Annual Report 2024 Special Feature

“Turning encounters into innovation.” Since our founding, we have been dedicated to our mission and grown by staying true to it. As COO, I am committed to tying the realization of our mission to sales and profit growth.

　We create various forms of value for society. One is generating innovations that make the world better. Innovation emerges when people with diverse ideas meet. Through our solutions, people can have encounters they might have otherwise missed, allowing them to connect with those they should meet. This embodies our mission of “Turning encounters into innovation.”

　Another substantial social value we create is supporting value creation for businesspeople, companies, and organizations through our solutions. Society faces numerous challenges, and organizations such as companies and public institutions, along with the businesspeople working there, confront these issues daily. Waste is one obstacle hindering efforts to solve these social issues. We develop our solutions with the intent of using digitization to eliminate waste in analog processes as much as possible. Through these solutions, we support professional in using their limited time for more valuable work, thus encouraging innovation in society, and this is another way we contribute value.

When we acquire new customers or renew contracts with existing ones, I feel the value our solutions create spreads through society. Each of these instances genuinely makes me happy. However, if this expansion remains confined to Japan, we canʼt say we are truly creating innovation for society. In this sense, seeing overseas customers use our solutions gives me a stronger sense of our valueʼs reach.

　In FY2023, I was particularly impressed with the adoption of Bill One by TAKENAKA CORPORATIONʼs Thailand subsidiary. In Thailand, the culture of paper and handwritten signatures remains even stronger than in Japan, with most business documents exchanged in paper form. At THAI TAKENAKA INTERNATIONAL LTD. accounting staff were previously stationed at each construction site to manage and process paper invoices received from various suppliers, including those providing materials and transportation.

　I had the opportunity to observe the sorting of more than 2,000 paper invoices per month at our scanning center. Managing and processing this large volume of invoices with non-standardized formats placed a great burden on the sites. If we continued in this analog way, this process would be prone to human error. I was present when Bill One digitized these massive bundles of invoices for the first time for the customer. It felt like a moment when our solution was truly creating social value. Initially, there was some psychological resistance to changing long-standing workflows and habits, but we prepared for this by holding multiple training sessions before implementation. Once the system went into use, the personnel realized they had no desire to go back to paper-based invoice exchanges. This was the innovation that occurred.

　The process of creating value for society involves overcoming challenges together with our customers and step by step. Through this steady process our solutions gradually become established and permeate society as business infrastructure.

Transforming work through digital transformation (DX) solutions is one of our key focus areas. In this area, we have set targets for two material issues (priority issues) to achieve by FY2029: 500 million items of information converted from analog to digital using our solutions, and 20 million users of our solutions.

　Digitizing analog information has been our strongest core competence since our founding. In a society where many paper-based analog processes persist, our DX solutions focus on eliminating as much waste as possible and improving operational efficiency. This will allow businesspeople to spend more time on tasks that truly matter. The number of analog data items digitized is a straightforward metric measuring these contributions. Similarly, the number of users measures how many people have benefited from operational efficiency gains through digitization.

　In FY2023, we saw progress beyond our initial expectations. We achieved 240 million items digitized and 7.89 million users, which I consider good results. Achieving our goals in the remaining six years will still be challenging. However, if we increase the number of users and grow our business, resulting in increased corporate value, we can confidently say we are creating real value for society.

In last yearʼs Annual Report, I discussed our shift in business strategy from optimization to maximization. In FY2023, each of our solutions made solid progress toward maximization.

　Going forward, Sansan will expand its recognition as a sales DX solution. It will do so by enhancing its corporate information database. In the future, we aim to evolve it into a sales DX solution centered on a corporate information database overseas as well.

In Japan, we will elevate Bill One into a solution that accelerates monthly closing based on three pillars: invoice receipt, issuing, and expense reimbursement centered on corporate credit cards. Globally, we aim to accelerate growth by capturing robust demand through solutions that address the characteristics and needs of each country and region. This will include accounting systems and business practices. We aim for Contract One to achieve growth comparable to that of Bill One. We are also considering new solutions to follow these.

　We will continue to grow our business steadily and, as a result, generate both qualitative and quantitative impacts on society.

Director, Executive Officer, COO
Kei Tomioka