Japan, despite being the third largest economy in the world, lags behind China, India and some Southeast Asian countries in adapting digital technology or Cloud Computing.
But recently Japan is showing signs of change in the industry. The government itself has begun to eliminate stamps that are widely used in this country instead of submitting administrative documents.
Meanwhile companies that have hired remote employees are working on how to replace paper use. For this reason, 40% of companies have launched digital transformation projects.
The solution is Cloud Computing or more precisely software-as-a-service, or SaaS. Freee is offering in Japan an app that can be used with phone and browser to do calculations.
SaaS products have attracted a lot of attention and already many companies are considering digitizing services like human resources and marketing.
Forecasts speak of a large increase in Cloud SaaS services in the future as such a thing is considered inevitable.
Japan is embracing SaaS also given the fact that many companies do not have people and see Cloud SaaS as an opportunity to be productive.
One example of success is Daisuke Sasaki, who a few years ago quit his job at Google to start his own company.
In 2012, he created a calculation application (SaaS) but initially found it very difficult to convince investors to support him.
Sasaki’s idea was basically for small companies to use this application through Cloud Computing which is now widely known as software-as-a-service or SaaS.
“Businessmen in Japan did not believe in Cloud or SaaS models,” he said.
Eight years later, his company Freee has become a symbol in the SaaS industry in Japan.
Shares of his company in December 2019 amounted to $ 4.8 billion.
But Freee is not a special case as SaaS service providers already dominate the Tokyo Stock Exchange, ranking 7th in the top 10 most valuable companies.