Top Conversation

Suzuken marked its 90th anniversary in November 2022. Positioning the coming era toward our 100th anniversary as the third development phase, we are accelerating our efforts to realize our new vision of a health creation enterprise.

Suzuken’s Supreme Advisor Bessho, Chairman and Executive Officer Miyata, and President and Chief Executive Officer Asano discuss the Suzuken Group's vision of a health creation enterprise and its business strategy.

Miyata: The founding spirit is the very origin of us as the Suzuken Group and is shared by all our employees. Our genuine desire to help people drives our actions.

We have witnessed our employees work hard to fulfill their social mission in the event of various natural disasters and emergencies.

For example, in the case of the sarin gas attack on the subway in March 1995, employees took a Shinkansen Kodama train from Nagoya, collected stocks of PAM, an antidote for sarin, from branches at each station, and delivered them to St. Luke’s International Hospital within a few hours from the order. In the aftermath of the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011, which was an unprecedented great disaster, employees who were affected by the disaster also put off cleaning up their own houses and worked hard to supply pharmaceuticals to customers so that the supply of pharmaceuticals would not be interrupted.

I believe that the sense of mission and responsible behavior of our employees is a testament to the inheritance of the Suzuken Group's DNA.

The strength of the Suzuken Group is the networks it has built up with medical institutions, pharmacies, and other customers, and the ability of connection and expansion utilizing those networks. This is also the Suzuken Group’s purpose for its existence.

Asano: The relationship of trust with our customers is extremely valuable, and I believe it is an important traditional asset that the Suzuken Group should value above all else. No matter how great a business model or service is, it cannot spread without the power of this traditional asset.

As we approach our 100th anniversary, we will leverage the strength of the relationships we have built with our customers over the years to provide a variety of healthcare solutions from the perspective of patients and people. In this way, we aim to contribute to society as a health creation enterprise.

Asano: Looking at the movement of various companies in Japan and overseas, I feel that different industries are moving into the healthcare market very rapidly, and that changes are happening faster than we can imagine. we need to follow this trend, and in order to do so, I strongly believe that we have to make changes and reforms to the extent that we completely change the way we think about Suzuken and the Group's existing business and the model of our business, though this may seem harsh. This is expressed in Bessho’s words of "the third development phase" and "transformation from the pharmaceutical distribution business as our core business into a health creation enterprise." With this in mind, the baton was passed to us.

Bessho: As we face an aging society, people including the youth are becoming increasingly aware of their health. We can’t see the future if we look only at pharmaceuticals from a narrow perspective, but if we look at it from a larger perspective of health, there is huge potential. DX will accelerate the approach to health that goes beyond pharmaceuticals, and will change the way we approach it. DX will open up new perspectives for the way companies should be. From that perspective, I believe we have a far-reaching future ahead.

Asano: What does a health creation enterprise look like? I think of it as the Suzuken Group contributing to health creation for patients. With patients as our starting point, we would like to become a group that comprehensively realizes health creation according to patient's life cycles.

Asano: Transformation into a health creation enterprise requires working on both the structural reform of our current business and new challenges for new domains, disassembling functions of each business like a puzzle with focus on functions as a concept in mind, combining them, and creating totally new value together with our partner companies. Currently, based on the concept of focus on functions, we have set forth three drivers of growth for new businesses: Smart Logistics, Digital Healthcare, and Community-based in-Home Healthcare. Through these initiatives, we hope to expand new business domains in the healthcare field, such as the development of new solutions for elderly facilities and homebound patients in community healthcare and the provision of new proposals for support for pharmaceutical companies that combine services and functions owned by both companies, and to find potential to create value that can help society.

At the root of these initiatives, there is our important social mission that we must play a part in the healthcare ecosystem, and I believe our important role is to address various social issues and social costs in healthcare. For example, I believe that our initiatives in smart logistics can contribute to reducing social costs and solving social issues, such as optimization of distribution inventory throughout the supply chain, reduction in disposal losses, improvement of delivery efficiency through sharing, and implementation of measures for the environment by visualizing distribution inventory in real time, because we have already established pharmaceutical distribution infrastructure covering the entire country including manufacturer distribution, nationwide transportation networks, wholesale distribution, and networks for delivery to customers.

Asano: As a group-wide initiative to accelerate the transformation into a health creation enterprise, we have launched an initiative called Chienowa, a proposal system for all members of the Group. We hope to foster the culture of the Suzuken Group through this initiative, which brings together the wisdom of all Group employees and applies the voices of employees to management.

Above all, I believe we really need people who will lead the new era. We will discover and develop human resources who will lead the new era by providing various opportunities for growth, such as introducing programs that give opportunities to all Group employees. We will also work to establish an environment in which employees can play an active role for a longer period of time in order to take advantage of experience and knowhow accumulated from the past and the connection with our customers, which is our traditional asset.

Bessho: Environmental change is always an opportunity. Should we think of this difficult time as a headwind or a tailwind? If we fight against it, we will be resisted. If we ride the flow, we can fly farther. I believe that we at the Suzuken Group must not confine ourselves to the conventions of pharmaceutical wholesale and MS. We are already not just a pharmaceutical wholesaler, but an indispensable part of Japan's healthcare, and an indispensable entity in protecting people's health. I believe the Suzuken Group is making steady progress as a new corporate group.

Miyata: The business environment is changing dramatically, and COVID-19 and digitalization have increased the speed of change further. The Suzuken Group is entering a new stage, the realization of a health creation enterprise, as our form in the third development phase. I believe that the health creation domain has infinite potential, and the value the Suzuken Group delivers to society and potential for the Suzuken Group to contribute to society will remain infinite. As we move toward the next stage, I believe that it is important to improve our corporate value while valuing the philosophy and spirit we inherited from our predecessors even when the environment changes.

Asano: Suzuken will mark its 100th anniversary 10 years from now. Together with the employees of the Suzuken Group, we hope to become a corporate group that can contribute more to society after those 10 years.

Carefully inheriting the founding spirit "Learning from customers,” we will move our headquarters by the opinions of people in the field and create new systems with everyone. We will use information wisely to provide more and more new services that satisfy our customers.

Simply because it is a very tough time, we want to take a step forward with courage. As president, I would like to create a company where employees of the Suzuken Group feel truly happy to have joined this corporate group and can work enthusiastically. The Suzuken Group will work all together as “One Team” to create the new global health creation enterprise.