Sharp & Company (CEO Lee Jun-seung), which was selected in the business field of the National IT Industry Promotion Agency (NIPA)’s ‘2023 Non-face-to-face leading service activation project in areas closely related to daily life’, is a domestic B2B SaaS startup that aims to digitize field work. We support the digitalization of field work for field-oriented customer companies (store-based manufacturing, distribution companies, franchises, public institutions, etc.) who have a relatively limited understanding of digital and have difficulty forming individual in-house development teams. It is known to be continuing to grow on a global basis, launching globally (Latin America) from the beginning and recording 60% of company-wide sales overseas as of the end of 2022.
In 2018, Shopl & Company launched ‘Shopl’. Shopl is a B2B SaaS-based field employee work collaboration tool that supports commuting and work management between headquarters and field employees. After launch, additional demand for digitalization of on-site facility inspections continued to arise from existing customers, and ‘HADA’, an on-site facility inspection software, was launched in 2022 and converted to a paid service in 2023. HADA is a solution that digitizes the inspection work of customers who are conducting multiple facility inspections based on existing paper, and the official explains that it is continuing to grow, with more than 2.8 million cumulative inspections since its launch.
Specifically, Sharple, a field employee work management software, should provide commuting (schedule) and work management from the beginning, considering the top-down work method and the nature of field work where tasks are assigned according to a daily schedule. The idea was used as a point of differentiation. In addition, considering that field work involves a lot of repetitive tasks and AI has strengths in processing simple repetitive tasks, we decided to reduce simple repetitive tasks in the field by actively introducing AI-based functions from the beginning as a technological differentiation.
Based on commuting and schedules, we provide a variety of functions for managing field work, such as bulletin boards, reports, and chatting. Considering that the work characteristics of each company are different, select only the functions necessary for each company and then view the details of the function. It was developed so that it can be used as our own service in a self-configurable form. Accordingly, even companies that are not familiar with digital technology or do not have an in-house development team have increased convenience by allowing them to set the functions they need according to company regulations with just a few clicks after introducing Sharple.
While Sharple is a field employee work collaboration tool, HADA is an field facility inspection solution. Most facility inspections by private and public institutions at home and abroad take the form of attaching a paper checklist to the on-site inspection facility and filling it out at each inspection. Paper checklists have the advantage of being intuitive, but there are problems with the digital conversion of field inspection work, such as the inability to know the inspection status without visiting the site and the difficulty in proving the actual inspector or inspection time.
Accordingly, Sharp & Company emphasized that, considering that most facility inspection personnel are in their 50s or 60s, they made it easy to use by simply scanning the QR code without any procedures such as membership registration or app download. This means that not only managers in large areas such as public institutions but also citizens can transparently access the inspection information and use the facility with confidence even in a coronavirus environment.
A Sharp & Company official said, “More than 60% of the workforce domestically and 85% globally work in the field, such as in stores, rather than in the office. However, due to the nature of field work, there is a lack of awareness of digital transformation or there is no specific plan for digital transformation. In many cases, we do not know how to do it, so it has not been digitalized relatively. “A lot of software for digital transformation of work has appeared around 2010, but it is still mostly focused on office workers, and cases that take into account the characteristics of field workers are limited,” he explained.
He continued, “Most existing field work relied on paper or messenger to collect data and then input it into Excel and manage it. “There are cases where large companies develop their own software, but in many cases, continuous upgrades are not possible and there is a burden on maintenance as global development labor costs rise,” he said. “Nevertheless, existing methods such as Excel and our own solutions are used.” As the business has continued for many years, there are cost advantages in that, although there may be some inconvenience, in-house members are familiar with it and no monthly costs are incurred. Accordingly, we believe that the biggest competitor in the introduction of SaaS-based field work digitalization solutions is the ‘familiar inconvenience’ of the existing method, and we have been working to resolve this.”
Before commercializing the HADA service (before 2023), Sharp & Company had been operating through sales from the Shopl service. Sharple service sales have allowed the company to grow by more than 150% every year, and 19 new people have been hired in 2022. An official explained that after the introduction of Shopl, there was a lock-in effect in which all work was carried out using Shopl, and the level of utilization was high, with leaders using the APP 25 times a day and employees using the APP more than 15 times a day. am. It was also emphasized that as a result of this high utilization, the paid customer churn rate was 0% even though it has been 5 years since launch.
An official said, “We have confirmed that public institutions, like private companies, are experiencing increasing demand for digitization of field work. “In particular, when the urea number incident occurs in 2021, expectations are rising for the possibility of conducting a project to collect urea number information through HADA at gas stations across the country with the Ministry of Public Administration and Security and for its use in public institutions,” he said.
In addition, “Most of the existing software for field workers is focused on advanced markets such as the United States and Europe, and the language provided is mainly English and European languages. “Our company started in Central and South America from the beginning, and most of our sales still occur in Central and South America and Southeast Asia, and we are seeking regional differentiation by providing 10 languages (Thai, Vietnamese, Chinese, Spanish, etc.) for each country.” He said.
Meanwhile, the National IT Industry Promotion Agency (NIPA, Director Heo Seong-wook) aims to promote the distribution of non-face-to-face services in areas closely related to people’s daily lives, such as business, daily consumption, education/evaluation, and well-being/health in the pandemic era. We are pursuing a ‘service revitalization project’. Starting in 2021, as the non-face-to-face digital economy accelerates across the economy and society in response to the great digital transformation in the post-corona era, this project will select and support key investment areas focusing on services that urgently require non-face-to-face transformation. Sharp & Company was selected in the business field.