Expansion of web applications and O2O-related products

「As AI became more widespread, interest in AIO (AI search optimization) for search engines increased. Attendance at seminars related to AIO measures reached five times the previous level, accurately capturing small and medium-sized businesses’ demand for AI use and contributing to orders for Web production, consulting, the digital guide Fullstar and the AI chatbot IZANAI.」

「Cloud Circus, a consolidated subsidiary, entered into a sales partner agreement with Shikigaku, which provides organizational consulting and employee training. The companies jointly began providing Shikigaku Growth Marketing, a marketing BPO service combining BowNow, the marketing automation tool, with organizational consulting and employee training based on Shikigaku’s organizational management theory. This strengthened the partner business in addition to direct sales.」

「During the current interim consolidated accounting period, the company added a dashboard, alert-rule settings and CRM integration to Fullstar, a CSM tool, as functions for delivering customer success. As a result of these enhancements and sales activities, it achieved the No. 1 revenue market share in fiscal 2023 among companies with fewer than 300 employees in the digital adoption platform market, which comprises tools that promote the use of implemented systems.」

「During the current fiscal year, Metabadge, a fan marketing tool, added a voting function to its administration screen, enabling customers to create voting content and analyze campaigns themselves. BowNow, the marketing automation tool, also began providing an email-generation service using ChatGPT, substantially reducing the time required by email marketing personnel and enabling higher labor productivity.」

「During the first three quarters of the current fiscal year, IZANAI, the chatbot, and ActiBook, the electronic book and video-sharing tool, were integrated with LP Builder, which can easily convert PowerPoint and Google Slides materials into websites simply by uploading them. BowNow, the marketing automation tool, was also integrated with Yoom, the SaaS-linked database provided by Yoom. These initiatives advanced functional integration among products. In addition, the AR promotion tool COCOAR became compatible with the Building Occlusion feature using Google ARCore’s Streetscape Geometry API.」

「During the first two quarters of the current fiscal year, ActiBook, the electronic book tool, added individual authentication functionality that enables viewing-status monitoring and real-time notifications for prospective customers. This made it possible to see in real time who was viewing which pages of sent materials and for how long, allowing approaches to be made without missing the right timing. In addition, the general-purpose API for BowNow, the marketing automation tool, was substantially updated to strengthen integration with external tools, enabling more effective use of BowNow. Regarding partners, the company entered into a customer referral agreement with Nangoku Shokusan, a general trading company based in Kagoshima Prefecture.」

「During the first quarter of the current fiscal year, the marketing automation tool BowNow received the High Performer award in both the MA and ABM categories at the ITreview Grid Award 2023 Spring and was rated as a product with high satisfaction and awareness among small and medium-sized businesses. IZANAI, the chatbot, substantially reduced setup work by automatically generating conversation flows through integration with ChatGPT. In addition, the addition of Text to Website, a new feature to LP Builder Powered by Slideflow that creates websites through text input using ChatGPT, is expected to lower the barriers to website creation for small and medium-sized businesses,」

「During the third quarter of the current fiscal year, the company developed LESSAR functionality for virtual try-on experiences using hand-recognition technology and for simulating flower pots and layouts before purchasing seedlings for the horticultural industry, creating a foothold for adoption across diverse industries by expanding AR’s purchasing applications. In addition, by entering into a customer referral agreement with Otsuka Shokai, it further strengthened its sales structure for BowNow.」

「During the first two quarters of the current fiscal year, the company began providing Cloud CIRCUS CMP, a consent management tool for personal information, creating an environment in which small and medium-sized business customers can comply with laws and regulations and confidently implement marketing initiatives using Cloud CIRCUS. BowNow, the marketing automation tool, surpassed 10,000 companies using it and received the Good Service award in the B2B MA tool category at the BOXIL SaaS AWARD Autumn 2022. The company also established an environment that makes it easier for partners to propose and sell the product by integrating the system with Cybozu’s Kintone.」

「The company began offering the online exhibition service acquired in the previous fiscal year under the plan name Crowd Booth. In addition, by enabling email distribution in BowNow’s free plan, it further expanded its free-user base.」

「During the first three quarters of the current fiscal year, the company simultaneously released its fourth commercial on nationwide television and in taxis in Tokyo, raising awareness of Cloud CIRCUS and improving understanding of the features of its various tools. It also enhanced the value of its existing services beyond functional development by integrating BowNow via API with Beegle Data, provided by Net Business Support. On 30 November 2021, it acquired the online exhibition business Sokoiru operated by Reflux. On the same date, it released a beta version of a 3D model creation tool as an option for the AR promotion tool LESSAR, and on 20 December 2021 it entered into a capital and business alliance with Media Equity, which operates the NFT issuance service HEXA. While actively investing to expand its services, the company also expanded new sales channels by entering into distributor agreements with Daiwabo Information System and KDDI Malaysia.」

「In September, the company held the free online conference Marketing CIRCUS DAY Autumn 2021, themed “What Is Digital Marketing That Japanese Companies Can Put into Practice and Turn into Results?” It also conducted a campaign commemorating the change of company name, generating a large number of inquiries and downloads of free versions.」

「The company began providing Fullstar, a tool for preventing churn and increasing repeat business that it had been developing for some time, in April 2021. It also linked the product of the chatbot business acquired in the previous fiscal year with Cloud CIRCUS and began providing a new chatbot tool, IZANAI, in June 2021. In addition, by enhancing functionality to integrate the IDs of 10 SaaS tools, including these new tools, the company strengthened Cloud CIRCUS’s integration as a single SaaS platform.」

「In its digital marketing-related business, the company provides Cloud CIRCUS, a suite of SaaS tools addressing five challenges involved in increasing customers: information dissemination, customer acquisition, improving customer experience value, lead nurturing and conversion, and preventing churn and increasing repeat business (under development).」

「As announced on 25 December 2020, the company acquired the LAMPCHAT chatbot business operated by Brocante in January 2021. Many companies face the issue of accumulating invisible opportunity losses because the difficulty of registering information creates a barrier when they collect information from prospective customers. To address this issue, the company will link the chatbot functionality expanded through the business acquisition with Cloud CIRCUS, improve its communication functionality with prospective customers, and enhance the quality of the customer experience.」

「The company newly began providing social media consulting to support customer acquisition for customers operating consumer-facing businesses that use COCOAR and LESSAR. Supported by companies’ post-pandemic demand for digitalization, increased cross-selling and new orders for Cloud CIRCUS led to strong performance in recurring revenue.」

「As Cloud Circus, the company is advancing integration and freemium offerings to provide all-in-one support from the upstream to the downstream stages of the marketing process. By addressing latent demand for digital transformation, it is providing multiple services to each company.」

「During the first three quarters of the current fiscal year, the company expanded its business beyond providing internally developed tools such as COCOAR, LESSAR and WONDARFOR. It sponsored event planning using intellectual property and expanded its business scope by becoming more involved in improving results through AR. The knowledge gained was used to accumulate expertise in tool development, contributing to strong performance in planning-based sales. In addition, the company began providing consulting across the full range of marketing activities and undertaking marketing BPO services for larger companies in selected industries. While this new contract business performed well, delays in delivery schedules also began to emerge as Web projects grew larger.」

「During the first two quarters of the current fiscal year, the number of companies using BowNow surpassed 3,000. As its functionality expanded, adoption by major enterprises also increased. In addition, the company launched LESSAR Face, a new plan for LESSAR, WebAR that does not require an app, enabling face-recognition AR and allowing it to address an even broader range of AR use cases and needs.」

「During the first quarter of the current fiscal year, the company provided major enterprises with COCOAR SDK, which makes COCOAR functionality available in their own apps. By offering broad-ranging services, from planning events using AR and supporting the creation of 3D content to operations support, it promoted a whole-product approach aimed at maximizing the results sought by customers. In addition, in response to existing BowNow and CMS Blue Monkey customers’ needs to invest in digital marketing, the company secured additional orders for a substantial range of advertising products.」

「During the current fiscal year, the company released LESSAR, which provides app-free AR, and WONDARFOR, which provides spatial-recognition AR, broadening the range of customer needs addressed and working to expand its AR solutions.」

「During the third quarter of the current fiscal year, the company was able to address a wide range of customer needs by expanding its AR service lineup with LESSAR beta, which enables AR through a Web browser without downloading an app, and WONDARFOR, which provides spatial-recognition AR. It also added ABM Template, a new feature to BowNow that templates scenarios for marketing approaches to customers, making it possible for any company to introduce and use marketing automation immediately without complex scenario design or scoring settings. Through these expanded features and proactive sales activities, the number of companies using BowNow surpassed 2,200.」

「During the first two quarters of the current fiscal year, demand for website renewals optimized for smartphone viewing and upgrades to SSL-enabled plans, which secure all website pages with SSL/TLS, remained strong.」

「BowNow had previously been sold mainly together with website production services, but in April 2018 the company established a dedicated team to sell BowNow on a standalone basis, and BowNow sales performed well.」

「The company began accepting applications for free plans for creca, a landing-page website creation software for smartphones; App Goose, an app creation software; BowNow, a marketing automation tool; and ActiBook One, an electronic book creation tool.」

「During the first three quarters of the current fiscal year, stock revenue remained steady, particularly as orders for Web promotion consulting grew and the range of online advertising expanded.」

「In particular, the BowNow free plan has performed well, with orders and installations progressing at many companies through the Web, exhibitions and partners.」

「As sales to early adopters settled and the company sought to expand sales more effectively among the majority market, it introduced freemium plans that price-sensitive customers could use for free, drawing out customer needs. It began accepting applications for free plans for creca, a landing-page website creation software for smartphones; App Goose, an app creation software; and BowNow, a marketing automation tool.」

「The company also added a stamp-rally feature to COCOAR, expanding its functionality so that it could be used to attract visitors to live events and physical stores.」

「In October 2016, the company announced and launched the video case-study matching site MoviePrint. It also added GPS (Global Positioning System) functionality to ActiBook AR COCOAR and expanded its features so that it could be used to attract visitors to live events and physical stores.」

「In the Web application product business, the company made progress in acquiring new customers and large-scale Web production projects, achieving orders in line with its plan.」

「Using multiple enterprise software products through Cloud Circus, companies can add AR (augmented reality) to printed materials such as posters to direct users to websites, track website browsing histories, identify promising customers interested in their products or services, and send emails based on scenarios tailored to customers’ interests, enabling automated sales promotion activities through marketing automation.」

「In addition, as social media usage expanded with the rapid spread of smartphones, the O2O (online-to-offline) business also attracted attention. We launched new services related to this area and worked to expand our product offerings.」