A Look Back To This Year And Into 2025

Hi, this is Kageyama, from KINTO Technologies! As is customary every year, I'd like take a moment to reflect on 2024 and share some thoughts on what’s ahead in 2025.

Review of 2024

Looking back, the number of challenges we needed to address has increased compared to a year ago. In response, our team grew, and the organization expanded. At the same time, even with that growth, I believe believe we’ve made a conscious effort to preserve the strengths of being an in-house development team.

One of the major milestones this year was the full-scale launch of the Dealership DX Project, supporting the digital transformation of Toyota dealerships across Japan. We’ve already rolled out tools aimed at reducing the workload for dealerships for creating estimates, as well as customer management apps. In addition, AI-driven product development has been progressing steadily. As AI adoption and cloud usage advance, the scope of security and governance are also expanding. To that end, we have established a dedicated cloud security unit and began reinforcing security around AI-related projects.

Internally, we have also moved steadily incorporating AI. The AI integration with Slack, our primary communication platform, is steadily becoming the norm across the company. There have also been cases where even non-engineering employees have used generative AI to develop an application. We have also started offering generative AI training sessions for our group companies and dealerships.

Progress of Key Initiatives

In last year's Advent Calendar, I wrote about three key priorities we aimed to improve:

• Technical proficiency
• Development productivity
• Release speed

First, on technical proficiency, we have expanded our technichal support for Toyota Motor Corporation and its group companies. We also developed use cases that have been well received by various IT vendors. One highlight has been our Tech Blog which attracted an impressive 120,000 unique users this year. As more people started contributing to it, we have received valuable feedback from both inside and outside the company.

Next, in terms of development productivity, we've been using Findy Team+ to quantitatively measure team performance, which has led to initiatives aimed at improving the efficiency of individual processes. The company has also introduced systems that integrate generative AI, such as GitHub Copilot, which has increased employees' awareness around development productivity, sparking new initiatives including efforts to increase overall throughput across the entire development lifecycle, from business planning to release.

An finally, regarding of release speed, our main focus has been on streamlining the early stages of development, particularly the process until the requirements definition phase. By having the development teams lead the requirements definition process as well, we’re beginning to steer the business side toward a product development approach that is more feasible and demands less development effort. We are still in the trial-and-error stage, but I would like to further spread this awareness of speed throughout the company.

Outlook for 2025

So, what will we focus on next year? I plan to center our efforts around two major "firsts":

• AI First
• Release First (Fastest Release)

AI First

AI first means exactly what it says, and we will be strengthening AI initiatives through:

• Seamless integration of AI across all products
• Development of more AI-driven products
• Leading AI adoption at dealerships and throughout the Toyota Group.

Thanks to the efforts of all our employees so far, we are in a strong position to accelerate these efforts in 2025. I am optimistic that we will be able to generate significant output next year.

Moving forward, I believe it's important to adopt a mindset of actively incorporating AI in product development; even for products that don't necessarily require AI. I look forward to seeing new ideas and cross-functional collaborations that will help bring our AI-first approach to life.

Release First

Release First (Fastest Release) is about using our expertise and technology to deliver products as quickly as possible. What it takes to achieve the fastest release can vary depending on the business owner and the nature of the product. This year, our focus was on enhancing productivity in both the requirements definition phase and the implementation process for specific projects and teams. Next year, instead of solely focusing on improving the productivity of specific stages, I’d like each product team to collaborate closely with stakeholders and consider how and where they can shorten the entire release cycle to achieve the fastest possible product releases.

I also believe we need to fully embrace the concept of MVP (Minimum Value Product). That doesn’t mean every product will follow the same development or delivery model. Our strength as an in-house development team lies in our ability to thoughtfully assess product value while still aiming for the shortest possible release timelines. This balance is one of our greatest contributions to the business, and we will push even further in this direction next year.

User First and Organizational Intensity

To support AI First and Release First, we will be reemphasizing two foundational themes in 2025: User First and Organizational Intensity.

User First means going beyond serving end users of our services: we also need to proactively engage with our business partners and the customers they serve. By identifying what truly matters to users and customers, we can elevate the value and impact of our work. That is why I see methodologies like user research as essential skills to develop.

Intensity is insipired by a Soccer Term. One of KINTO Technologies' key strengths is our team of highly skilled individuals. But to achieve even greater outcomes as an in-house development team, we need to further raise the collective capabilities of our teams and organization. I encourage everyone to reflect on the mindset and actions needed to help KTC become a truly high-intensity organization.

Full Throttle

While we didn’t explicitly include technical expertise and communication skills in our 2025 themes, these have become deeply embedded in our culture and are now expected. They remain timeless pillars at KTC, and I hope each of us will continue to nurture them and strengthen them. We will continue to give our best next year as well, with no shortcuts.

Hitoshi Kageyama, Executive Vice-President, KINTO Technologies