Janice Yamamoto, Sales Operations Manager at Formic Technologies
Janice brings 18 years of experience being inside the manufacturing automation space, focused on sales opimization and project management.
What do you feel is important about your role as Sales Operations Manager at Formic?
I think it's really easy to think that every customer and every scenario is binary and black and white. But when you're out in the field, traveling, and helping customers face to face, there's a lot of pressure to perform well and provide whatever the customer may need at that moment. The approach that I try to have with sales operations is to remember that I'm here to lessen the pressure by providing any and all tools to make the salespeople more effective in the field and allow them to remain incredibly customer focused.
What drew you to the company?
There were a lot of different things that were exciting to me, such as the team, the stage that the organization was in, but what excited me the most was our mission. What is unique about the Formic mission is that not only are we trying to help American manufacturers, but we're trying to help these businesses help themselves, and that's the most lasting and effective way to make a change. Everybody at Formic has a really customer focused, mission driven competitive edge and I am interested to see how that edge changes some of what the rest of the industry has accepted as standard.
How does Formic’s mission affect change and create meaning for you and for the sales team?
The sales team that we have here is very mission driven. We care a lot about our customers and have a personal investment in their success. There's a level of pride in the work that we all do and that extends to the work that our customers can do. We feel ownership over our clients’ success and in their ability to stay competitive.
What do you think draws customers to Formic?
There is a lot of skepticism around robotics automation in the manufacturing industry, but I think Formic has done a really good job of thinking through all the potential caveats from the customer's perspective. Our robotics-as-a-service offering presents something that not only makes financial sense for us but makes financial sense for our customers. We take away all of the risks of automating for someone who has never done it before. Being able to convey to our customer base that everybody on our team genuinely cares about the successes of their business makes a big difference.
What gives you confidence that our mission can endure, that the company is heading in the right direction?
What we're doing with robotics-as-a-service is disruptive to the industry. Typically, the type of people who gravitate towards disruptive products is going to be your visionaries. Trying to find a visionary who hasn't already invested in robots is a really interesting challenge. But we are finding customers who walk in and immediately say, “I get your vision and I’m bought in, where do I start?” Working together with these visionaries who love what you're doing and want to support you as much as you want to support them is the type of partnership that drives me to keep going.
Janice Yamamoto