Start small

Glossary

"Small start"

This glossary explains various keywords that will help you understand the mindset necessary for data utilization and successful DX.
This time, we will explain the significance and necessity of "starting small," an approach that is effective in today's world where the pace of change is accelerating and uncertainty is on the rise, and through that, we will think about what we should be aware of when it comes to IT systems and business initiatives today.

What is a small start?

A small start is the idea of starting something quickly and on a small scale, instead of making extensive preparations that take time and money.
It is said that the social and business environment today is changing rapidly and becoming more uncertain. Speed is required more than ever before, and the method of making plans by predicting results in advance often does not work well. Small starts are considered to be an approach suited to such current circumstances.

What are the benefits of starting small?

The need for a small start is sometimes expressed using phrases like "start small," and I think the phrase is often used in a positive sense.

While there is value in starting quickly, there is also value in thinking things through carefully before proceeding. Also, starting small and starting quickly are not the same approach. So, let's first consider what the characteristics of starting small are and what advantages it has.

Things you can start on a small scale

This is the idea of starting with a limited effort and then expanding based on the results. For example, if you are starting a new udon specialty business, rather than expanding nationwide all at once, you could try converting some of your existing stores into udon specialty stores.

Start early, get started right away

The small scale of the project makes it easier to prepare for the start of the initiative, which shortens the time it takes to get started.

Small capital requirements

A smaller effort requires less capital, and if less capital is needed, the effort is easier to undertake.

Making decisions easier

If it doesn't require a lot of capital or a long-term commitment, it's less of a major decision for management and it's easier to get approval for new initiatives, which allows you to move faster.

Being able to make decisions quickly

Lowering the hurdles to deciding to start something can also change the mindset of being cautious about new initiatives. It can also be an opportunity to reduce the negative effects of the so-called "big company disease" of decision-making, where you can't get anything done without creating extensive analytical documents, strict plans, and explaining them in meetings over and over again.

Addressing stagnation

It also helps to understand that there are situations where actually trying something out is quicker than situations where discussions continue in a conference room and no progress is made. Also, by starting small and trying things out in reality, you can reduce the mistakes of long discussions in a conference room, where you make delusional calculations about the future, but when you actually put them into practice, they quickly fall apart when faced with reality.

Simplify management tasks

A small business reduces the need for reporting and management efforts once it is launched.

The difficulty of the business itself will decrease

If you plan to serve 5,000 frozen dumplings every day, it will be difficult to prepare the necessary personnel and equipment. However, if you start by selling a limited number of frozen dumplings as a test, even an amateur with no preparation or experience can give it a try.

Getting more appropriate people to work on the project

Lowering the hurdles makes it easier for people who see the opportunity and believe it will work out, and for people who want to try it themselves, to take action based on their own judgment and desires.

Being able to change direction or become more flexible

For example, if a nationwide beef bowl chain were to stop serving beef bowls, it would be difficult to explain and persuade them, but if it were a privately owned beef bowl restaurant, it would be easier to make the decision to stop serving beef bowls and specialize in oyakodon. This would make it easier to change the direction of the business and meet customer needs.

It's easy to learn from failure

In today's world of heightened uncertainty, it is important to view failure as a beneficial outcome, learn from it, and make use of unexpected insights gained from actually running a business. When a business is large-scale, requires careful analysis and planning in advance, and involves commitments that must be achieved, it is inevitable that people will become risk-averse. This makes it difficult to adopt a mindset of trying new things or taking advantage of irregularities.

The damage of retreating is small

Because it is small in scale, the impact of withdrawing is also smaller, which also makes the decision to start less weighty.

Easy access to proven strengths

The knowledge gained by starting small and actually trying it out is different from the knowledge gained through analysis, as it is clear that it was achieved by "actually trying it" and so has a different persuasive power.

The disadvantages of starting small

When we wrote down the advantages of starting small, we found many encouraging "good things." However, some people may have doubts about whether this is really true. In fact, there are some things you need to be careful about when starting small.

Sometimes large scale is essential

The essence of an undertaking can sometimes lie in its large scale. For example, if you're making dinner for 20 people, you can do it by everyone working hard, but if you want to make dinner for 10,000 people, building production facilities and figuring out how to deliver them become major challenges. Starting small misses the true essence of what to do with the factory.

If such mistakes are made, problems may arise, such as the company being unable to move from a trial system to full-scale operation and going bankrupt, or being unable to scale on a large scale, which could hinder business growth.

Preparation can be important

In some cases, proper preparation and consideration is important, and the realizations you make are crucial. For example, rather than rushing out, it's better to take your time and check the weather and bring an umbrella. Also, being too unprepared can lead to providing poor quality service to your customers, which can cause you to miss out on success.

This can be a reason for poor decision-making

Starting small can sometimes lead to rash decision-making. The problem is only with decision-making that takes too much time and effort. Things that can be easily found by research or can be easily corrected by consideration are better to think about in advance, even if you are starting small.

You may not want to think, plan, or analyze, and to justify this, you may argue that you should act before you think. Also, if you don't think carefully about what you're doing beforehand and understand what you're doing, you may not be able to learn well from the results or failures that occur.

PoC poverty can occur

It has been pointed out that there is a syndrome in recent DX efforts that is called "PoC poverty." This refers to a situation where PoCs (Proof of Concepts) are conducted for new technologies, etc., with the idea of starting small (because this is the way of the new era), but PoCs are conducted one after another without producing any results.

Starting small, which is considered a "good thing," can become the goal itself, or costs and failures can be overlooked, or goals can be quickly changed without overcoming the essential obstacles that are necessary for success. This can result in unnecessary failures that do not lead to results, and only incur costs.

Initiatives can be chaotic

The proliferation of small initiatives can lead to confusion and inefficiency, which can result in the loss of overall optimization and can cause confusion and exhaustion for the staff on the front lines and those supporting the project behind the scenes.

For example, the same cloud service may have similar features (e.g., a to-do list management feature) released in different places, making it difficult to know which one to use. Furthermore, new features being freely provided here and there can lead to the system becoming like a complex and bizarre building with unplanned additions.

How can we make it smaller?

For example, you can make something smaller in the following ways:

Limit the scale (quantity) of offerings
Limiting the scope and types of functions and services provided
Limit your preparation
-Reduce approval and decision-making time before starting the initiative
-We carry out the operations ourselves
-Get started quickly by using what you already have
Limit the market; region, purpose, target demographic, etc.
Focus on what you want to confirm and the value you want to prove, and narrow it down to the scope necessary to verify that hypothesis.

Why is the idea of "starting small" becoming so popular?

As you can see, there are both good and bad aspects to "starting small." However, even with this in mind, the significance of starting small has come to be preached recently. Why is this?

Changes in the world situation (business environment)

Recently, we have been referred to as living in the VUCA era, where the pace of change is accelerating and uncertainty is high. It has become difficult to predict what the future will hold or the results of doing something. In such a situation, the traditional approach of planning, where you conduct thorough analysis in advance, make a plan, and then steadily execute that plan, is no longer effective. This is because analysis and planning often become unworkable.

Ideas such as "start small and fast," "be flexible rather than stick to a plan," and "failure is learning" all advocate changing the way we approach things to adapt to these new circumstances.

Changes in business assumptions

Another change is that the world is becoming more conducive to starting small, quick businesses.

For example, if you wanted to start a business selling your own home appliances nationwide, in the past you would need a factory, as well as the various equipment and personnel required for manufacturing, and you would have had to create a large company that required a huge amount of capital.However, nowadays, individuals with the ambition and skills can even develop and sell home appliances as a sole proprietorship.

You can design home appliances using open-source design software that runs on your home PC, raise funds through crowdfunding, send the design data to a location such as Shenzhen in China, and have them manufactured in small batches at low cost and with short lead times, with sales and distribution handled by Amazon.

Such changes are occurring in a variety of ways. The world is now competing on the premise that it has become possible to start dramatically "small" and "quickly." It is no longer possible for a company to take a year to do what other companies can do in a week. From this perspective, starting small is now a situation that we have no choice but to accept.

IT and "Starting Small"

IT is a prime example of something that is dramatically changing the world.

In the past, it was difficult for IT to be "small" and "fast."

IT is essential to business today, but apart from companies with many skilled IT engineers, IT is often seen as a hindrance to various initiatives.

I wanted to try something out, so I asked for a system development, but it ended up costing me a lot of money, took a long time to develop, and the finished system wasn't what I expected. What's more, every time I asked for additional features or modifications, it cost me more money and time, and it still didn't turn out the way I expected.

Changes brought about by the advent of the cloud

In the past, it was difficult for IT developers to be "small" and "quick." Just getting to the starting point of system development required huge expenses, such as purchasing expensive hardware like servers, and purchasing and setting up expensive software. Naturally, this meant that IT could not be made affordable for customers.

The advent of the cloud dramatically changed this. It created a situation where skilled engineers could start full-scale system development for pocket money. The emergence of a situation where IT could be started "small" and "quickly" led to the current situation where many IT startups continue to be born.

"Starting small" in IT

A wide variety of cloud services are now available, and by utilizing these existing services, it is becoming possible to utilize IT in a much smaller and faster way than with traditional system development.

In the past, this would have required outsourcing to engineers, which would have been costly and time-consuming, but by utilizing no-code and low-code technologies and mastering IT themselves, in other words, by working towards "in-house development," an environment is now being created where companies can get started on their business quickly and at low cost.

If you can use IT yourself, working on something small and quickly can have a big positive impact. The example mentioned earlier of "developing and selling home appliances as a personal business" also makes full use of the possibilities of the Internet and IT, and is suitable for test-starting a business online or using a smartphone app instead of a physical store.

IT to support small starts

What kind of in-house IT can support a small start, or how can you prepare and approach IT to prepare for an era of change?

Ability to make effective use of existing IT assets

Developing an IT system from scratch to suit your company's needs takes time and costs money. It is necessary to make full use of the IT that your company already owns and cloud services that are already available in the world, thereby achieving "small size" and "speed."

In-house production (being able to make or change things ourselves)

Even if you outsource important systems that require technical skills to engineers, you will not be able to effectively achieve "small" and "quick" unless you are in a position to incorporate your own insights, learnings, and requests into the IT. In other words, the "in-house" approach that is being recommended these days is desirable.

Incidentally, it is common for on-site staff to make do with Excel and manual work, but this can also be considered an example of in-house development using IT to the extent that they can use it themselves. In other words, it is not uncommon for organizations to effectively use in-house development.

"Connecting" technology that can meet these needs

I hope this will resonate with people who have struggled with business initiatives because they have been unable to utilize IT effectively. By changing your way of thinking, such as making good use of what you already have and in-house production as much as possible, you can achieve much smaller and faster operations than before.

However, you may be wondering how to achieve this. In fact, IT that can do the above already exists. These are "connecting" technologies such as DataSpider and HULFT Square, known as "EAI," "ETL," and "iPaaS."

Available only in GUI:
All you need to do is place icons on the GUI and configure them, so there's no need to type out code like in regular programming.
Connect to a wide variety of systems, clouds, and data:
By placing icons, you can connect to various clouds, systems, and data, allowing you to make full use of your existing IT assets and existing cloud services.
Professional specs for full-scale use:
Some products are easy to use but can only do simple things, and when used on a full scale, their processing power is insufficient, or the software is of low quality and can cause problems.However, this product can be started on a small scale and has the performance and reliability to handle full-scale use.

What we envision as IT utilization is that instead of spending time and money developing IT systems, companies can "connect" and combine what they currently use within their company with cloud services that already exist in the world, and quickly create IT that allows them to do what they want to do now.

For now, we'll quickly create a cloud system using kintone, and we've also prepared a sales support system that connects Salesforce and kintone. We'll continue to use the detailed Excel spreadsheets used in the field and data integration them bidirectionally. We'll also connect it to Slack so that we can be notified immediately if something happens, or we can send order processing commands to the cloud from Slack.

What do you think? It seems like not only the development speed but also the work itself will be speedy. And best of all, because we are assembling it ourselves, if we notice something, we can immediately make changes or add functions ourselves.

"iPaaS" allows you to start small with "connecting" IT itself

There are cloud services that eliminate the need for in-house operation of this "connecting" IT. These are "iPaaS" cloud services such as "HULFT Square" and "DataSpider Cloud," which are becoming increasingly popular.

Because it's cloud-based, there are no initial costs and the effort required for implementation is minimal, allowing you to start small with your "connecting" IT. Because it's a cloud service, there's no need for in-house operation after implementation. While iPaaS is often easy to use but can only handle simple tasks or simple processing, it can also handle full-scale processing that requires high processing performance and IT that handles tasks that require high reliability, so you can start small and then scale up to full-scale use.

Related keywords (for further understanding)

EAI
- It is a concept of "connecting" systems by data integration, and is a means of freely connecting various data and systems. It is a concept that has been used since long before the cloud era as a way to effectively utilize IT.
ETL
- In the recent trend of actively working on data utilization, the majority of the work is not the data analysis itself, but rather the collection and preprocessing of data scattered around, from on-premise to cloud. This is a means to carry out such processing efficiently.
iPaaS
- A cloud service that "connects" various clouds with external systems and data simply by operating on a GUI is called iPaaS.

Are you interested in "iPaaS" and "connecting" technologies?

Try out our products that allow you to freely connect various data and systems, from on-premise IT systems to cloud services, and make successful use of IT.

The ultimate "connecting" tool: data integration software "DataSpider" and data integration platform "HULFT Square"

"DataSpider," data integration tool developed and sold by our company, is a "connecting" tool with a long history of success. "HULFT Square," a data integration platform, is a "connecting" cloud service developed using DataSpider technology.

Another feature is that development can be done using only the GUI (no code) without writing code like in regular programming, so business staff who have a good understanding of their company's business can take the initiative to use it.

Try outDataSpider/ HULFT Square 's "connecting" technology:

There are many simple collaboration tools on the market, but this tool can be used with just a GUI, is easy enough for even non-programmers to use, and has "high development productivity" and "full-fledged performance that can serve as the foundation for business (professional use)."

It can smoothly solve the problem of "connecting disparate systems and data" that is hindering successful IT utilization. We offer a free trial version and online seminars where you can try it out for free, so we hope you will give it a try.

Free product introduction seminar

Why not try a PoC to see if "HULFT Square" can transform your business?

Why not try verifying how "connecting" can be utilized in your business, the feasibility of solving problems using data integration, and the benefits that can be obtained?

I want to automate data integration with SaaS, but I want to confirm the feasibility of doing so.
We want to move forward with data utilization, but we have issues with system integration
I want to consider data integration platform to achieve DX.

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