SAKURA HOUSE Website renewal and CRM software replacement

Since its establishment in 1992, SAKURA HOUSE has been offering a variety of room types such as monthly apartments, shared houses, guesthouses, dormitories and vacation rentals for short to long term stays, with a genuine desire to ensure the safety and comfort of our inbound guests. Today, we, as SAKURA HOUSE, offer more than 100 residences in Tokyo, Izu-Kawazu and Kyoto.

The SAKURA HOUSE website was established over 20 years ago to meet the needs of our guests from abroad who want to search for a room or make a reservation from their home country. We, as web directors and staff members, have continued to make minor updates and have undergone a series of major website redesigns to improve the clarity and usability of the website and make it as pleasant to use as our accommodations are.

Even now, in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, we are trying to see this as some opportunity to reevaluate our website, and are working on a website redesign project.
With the help of Argano, a tech company that creates a wide range of services, we have been meeting with them to make our website and customer relationship management (CRM) software more convenient and comfortable.

Meeting with members of Argano in SAKURA HOUSE Lounge

When we made a list of features we wanted to add, the folks at Argano taught us the importance of utilizing the services, if there are services that can be used by customizing them well, rather than just creating and replacing it from scratch. For this CRM replacement, we decided to use Zoho CRM, a well-known cloud CRM tool, as our customer management service.

At the meeting, SAKURA HOUSE web directors and Argano members started by reviewing the current situation and coming up with the general idea of what needs to be done, identifying the areas that need to be improved, discussing whether the features we want to add can be implemented, and adjusting the details.

During our website redesign meetings, we realize that there are many similarities to a major renovation of a SAKURA HOUSE building. In the renovation process, we check the current state of the building, decide what parts to keep, what walls and doors to improve, what units to install, how to position the electric switch panels and outlets, what furniture and appliances to install, where to put the beds and air conditioners, and other details to make sure that the building is safe and comfortable.

Whether it’s a building renovation or a website redesign, it’s a joy to see them completed and ready for everyone to enjoy using them.

With new technology and services, we hope to implement and welcome you before the end of the year with a series of tests to ensure that the website and CRM integration is more efficient and the functionality is enhanced to make browsing, searching and functioning on the website more convenient when booking and staying with us.