Tatsuya Okada
Joined in 2018
Engineer of Mobility Engineering Team Unit
4th Department, Business Solution 2nd Business Headquarters, GxP Incorporated 

Please tell us about your encounter with the GxP Group and how you joined the company.

I found the GxP Group when I saw it on a job hunting website as a “recommended company”.
I was mainly looking for a job at an IT company, and I felt that I wanted to create something useful myself, rather than following someone else’s orders. So, when I was looking for an independent company that could continue development, the GxP Group matched my criteria, so I applied for a company information session.

Before joining the company, the timing of the interview was right. After I attended a company information session, it progressed in a short period of time for the interview.
I thought that I would not know the atmosphere of the company until I actually joined the company, but in the interview,I got a glimpse of how the interviewers were friendly with each other. So I decided to join the GxP Group.

What kind of projects and work are you involved in?

I am mainly involved in two projects.

One of them is a project for a relationship information management system for corporate executives. In addition to the function to share and manage business cards within the company, there is a function which manages relationship information such as the schedule of meeting with customers and which customers we’ve sent New Year’s cards. By managing the relationship information, it is possible to record the relationship with the customer, and it is designed assuming that it will be useful for handover and so on. My work is mainly design and implementation, but I also take on the role of leader within the development team, organizing weekly development plans, etc., and aligning awareness within the team. At first, this project was also aimed at cultivating young people, so when I was in my first year at the company, a high level of technical and quality was required. To be honest, I was desperate to keep up. However, through this project, I began to think about service sustainability and user experience (UX).

The other is a project aimed at collaborating with customers, where we are developing a travel product sales platform. This platform has a number of services, such as product management and search serviec, necessary for selling travel products, and the prospect of this platform is to allow each travel agency to implement any service. Currently, we are working to enable GxP, which is good at business-related areas, to develop and modify undeveloped services and services which development has been delayed. I am organizing the current understanding and the functions that need to be added in the future in order to improve the services that have already been developed. The scale is large and there are many abstract topics, so I am studying to deepen my knowledge of the travel industry in preparation for collaboration. For this project, I was entrusted with the quote work for the first time though, there are still some aspects without seniors advice, would like to work on it on my own soon.

What are the interesting parts, difficult things, and rewarding aspects of your work?

The most interesting part of the job is deriving the optimal solution through discussions within the team. There are times when things don’t go smoothly due to customer circumstances or technical problems, but at that time, we share and discuss each idea within the team to come up with the optimal solution. In the process, I can come into contact with the way of thinking of various people, so it is fresh and interesting to see the opinions spread more and more. Above all, I am happy that the answers given by the team are useful to our customers.

The difficulty of my work is that I have to go back and forth between “concrete” and “abstract” appropriately in order to match the perceptions of myself and others. I feel this in various situations, both within the team and in communication with customers. I don’t think it’s limited to this job, but I think that in order to decide something, it is necessary to agree on the recognition first. Our work is often abstract, and we need to make it moderately concrete in order to match the perceptions of our customers and members. I find it difficult to strike that balance.

Do you have any dreams or goals for the future?

I don’t have a clear goal yet, but I would like to be able to propose optimal functions and systems that can solve customer problems.
It would be great if I could gain a deep understanding of the customer through interviews, and become a good bridge to implementation.

What do you think is good about joining the GxP Group?

There are many positive people, so it’s a good place not to be strangely afraid. My boss and I are close and easy to talk to, which is helpful.

In addition to that the management level employees creates such an atmosphere, GxP has a cross-team discussion called “GxP Domain Discussion”, which provides opportunities to actively exchange opinions and information with various people. I think there are such opportunities, the whole company has an atmosphere that makes it easy to talk.

I myself try to talk to people when members are excited about chatting, and to communicate casually.

Please give a message to job-hunting students who are interested in the GxP group.

If you have a goal of what you want to do or what you want to be like, I think it’s a company that provides a place where you can challenge it.

The reason why I have a certified Scrum qualification is because I told my seniors in 1on1 that I didin’t understand Scrum well. He told me that there was a certification, and he set up an opportunity to talk to a qualified person in the company, and I was able to actually obtain the certification. Other than myself, new employees who joined the company because they wanted to do agile were assigned to agile projects after being assigned, and they are learning agile on site.

There are people with various skills in the company, so I think it’s a company that responds quickly to your desire to do something. If you are interested in our group, please find your own goals!

My Favorite GxP Way

Speed & Steady

It sounds like I am saying opposite thing: Speed and Steady, however, I chose it because the balance is important at times, and chose it as admonitory for myself who is a slow starter. I myself don't have a lot of preferences, and I'm not a craftsman, so I'm the type of person who sees balance and changes priorities. After joining the GxP group, I was taught that no matter how hard I worked, if things didn't work properly or if the quality was low, it would be pointless.