JAFCO is working with Aerial Partners Co., Ltd. and Mer Co., Ltd., which provide DX solutions for the financial reporting process, to standardize back office operations at seed-early startups.
We spoke with Yutaro Saka of JAFCO Group Co., Ltd., Kento Numazawa, CEO of Aerial Partners Co., Ltd., and Toshiaki Sawaguchi of Mer Co., Ltd. about the background of this project, awareness of issues, and what we want to achieve in the future.
[Profile] (honorific title omitted)
Kento Numazawa, CEO of Aerial Partners Co., Ltd.
After retiring from KPMG AZSA Audit Corporation, he founded taskey Co., Ltd., which provides chat novel application "peep" (current position of Audit & Supervisory Board Member). He is the representative of Atlas Accounting Co., Ltd., a consulting firm in the accounting and finance field, and provides a wide range of support from start-ups to large companies. Founded Aerial Partners in 2017. He has served as chairman of the tax system review department of the Japan Cryptocurrency Business Association (JCBA).
<What is Aerial Partners Co., Ltd.>
Providing "Gtax", a data management platform for digital assets, to crypto asset exchange companies, Dapps / NFT companies, and other financial companies. For individual investors, it provides a virtual currency tax return service "Guardian". The group's Aerial tax accountant corporation handles DX support business for accounting and financial reporting processes. Under the banner of "realizing a society full of creative activities, free from inefficiency," the tasks that should be tackled by reducing complicated tasks such as "simple tasks" and "repetitive tasks" related to accounting and financial reporting. We support the creation of an environment where you can concentrate on your work.
Mer Co-Founder & CEO Tomoaki Sawaguchi
At a venture company in Tokyo, he is responsible for launching a corporate solution business and expanding the subscription business, and serves as COO of the company.
Currently, he has started a business and is the only master partner in Japan for the CRM platform "Pipedrive", which has been introduced by more than 95,000 companies worldwide.
<What is Mer Co., Ltd.>
The only master partner in Japan for CRM "Pipedrive", which has been installed in more than 95,000 companies in 175 countries around the world. We support the efficiency, automation, and visualization of sales operations using sales tech and no-code.
* The service content of "pipedrive" is introduced in this article.
JAFCO Group Co., Ltd. Yutaro Saka
Graduated from the Faculty of Law, Sophia University. Joined JAFCO in 2012. The main investment destinations are Money Forward, Chatwork, WACUL, Karakuri, GIFMAGAZINE, etc. Forbes Japan sponsored "Japan's Most Influential Venture Investor Ranking" No. 2 in 2017. Currently engaged in investment support business.
-What are the challenges in back office operations at startups? Please give us an overview of the modeling project and the background behind its launch.
Numazawa In accounting and labor processes, we would like to build a package based on common guidelines that lead to startups and contribute to the reduction of operations of each company. Startups should focus most on activities that lead to business growth and organizational expansion, such as product development and sales. However, looking at the actual working hours, most of the resources that should be invested in the main business are devoted to back office operations. In startups with limited human resources, management is often responsible for simple and repetitive tasks, and there is plenty of room for improvement.
There are various management processes, from the minimum tasks that should be performed in the accounting and labor fields, to tasks that are better to do, such as bookkeeping management, sales / payment management, billing / payment management, and expense flow system construction. .. In this project, we would like to model what is needed in the seed-early period, make the best use of existing applications, and improve efficiency as much as possible without human intervention.
Saka: Many companies start rough management in the early stages of startup because there are many simple tasks in back office operations. When an organization scales up and then starts to maintain it, it becomes more powerful because it is difficult to grasp "where is this data" and "who has seen it". I think it is very important to create a back office system that can withstand even after scale from the initial stage when the organization is brand new.
JAFCO's investment support team is engaged in "creating an environment where management can face the business" and "discontinuous growth support". This project for the management system package for Seed Early is exactly here. I would like to significantly change the time allocation of entrepreneurs and core members in order to create an environment where they can concentrate on their products and speed up their business.
I myself had a time when I was seconded to an investee company to work as CFO, and I was frustrated by the simple but time-consuming work content. "Who did the same work, so I wish I could imitate what I had done at another company ..." That's the basis of the launch of this project.
-What kind of support will you provide to startups?
Numazawa We have prepared a business support package that handles data flow / business flow design and operation for back office operations, and set monthly costs according to the size of the organization (number of employees). We try to keep costs down compared to hiring people in the corporate sector.
In the first place, the ideal person to hire in the startup phase is the person who supports business growth in the competitive area. We left the defensive part of management to us, and thought of a service that would allow us to concentrate on the offensive area.
Saka The more employees there are, the more complicated the back office work becomes, but it is definitely more efficient to leave it to the system vendor from the beginning rather than solving it with human man-hours. Through this typed project, I would like to tell you that when the company grows, you should design your business without relying on people.
Numazawa There are many SaaS apps that improve the efficiency of back office operations. There are also products that are suitable for individual business processes such as expense reimbursement. However, what and how much should back office operations be done at startups in the first place? The current situation is that there is no overall framework.
Therefore, this service supports the modeling of the entire business process, including the system linkage of each SaaS application. By modeling data flow and business flow at an early stage, it is possible to build a back office system that can be scaled even in a rapidly growing startup.
Saka Business efficiency solutions are updated daily and new services are coming out. But startup executives and core members don't have the time or time to think about operations to compare and verify them.
We believe that being able to propose a model that improves work efficiency by linking this system with this system will lead to a reduction in man-hours for each company and each member, and will speed up the growth of the entire startup.
-How are the roles of Aerial Partners, Mer, and JAFCO divided?
Saka Aerial Partners is advancing proposals based on accounting knowledge, and Mer, a CRM player, is reflecting his knowledge on automation of sales management process and system cooperation in modeling. Aerial Partners is a group company of aerial tax accountant corporation and is an accounting and finance professional. At the same time, he is very rare as an accounting firm and a system vendor who is bright in DX for improving business processes. I thought that if the three companies worked together, a modeling project for the entire business process could be realized.
Sawaguchi That's right. Even if the system can be linked, it is difficult without real knowledge of back office accounting. There are various SaaS for operations around accounting, and data is accumulated in each SaaS. It is necessary to integrate all of them, proceed with accounting processing, and drop it into accounting software, but even if SaaS is connected, how to utilize it after that cannot be understood without specialized knowledge. Getting professional advice is very encouraging for startups.
-What issues do you want to tackle in the future through the back office business modeling project?
Numazawa: Knowledge of back office operations is familiar to many startups, but there aren't many places to share it.
Therefore, I would like to create a community where we can learn each other's knowledge. We are a group accounting office and have supported a total of about 400 companies. It would be nice to have a meeting where you can discuss what you have been working on in the back office while sharing information.
Saka: In the first place, the project started to think that it would be better for the entire ecosystem to provide a modeled guideline rather than trial and error by each company. The purpose is to build a system within the company and to support driving management activities.
We would like to make the knowledge gained through the project a knowledge base so that startups can refer to it. Sharing knowledge throughout the industry will raise the level of the entire company, so I would like to create an opportunity to exchange opinions as a "JAFCO back office committee." If you are an entrepreneur or a core member who wants to participate, please contact us.
【Case Study】
Build an efficient and strong back office from the founding period! Case of Mer Co., Ltd.
Mr. Tomoaki Sawaguchi of Mer Co., Ltd. said that back office operations have been postponed since the establishment in February 2020. I heard your thoughts on actually promoting the introduction of the package.
-What is the background to the introduction of the standardization of back office operations in this project?
Sawaguchi Pipedrive Became a master partner of (Pipe Drive) 2020 Year 9 Since the month of the month, I have been focusing on aggressiveness, and honestly, the back office work has been postponed. There is a lot of manual work SaaS There was no coordination or expense settlement workflow mechanism. From the founding 2 Considering that we will reach the end of the term and increase the number of employees and expand the customer base, it was an urgent task to improve the back office operations. With the introduction of this package, we have established workflows for invoice management, payment details, and expense reimbursement, and are still making improvements.
-What has changed specifically before and after the introduction?
Sawaguchi For example, I managed the invoice manually. Since it arrives from customers via multiple channels (SNS, email, chat tools, etc.) such as emails and chat tools, it took time and effort to download documents, check them, and divide them into folders.
After the system is introduced, if the customer submits the documents to the invoice upform, the flag will be set on the scheduled payment date and a notification will be sent. I thought I had to do this kind of business improvement, but I didn't know how to solve it because I didn't have accounting knowledge. With the support of Aerial Partners, it became clear, "What should I do with our flow?" It's great that the stress of back office work, which I always thought "I have to do something about it ..." in the corner of my head, has disappeared.
-What were your thoughts on the timing of the introduction?
Sawaguchi: From the early stages of startups, I thought it was necessary to build a flow for back office operations. Cloud services can be introduced from tens of thousands of yen per month, and the number of solutions that connect them is increasing. I think it is important to create a scalable environment by investing costs from the time of starting a business.
Considering future business expansion, it is necessary to incorporate all data into accounting software. It is very valuable to be able to get professionals to create all cost items and sales items without omission in order to consolidate them into one data. Currently, we are still in the process of improving, but we are proceeding with item arrangement, and we would like to proceed to the point where the received data is automatically linked.
The collaboration between Aerial Partners, Mer, and JAFCO has created a system that can support startup back office operations. In the future, I would like to introduce the success stories of the companies that supported it, so please keep an eye on this project.
