History 3: Present Our Future Lies in Comprehensive Power of Group

To provide truly useful management information systems to our customers,
We will leverage Group’s collective strengths while overlaying aspirations with specialists in each field

From Accounting System to Management System

Earlier, I referred to listings as a means of strengthening governance. But of course, it is important to utilize the funds raised for growth investments.
In this context, I started to consider DivaSystem not only as a consolidated accounting system that supports our customers’ information disclosures, but also as a consolidated management system that helps them formulate growth strategies and strengthen governance.
Taking the opportunity of the listing, I thought we have finally reached the stage of realizing our mission of “spreading accountability” by diversifying our business portfolio.
In fact, DIVA was making a significant track record by actively offering applied systems that combine in-house packages and other companies’ products that are useful for managerial accounting.
However, in 2008, the year following the Company’s listing, the Global Financial Crisis struck.
I took the advice of an auditor and took all the effort to avoid making loss. However, I realized that, in order to continue investment in growth and realize our mission, the Company should gain scale and physical strength to invest in R&D under any situation. The Company needed to increase its sales from three billion yen at that time to a minimum of ten billion yen.

Company That Resonates with Our “Customer Orientation”

That’s when I met Internet Disclosure Co., Ltd., (ID) in 2009. This company offers, in a word, comprehensive, searchable database of information disclosed by listed companies. President Takizawa himself was a certified public accountant and he established his own industry classification based on his own experience as an auditor, and he facilitated comparison with other companies. The service was highly evaluated for its convenience and was used by most domestic auditing firms.
If this system is used by companies in the preparation of accounting information, it can be used for more effective information disclosure, such as benchmark comparisons.
But what I felt most attractive was that the company focused on user-friendliness.
We shared the same thorough customer orientation in which whatever the system such as accounting system, it won’t yield value unless used by the customers.
While watching the demo, I shouted “this is it!” I met with President Takizawa many times, and at the end, I begged him to join the Group.
In 2012, we welcomed ZEAL Corporation, which engage in a business intelligence business that makes use of the vast amount of data in business-related systems in the formulation of management strategies and decision-making, as a member of the Group.
This company did not develop its own products. It had a reputation for system integration technologies that cater to customer needs, organize and analyze data from the database, and lead to output. Major SIers also entrusted the company with the system integration of this field. However, when the founder of the company decided to set up a new company, he proposed a transfer of business, saying that Mr. Morikawa would be able to make use of the current organization.
As the business environment and needs of our customers change, there were times when we couldn’t respond with our own products alone. In addition, if we join together with ZEAL, which is in the era of big data utilization and utilizes sophisticated and diverse technologies and tools, we should be able to provide solutions that will further help our customers improve their management and governance. With a view to strengthening the Group, I decided to accept requests.
Furthermore, in 2017, in order to fully respond to customers’ labor shortage issues, we established FIERTE Corporation through business split from DIVA, so that we can grow the team that has been responsible for outsourcing the preparation of financial statements using the DivaSystem since 2004 as a group of specialists who respond to BPO needs for various systems.

Establishment of Holding Company Avant

Year 2013. As number of the Group companies increased including DIVA, ID, and ZEAL, I considered it necessary to train the next generation of managers through the independent growth of each company, and necessity of a control tower to draw up overall growth strategy while looking at the portfolio of corporate groups with diverse expertise.
Accordingly, we established a pure holding company, AVANT Corporation, in which the top management of Group companies is in charge of the execution of business as corporate officer of Avant, and the directors of Avant are dedicated to the supervision of execution.

Toward Second Phase of Growth to Demonstrate Comprehensive Strength

And now. The environment surrounding our customers is changing dramatically in the face of the enhancement of corporate governance, the trend incorporating digital transformation (DX), and the spread of COVID-19.
For example, the corporate governance code is continuously revised to reflect strong demand for a commitment to sustainable value creation based on bold management decision.
As a result, discussions among division team and managers, which were siloed and closed, are transformed into open discussions reflecting various stakeholders and objective data.
At the same time, the technologies which were immature at the time of DIVA’s founding, have matured to a level that can sufficiently withstand practical application, and that have begun to accelerate the management reforms, business reforms, and governance reforms that are required of companies to integrate specialized knowledge that utilizes these technologies and to look at them from a comprehensive perspective.
I believe that these developments are precisely the fact that customers have come to demand “spreading accountability.”
Until now, the Avant Group has maintained high growth by refining its respective areas of expertise. DIVA, IDs, which are responsible for making management information more usable, ZEAL, which is responsible for making it visible, and FIERTE, which is responsible for making it more entrusted.
As we move forward, I am confident that our collective strength as a group is becoming increasingly important for us to meet the needs of our customers in the future-our ability to offer proposals that combine our respective areas of expertise.
In the following session of “Avant Group’s “Challenge”: Transformation by DX,” I had frank discussions with customer representative, IT specialist, and the leaders of the Group. Please discover the possibilities of Avant that emerge from this discussion.