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EDINET

  • Glossary

「EDINET」

This glossary explains various keywords that will help you understand the mindset necessary for data utilization and successful DX.
The importance of utilizing data has been emphasized in recent years, but this time we will consider how to make data available to society and have it utilized.

What is EDINET?

EDINET (Electronic Disclosure for Investors' NETwork) is a computer network operated by the Financial Services Agency, and is an IT system used as a means of electronically disclosing disclosure documents such as securities reports in accordance with the Financial Instruments and Exchange Act.
In order to ensure the sound functioning of the "corporate system" that supports the development of our society, there are various documents that are legally required to be disclosed (financial status, business details, etc.).EDINET makes it possible to disclose these documents electronically, improving efficiency, and by making them available to anyone at any time via the Internet, it is used as a means for investors to use them in making investment decisions.

Making the Great Innovation "Corporation" Work

EDINET is an IT system that has been developed to make the "corporation system" function better.

Corporations are a great invention

Nowadays, it is common for "corporations" to exist in the world, but the first corporation in human history is said to be the Dutch East India Company, founded in 1602, and it has only been a few hundred years since full-fledged corporations began to be established.

There is a story that when Eiichi Shibusawa, who is also featured on the 10,000 yen bill, was heading to Europe for the first time, he was surprised to learn that the huge Suez Canal was being built by a joint-stock company. Up until that point in history, huge construction projects naturally required the financial resources and power of a king or emperor, so it was surprising to learn that such a huge undertaking had been accomplished with the investment of many people in the "plan to build the Suez Canal."

The corporate structure in which fraud was rampant

However, once the corporate structure was established, fraudulent practices of raising money under false pretenses became rampant. It became possible for people to raise money under gibberish schemes and then run off with the money, or to raise funds by falsely claiming to have good business performance when in fact it was not.

If we leave this situation as it is, under the guise of freedom and personal responsibility, we will end up with a strange world where corruption spreads and bad people become very rich. Therefore, various regulations have been put in place to prevent corruption.

For example, this is how the system of having a third party, a certified public accountant, verify a company's financial situation and make it publicly available was born. Companies are now required to submit fact-based reports on their financial situation to the stock market, making it mandatory to "provide accurate information about their company," and mechanisms are being put in place to prohibit and punish fraudulent transactions such as insider trading, where insiders buy and sell stocks.

Simply requesting information about your company is not enough

Such regulations not only prevent fraud, but also provide investors with information that makes it easier for them to make investment decisions, which in turn helps to direct capital to superior businesses. This not only protects investors but also contributes to the development of society.

Therefore, the Financial Services Agency requires Japanese corporations to regularly disclose information such as "what is their financial situation," "what business is they engaged in and what are their prospects," etc. They are also required to report on who holds large amounts of the company's shares and whether there have been any changes in large holders, such as someone newly acquiring a large number of shares.

Specifically, companies are required to submit "securities reports," "securities registration statements," "large shareholding reports," and other documents, and information disclosure has been made mandatory by law. However, simply disclosing information is not enough. This is because simply requiring the submission of paper-based reports meant that users had to go to the trouble of going to government offices to request access, which was inefficient.

It wasn't until the information was published and available in bookstores that it became widely available to the public. Before it was published, professionals involved in the stock market had access to the information, but ordinary investors did not, creating an information gap and unfairness.

EDINET

To solve such problems, the Financial Services Agency has established the following IT system, "EDINET."

  • Streamline the submission of the above-mentioned disclosure documents for corporations by moving from paper-based paperwork to electronic submission via the Internet.
  • Documents submitted on paper are also digitized and made public.
  • The submitted disclosure documents will be made publicly available via the Internet and will be accessible to anyone 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
  • You can search back through past data and use it to decide where to invest.

Such a system would reduce the effort required for companies to disclose information, cutting costs, and would also allow general investors to access information more quickly. If there are companies trying to do good business, information about them would be spread correctly and quickly, making it easier to raise funds, and we can expect this to contribute to the healthy development of the Japanese economy.

You can research companies you are thinking of investing in, and it will also be easier to compare them with other companies in the same industry to see which ones are more promising.

The documents to be submitted are not simply electronic data, but are HTML documents with a precisely defined format, and the data format is also somewhat standardized. Therefore, creating disclosure documents in a format that follows the rules can be time-consuming, but the fact that formats are consistent across companies makes it somewhat easier to utilize the data, such as extracting necessary figures from disclosure documents.

In particular, financial information must be submitted in XBRL, a globally used XML data format, which can be read and processed by applications that can process XBRL.

Additionally, starting in 2019, an API that allows for the retrieval of information from EDINET will also be provided, making it possible to retrieve submitted documents and attachments in a list by date, and efforts are being made to create an environment in which data can be used more smoothly.

Data cannot be utilized simply by being there

I believe that the history of EDINET offers some useful insights into the "use of data in companies" that is currently being promoted throughout Japan.

Just having data doesn't mean it will be utilized

If your company "doesn't even have data," then it's certainly something you should address first. You can't utilize data without data. It's common for companies to say they're embracing DX only to realize they don't have the data to begin with. So, I think there are many efforts underway to properly collect data, such as installing sensors to collect data.

The problem is that simply preparing data is often not enough. You may have the data, but it seems like you're not using it properly. What's wrong? I think there are many companies struggling with this issue.

Data (disclosure information) already existed before EDINET was created. However, it only existed on paper, and there was no environment in which the data could be used smoothly. This initiative resolved this issue. In other words, it simply "established an environment in which data could be used," but EDINET has now come to be called a treasure trove of information that is useful for making stock investment decisions.

You may not realize it, but your company may

Although they often don't realize it, many companies have inefficiencies in their data utilization.

For example, how are the figures displayed in the PowerPoint presentations at monthly management meetings generated? In many cases, they are generated by referencing and copying and pasting a wide variety of data from various sources, such as Excel files scattered throughout the company and data on various cloud services.

When you want to use data, you first have to find where the data is (it may not even be there). If you find it in an Excel file, you have to check which sheet and which part to read, the data format, numerical units, and aggregation period. I think it's common to have to go through the trouble of "decoding" the data and converting it appropriately before using it for aggregation or other purposes.

This situation not only increases the amount of work required to utilize data, but also slows down the process. If you spend a week preparing materials for a management meeting, even if you think, "I'd like you to look into this further," or "I'm curious about these numbers, but what's going on?", you'll have to wait another week.

It may be in the form of digital data, but doesn't this seem similar to the situation where you can't even check the disclosure information of your investee companies unless you go to the government office and request access?

What is needed is a "data integration platform"

So what should be done? In order to eliminate inefficiencies, companies may try to standardize data formats within the company (a common practice), or simply gather data in one place, which would solve the problem, but these efforts tend not to work and tend to discourage data utilization.

This is because data is inherently generated from various places within a company, and each type of data has different circumstances regarding its generation and use.

In reality, in order to make the most of data, it is necessary to establish an infrastructure that allows people who understand each data type and its utilization to connect to the company's diverse data sources as needed, prepare data conversion processes as needed, and bring the acquired and converted data to the place where it will be used.

Connecting technologies that are useful in creating an environment for utilizing data

In other words, in order to utilize the potential of data, it is necessary to create a "data utilization environment" that can effectively utilize the data scattered throughout the company, and also to create an environment that allows for the smooth and efficient integration and use of cloud services and the like.

Please utilize "connecting" technology

Such a request may seem like an impossible task, but in fact, a solution already exists. There is a means to efficiently develop an initiative to connect to data stored in a wide variety of systems and on the cloud, read, process, and transfer data as needed, and improve the data environment using only a GUI (no code). These are "connecting" technologies such as "DataSpider" and "HULFT Square," known as "EAI," "ETL," and "iPaaS."

Can be used with GUI only

Unlike regular programming, there is no need to write code. By placing and configuring icons on the GUI, you can achieve integration with a wide variety of systems, data, and cloud services.

Being able to develop using a GUI is also an advantage

​No-code development using only a GUI may seem like a simple compromise compared to full-scale programming. However, being able to develop using only a GUI allows on-site personnel to proactively work on cloud integration themselves. On-site personnel are the ones who know the business best.

Full-scale processing can be implemented

There are many products that claim to allow development using only a GUI, but some people may have a negative impression of such products as being too simple.

It is true that things like "it's easy to make, but it can only do simple things," "when I tried to execute a full-scale process it couldn't process and crashed," or "it didn't have the high reliability or stable operating capacity to support business operations, which caused problems" tend to occur.

"DataSpider" and "HULFT Square" are easy to use, but also allow you to create processes at the same level as full-scale programming. They have the same high processing power as full-scale programming, as they are internally converted to Java and executed, and have a long history of supporting corporate IT. They combine the benefits of "GUI only" with full-scale capabilities.

No need to operate in-house as it is iPaaS

DataSpider can be operated securely on a system under your own management. With HULFT Square, a cloud service (iPaaS), this "connecting" technology itself can be used as a cloud service without the need for in-house operation, eliminating the hassle of in-house implementation and system operation.

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 in various places, from on-premise to cloud.
  • 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 hinders successful IT utilization. We regularly hold free trial versions and hands-on sessions where you can try it out for free, so we hope you will give it a try.


Why not try a PoC to see if HULFT Squarecan 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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