or will the North American growth strategy simply depend on doubling down on existing revenue streams?
A: In our all service areas of consulting, financial IT and retail distribution system, we will explore various opportunities to grow beyond organic growth. These potential opportunities include business partnerships and M&As, which gives my role to enhance governance even more important meaning.
We see increasing interests and demands for utility service in the U.S. as the general attention has shifted to quality from cost and speed. Utility service is a unique service that combines BPO [business process outsourcing] service and IT platform provision, which allows users to update the system and thus optimize the operations.
NRI is a leading provider of this domain in Japan and we believe we can offer the U.S. market a unique service that combines the BPO service and some platform provision in a sophisticated manner.
We look forward to catering to the unmet needs of the U.S. market by utilizing our extensive knowledge and experience gained as a dominant player in the industry in Japan.
Q: Anything else you’d care to add?
A: Besides my main mission to enhance firm’s governance, I will strengthen the network with local clients and partners including executives from financial institutions in the U.S.
Relationship management remains one of the top priorities of my responsibility. I firmly believe with more than 25 years of my experience at the firm, to cultivate business relationships and networks in the U.S. will bring great benefit to NRI and contribute to the firm’s future growth in a significant way.
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