■Company Overview

1. Company Overview

Dream Arts ＜4811＞ is a SaaS product for large enterprises (no-code development tool “SmartDB,” an internal portal construction tool “InSuiteX,” an information sharing tool “Shopran” for chain stores) with a mission to “contribute to the development of people and organizations and society full of joy of co-creation,” and a cloud service “DCR (”) for specific customers that improves corporate productivity and realizes creative ways of working It is a cloud service vendor that provides “DX Custom Resolution)”. It has 2 headquarters in Tokyo and Hiroshima, and is also based in Okinawa and Dalian, China. Furthermore, there is a cloud monitoring center operating 24 hours a day, 365 days a year in Ishigaki City, Okinawa Prefecture. The company group consists of the company and Yumeson Information (Dalian) Co., Ltd., which is a consolidated subsidiary, and Yumesou Information (Dalian) is positioned as one of the development bases that develop, test, and support the company's products.

Corporate DX (digital transformation) is progressing year by year, but DX system development is dependent on contract development by IT vendors, and IT human resources are also unevenly distributed among IT vendors. Amid a shortage of IT human resources, most Japanese companies are not progressing in-house production of systems. The current situation is that core systems such as ERP*1 have become black boxes without accumulating technical capabilities or know-how, and it is difficult to utilize data as imagined. The SaaS product “SmartDB” provided by the company is a no-code development tool, and application development is possible even for non-IT personnel. The company is based on the concept of “digital democratization,” and positions “SmartDB” to realize “citizen development” *2 as a growth driver.

*1 ERP: An abbreviation for Enterprise Resource Planning (Enterprise Resource Planning). A method that aims to improve work efficiency and overall management by comprehensively managing and allocating various resources such as funds, human resources, equipment, materials, and information owned by a company. Also, it indicates a cross-business software package introduced and used for this purpose. Since it forms the core of enterprise management, it is sometimes called a core system. It is often divided into components such as “accounting operations,” “human resources operations,” “production operations,” and “logistics operations.”

*2 Citizen development: A development style where field department employees without IT expertise take the lead and promote business digitalization, assuming the introduction of tools that can develop applications without programming. Employees who develop in this style are called citizen developers (citizen developers).

The company has been selling in-house developed package software “INSUITE” and “SmartDB” as an independent software vendor since 1999 when it was first established. Since cloud usage in large enterprises has progressed in recent years, provision of “INSUITE,” “SmartDB,” and DCS (Dremarts Cloud Service) provided on cloud platforms began in 2017. New sales of packaged software were stopped in 2018, and the business model was changed to a cloud service vendor. Along with this, the profit model was changed from a method where the full amount is collectively recorded when software is sold to a monthly usage fee system where a fixed amount is collected every month, and growth temporarily slowed. Meanwhile, development to conform the product to the SaaS type and the establishment of a new customer success team to support introduction to customers and promote utilization became necessary, leading to an increase in costs. Therefore, losses were recorded from the fiscal year ending 2020/12 to the fiscal year ending 2021/12, which is a transition period, but we succeeded in improving the SaaS ratio in a short period of time, and turned into a surplus in the 2022/12 fiscal year. It was listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange (hereafter, Tokyo Stock Exchange) growth market in 2023/10, and continues to the present. We have long dealings with large companies, and our customer base is mostly leading companies in various industries, such as Mitsubishi UFJ Bank, Ltd., Daiwa House Industries ＜1925＞, KDDI ＜9433＞, Japan Airlines ＜9201＞, Nihon Keizai Shimbun Co., Ltd., Bridgestone ＜5108＞, and Nippon Express Co., Ltd.

2. HISTORY

The company was established in 1996/12, and the groupware “INSUITE (R) 99” for small and medium-sized enterprises was released in 1999/2. After that, the information portal “INSUITE Enterprise” for large companies was released in 2002/7. The target was narrowed down to large companies, and the web database “SmartDB” was released in 2005/11, and set sales with “INSUITE” began. In 2007/8, a wholly owned subsidiary, Dream Creation Information (Dalian) Co., Ltd. was established in the same area due to the fact that university students from Dalian, China were hired as new graduates. In 2008/1, a SaaS “store matic (R)” (hereinafter “store matic”) for chain stores was released in a joint venture with Nexway Co., Ltd., and the business transformation to a cloud service vendor began. Since 2010/11, it has been sold under the double brand of “Store Matic” and our own brand “Shop Run.”

In 2012/1, it acquired 51% of the shares of Index Okinawa Co., Ltd. and made it a subsidiary, and the name was changed to Dream Arts Okinawa Co., Ltd. In 2014/5, a cloud monitoring center was established in Ishigaki-shi, Okinawa. Furthermore, with regard to Dream Arts Okinawa, the company, which became a wholly owned subsidiary due to additional stock acquisitions, was absorbed and merged in 2021/7.

In 2014/10, the “SmartDB” API* was released, and development as an application development platform began. After that, development of cloud infrastructure progressed, and sales of “DCS,” which provides “INSUITE” and “SmartDB” on a cloud platform, began in 2017/9. Then, in response to the progress of cloud use in large enterprises, sales of package software to new customers were stopped in 2018/12, and business model transformation to SaaS vendors began.

※API: Abbreviation for Application Programming Interface. An interface specification used by software to exchange information with each other. By going through this specification, functional linkage with other software is possible, and convenience is enhanced.

ISMS cloud security certification was obtained for “DCS” in 2019/11, and won the “Microsoft Japan Partner of the Year” for 2 consecutive years in 2020/8 (2019 “Retail Awards”, 2020 “Social Responsibility Awards”). In November of the same year, “InsuiteX,” which was completely revamped based on the latest cloud architecture, was released as a successor product to the information portal “INSUITE Enterprise” for large enterprises, and the world's first* dynamic branch function was implemented in “SmartDB” as a no-code tool in 2021/11. Recently, in 2022/7, “SmartDB” won the “iReview Grid Award 2022 Fall,” and it has been certified as the highest “leader” in 3 categories such as the Workflow No Code Web Database, which is the only SaaS, and external evaluations and awareness are also increasing.

※According to the company's research.

(Written by FISCO Visiting Analyst Matsumoto Akihiro)