Ensuring Reliable Quality as Business Infrastructure

Quality

Goals and KPI

2030

Goal: Achieve and maintain reliability and system uptime appropriate for social infrastructure as well as excellent product quality that meets the expectations of many users, including SMEs
KPIs: IT service system uptime: 99.5% or higher on an ongoing basis

Enhance organizational capacity for product development

Build an organization that integrates development and operations

Establish a team dedicated to quality assurance and enhance quality in the development process

Establish and invest in education and training programs

2024

Goal: Build organizational infrastructure for high system uptime and excellent quality
KPIs: Enhance the management system to improve system uptime

Establish a cross-sectional organization to improve product quality

Evaluate accessibility of in-house products using WCAG^* as the evaluation standard

Formulate accessibility guidelines
Initiatives: Enhance the management system to improve system uptime

Build monthly report and review system to improve uptime

Use metrics to check each component for abnormalities and unusual trends and conduct reviews

Establish system environment that spans from monitoring to anomaly detection and notification

Eliminate time lag from anomaly detection to notification by consolidating the combined use of several SaaS into one service

Establish a cross-sectional organization to improve product quality

Establish a new team dedicated to promoting quality activities

Organize and implement quality guidelines

Standardize release criteria and strengthen test processes

Visualize and monitor state of quality

Evaluate accessibility of in-house products using WCAG^* as the evaluation standard

Preparation stage in FY2024; from FY2025, plan to study and implement the necessary responses in accordance with the company-wide strategy

Formulate accessibility guidelines

Preparation stage in FY2024; from FY2025, plan to study and implement the necessary responses in accordance with the company-wide strategy

* Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG): International guidelines regarding the accessibility of websites and web content; in particular, it is used as a standard for allowing easy access to online information by everyone, including children and people with disabilities

Approach and System

Basic Approach to Quality

We support the business of more than 930,000 companies^*1 through our cloud services centered around business chat. As a provider of business infrastructure, we are expected to continuously provide services. At the same time, we are committed to developing and providing IT services that offer the benefits of IT and DX to workers everywhere, including those at small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that may not be familiar with IT and have not yet introduced or utilized IT and DX before, in order to achieve our mission and vision.

To accomplish this, we conduct activities related to quality in the development and provision of IT services, carrying out development with a focus on “ensuring soundness and availability^*2 appropriate for social infrastructure,” “usability (ease of use and satisfaction based on purpose of use),” and “accessibility (lack of barriers for service use).”

Please view the “Advanced Information Security and Privacy Protection” page for details on activities to ensure information security.

*1 as of the end of June 2025
*2 Availability: The ability to keep a system running without stoppage due to failures (equipment or parts failure, disasters, accidents, etc.), or an indicator of such availability.

Quality Management Structure

We have established a system in which the Product Unit, which is responsible for developing IT services, leads activities related to quality, headed by the Executive Officer and Deputy Head of Communication Platform Division. The Product Design Group within the Product Unit also plays a central role in conducting activities to improve usability and accessibility.
In fiscal year 2024, we established a new QA Group as a dedicated team for promoting quality activities across departments. The QA Group organizes and implements quality guidelines, and uses these guidelines to help standardize our release criteria and strengthen test processes. At the same time, the QA Group visualizes and monitors the state of quality.

Quality Management Structure Chart

Main Initiatives

Quality Improvement in Product Development

We adopt a system where our Product Unit is responsible for everything from service development through to post-release incident response. This allows us to consolidate information related to quality that is provided by customers and other parties in the Communication Platform Division and conduct quality-related activities that focus on quickly and reliably connecting this information to new development and post-release service improvements.
We also seek to provide stable services through daily improvement activities. To create services that can be changed and improved, we use loosely coupled^*1 service infrastructure, and at the same time, employ container technology^*2 that is suited for improvement and deployments at high speed and in short cycles.

*1 Loose coupling: A state in which system components are highly independent from each other, with weak ties, mutual dependencies, and relationships
*2 Container technology: An OS-level virtualization technology that organizes servers to enable efficient application and web development and management

Product Development Flow and Quality Control Process

Initiatives for Continuous Service Provision

We have established our own guidelines to develop and provide sound systems with high availability. We also conduct regular security vulnerability checks through a third-party organization. Moreover, we conduct security audits of critical systems used by our company through a third-party organization to ensure there are no critical issues. We also regularly collect vulnerability information on OS, middleware, and other technology used in our systems and respond quickly and appropriately to these vulnerabilities.

For Chatwork, our core service, we distribute and store user data simultaneously in three contracted Amazon Web Services (AWS) data centers. We carry out redundancy^* to ensure that the data of our customers is not lost in the unlikely event of a large-scale system failure or major earthquake that causes data loss at a specific data center.

* Redundancy: The process of duplicating computer systems by adding spare systems in preparation for equipment or network failures

Usability and Accessibility Improvement through Expert Reviews

Our Product Design Group plays a central role in conducting expert reviews so that we can develop services that provide the benefits of IT and DX to workers everywhere. These expert reviews evaluate “usability (ease of use and satisfaction based on purpose of use)” and “accessibility (lack of barriers for service use)” in accordance with WCAG guidelines, identify problem areas, and make improvements.

Improvements and Issue Response

We have a system in place whereby the Communication Platform Division consolidates and organizes information on issues received from customers through our help desk as well as information on issues identified by related internal departments such as Customer Success, Customer Support, Sales, and Marketing, and takes necessary action to remedy them.

Service Improvement Process Based on Feedback from Customers and Other Parties

We also provide services with a targeted system uptime of 99% or higher as our Service Level Agreement (SLA)^*. In the event of a failure, we have an internal response flow in place to quickly restore service. We also have a system in place to provide refunds to users in the event that uptime falls below the predetermined level.

* Service Level Agreement: A service level agreed to between the service provider and its users regarding the level of service

Response Flow in Case of Failure

To prepare for emergencies, we have an on-call system in place 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
In case of a major failure, we collaborate with the failure response team—which includes the management such as the executive officer in charge—to implement company-wide response.

Employee Skills and Capability Development

We must develop the skills and capabilities of our employees in order to maintain and improve the quality of the services that we provide. To accomplish this, in addition to new employee training, we support the professional development of our employees through in-house study sessions with external instructors, opportunities for employees to present and share their knowledge, training to improve professional skills, subsidies for the purchase of books and other materials, and other measures.

Value Creation Process to Achieve Our Mission