Financial_Times_Asia_-_April_6_2020

Monday 6 April 2020 ★ 9

CO M PA N I E S & M A R K E T S

An online queue manager has rapidly become

vital in today’s ‘click and deliver’ culture

A supermarket delivery is the 2020

equivalent of a Glastonbury ticket. You

can get them, but it requires

persistence and strategy.

My first delivery of the coronavirus

crisis, from Wm Morrison, Britain’s

fourth largest supermarket chain,

wasn’t too hard to secure, even though

Ocado, the middle-class delivery

service of choice, had already closed to

new customers.

Trying to get a second slot from

Morrisons, however, was tricky, even

for three weeks’ time. But the quest

was greatly helped by a background

software plug-in that the retailer — and

Ocado too, which shares Morrisons’

system — are using.

It is called Queue-it, and informed

me that typically, 70-80,000 people

were ahead of me in the line, and it

would take an hour or more just to get

on to the Morrisons site. Getting a

delivery time was a separate matter.

That, I learnt, required getting on to

the site repeatedly at quiet times to

peek at the upcoming slots.

At 2am on a Sunday, there were still

7,000 people in line — a five minute

wait, as Queue-it’s helpful dashboard

showed. But even if getting on to the

site was easy, there were still no slots.

At 6am, there were 17,478 customers

stacked up, with 15 minutes’ wait time

and, again no availability.

Yet by studying form patiently, it was

possible to get the treasured slot, and

kudos to Morrisons for a good service

in the circumstances.

What intrigued me, though was

Queue-it. Based in Copenhagen, it

proclaims itself as a way of preventing

website crashes by controlling traffic

and treating customers fairly.

Was Queue-it, however, something

Morrisons had always had working in

the background, or a solution they

drafted in for the crisis? By extension, I

wondered, was Queue-it enjoying, to

use that slightly tainted expression

from 1914 to 1918, having “a good war”.

The technology director at

Morrisons, a busy person I am sure,

would only say they are “very pleased

with how Queue-it is being used to

manage our traffic online,” so I spoke

to Niels Sodemann, a former Ernst &

Young consultant, who co-founded

Queue-it in 2010, initially for the online

event ticketing industry.

“At the beginning, we knew for sure

that there would be capacity issues

online in the future, but when we

called the bank for funding, we were

laughed at.”

Soon, however, they were trialling

their software on the Danish

government website for renewing

hunting licences. They now have 750

corporate clients. Mr Sodemann

explains that Morrisons and Ocado had

adopted Queue-it in the past few

weeks, having tried another queueing

software but not gone with it.

But Queue-it, which Mr Sodemann

says is the biggest company globally in

its niche, had been trying to attract

supermarkets across Europe since the

beginning of February.

“We were being used at that time in

Hong Kong for mask sales, which were

the big-demand product there, and at

the same time we started reaching out

proactively to supermarkets, because

we knew there was going to be an issue

in the near future. And, yes, that’s

driving a lot of new business,” he says.

He thinks the supermarkets in

Europe did not understand how big the

change was going to be. “It’s been an

explosion into online at the same time

as a seismic, colossal increase in usage

of the internet.”

The inspiration for Queue-it had

originally been the paper ticket system

used at busy times in Danish bakeries.

“There’s a lot of psychology in

queueing,” Mr Sodemann adds.

“Having the number and displaying it

helps you understand that they’re

adjusting the flow of users to the

capacity of the shop. You see it’s fair

and you can decide yourself if you want

to stay. Fairness and understanding

who is in front and who’s behind is

extremely important. It decreases the

stress level across the board.”

So is Queue-it having a good war?

Getting new clients on board has been

easier, but Mr Sodemann says there

will also be businesses that fail.

But he concludes that “this crisis,

like others, will change many of the

ways business is done”.

[email protected]

Danish software group

Queue-it says it prevents

website crashes by

controlling traffic and

treating customers fairly

‘

Jonathan Margolis

Technology

’

from markets where its position is lag-

ging. The division of roles within the

alliance, which also includesMitsubishi

Motors, will be more explicit, with each

partner taking the lead in markets and

technologies where it has an edge.

Under his predecessor, the carmaker

had outlined plans to cut 12,500 jobs,

but the rapid deterioration in business

conditions and plant shutdowns caused

by Covid-19 mean there will be many

more jobs lost. “We may need to right-

size more dramatically,” Mr Uchida

says, without elaborating on the details.

Mr Uchida is an outlier among Japa-

nese executives inside Nissan, who have

mostly stayed at the company since

graduating. He spent many years of his

childhood outside Japan as his father,

who worked at an airline, was posted to

places such as Egypt and Malaysia.

“That’s where I found the diversity, cul-

ture and adaptability to different cir-

cumstances,” he says.

After studying theology, Mr Uchida

spent more than a decade at a trading

house now known as Sojitz. His first

experience with the automotive indus-

try was during the five and a half years

he spent in the Philippines, where the

trading house had a joint venture with

Mitsubishi Motors. He then joined Nis-

san in 2003, starting in the purchasing

division before being assigned roles in

South Korea and later in China.

The multicultural experience was one

of the key factors why the company’s

nomination committee selected Mr

Uchida as its new CEO to lead during a

period of uncertainty and tension

within the alliance.

Following two decades of one-man

leadership under Mr Ghosn, Nissan is

experimenting with a troika manage-

ment team that also includes Ashwani

Gupta, who is now the chief operating

officer. The approach is untested, and

critics say it makes it unclear who is

actually leading the company. But Mr

Uchida says: “If we set the right direc-

tion, I think this company has a lot of

strength to revive itself.”

How to Lead.Makoto Uchida, chief executive of Nissan

the Nissan brand. “Our individual capa-

bility is much higher than what we are

delivering today,” Mr Uchida says.

“It’s my job and the management’s

job... to move the company in the

right direction.”

As part of efforts to rebuild its brand,

Mr Uchida has talked often about the

new “Nissan Way” with employees, say-

ing the group’s corporate culture needs

to be transformed to put an even bigger

emphasis on customer needs in each

market. “If you take it seriously and act

proactively, I believe that Nissan’s

future will be brighter,” Mr Uchida said

in a message to employees in February.

Restoring that direction will entail

pain, Mr Uchida says. Following years of

aggressively pursuing a higher market

share and sales volume during the

Ghosn era, the company has shifted its

focus to profitability. But that has meant

Nissan will be concentrating more on

areas where it is strong and withdrawing

direction the company was moving

towards,” Mr Uchida says.

Now Nissan’s plants located all over

the world have been temporarily shut

down because of the lockdown of cities

and supply chain disruptions caused by

the spread of coronavirus, triggering a

two-notch downgrade of its debt by rat-

ing agency Moody’s to just above junk

territory. Shares in the company have

nearly halved this year.

Still, in a message to employees at the

start of the new financial year on April 1,

Mr Uchida said: “We will have to endure

inconvenience and uncertainty for

some time. However, we can definitely

weather the storm.”

As he started the role of CEO, he

placed top priority on visiting thegemba

— the factory floors and design centres

in Japan, the US and Europe — where he

held town hall meetings with employ-

ees. Staff asked their new boss how they

could help the management to repair

make a lot of planning. I still cannot

foresee how much impact this uncer-

tainty will have” with the pandemic now

spreading to the US, Europe and else-

where, Mr Uchida says.

Even before Covid-19, the CEO had

enough problems to deal with. The car-

maker had faced a serious crisis since

the 2018 arrest of its former chairman

Carlos Ghosn on financial misconduct

charges, which the ex-chair denies.

Losses were building up on tumbling

sales worldwide, and its 21-year alliance

with France’s Renault had nearly col-

lapsed. Mr Uchida’s arrival was meant to

mark a new start for the company.

Instead, his former boss stole the spot-

light as he made an audacious escape

from Japan to Lebanon, launching a

public tirade against Nissan executives

for plotting to bring him down — a claim

strongly disputed by the company.

“People were a bit demotivated. In a

way, they were worried about what

J

ust weeks after Makoto Uchida

was appointed to lead Nissan in

early December, news of the

coronavirus outbreak in China

reached the Japanese car-

maker.

His wife and two children were still

based in Wuhan, the early centre of the

pandemic that has now killed more than

67,000 people worldwide. The city is

home to the headquarters ofNissan’s

joint venture with China’sDongfeng

Motor.

“My employees are my family too, so

we wanted to make sure they were safe

and treated well. That comes first,” says

the 53-year-old who used to head the

company’s operations in China before

becoming chief executive.

Mr Uchida says he was also extra care-

ful in how the company communicated

its response to the virus: “We should not

be exaggerating the situation or unnec-

essarily inviting panic mode or uncer-

tainty among our employees.”

Since the outbreak, Nissan has given

regular updates and guidelines to

employees on health and safety, and tips

on how to stay connected while working

virtually through Zoom or Skype. Mr

Uchida and other executives also com-

municate regularly with HR and line

managers.

For both the company and the wider

car industry, the lessons drawn from the

2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami

proved vital. The detailed list of parts

suppliers that had been compiled after

that earlier disaster helped Nissan to fig-

ure out which parts were imported from

China and where the shortages might

occur, so it could set up back-up plans to

produce them elsewhere, according to

Mr Uchida.

Even so, Nissan, with its heavy reli-

ance on hundreds of components made

in China, became one of the first global

carmakers to cut production at home

because of a parts shortage. “We need to

Seeking the right direction in times of crisis

Shortly after taking over a

group hit by scandal, the

new boss was dealing with

the coronavirus outbreak,

writesKana Inagaki

Experience:

Mr Uchida was

considered

Nissan’s ideal

candidate due to

his time spent

outside Japan

Androniki Christodoulou

Leadership

More interviews

illuminating the

personalities of

high-profile

leaders by

focusing on the

issues they faced

ft.com/howtolead

‘My employees are my

family too so we wanted

to make sure they were

safe and treated well’

APRIL 6 2020 Section:Features Time: 5/4/2020 - 17: 57 User: nicola.davison Page Name: MONINTERVIEW, Part,Page,Edition: USA, 9, 1