The Plant: Turning tech dreams into reality

Founded in 2005 by American Anatole Varin, The Plant Co Ltd focuses on creating smart, efficient web applications that are both easy to use and easy to manage. The company offers custom-built multilingual E-commerce, CMS, intranet and CRM solutions, based on its QOR™ framework. It is also the company behind Qortex™ -- a social productivity application that helps teams work smarter together.

Japan Today hears more from Varin.

Tell us a little about your background.

I've been in Japan for quite a long time now, about 15 years. I originally was on a scholarship from the Japanese government and did my Masters in International Commerce and this is when I got into Internet services building as my first project a portal site for Japanese SMEs to market their services to the West as part of my Master's thesis. From then, I co-founded GPlusMedia before starting The Plant in 2005.

What are your main services?

Our main focus is CMS, E-commerce and CRM for multinational clients; however, we also do unrelated custom development, one of our larger projects being the MY ASICS running software.

What percent of your clients are multinationals and what percent are Japanese companies?

All of our clients are multinationals. Most of them are foreign companies, but we have some Japanese multinationals which are important clients for us as well.

What is Qortex and why is it better than internal emails?

There are a lot of problems with email when used in business. The first is that the majority of communications in business should be company, not private knowledge. With email, you end up sending personal emails that either keep people out of the loop or get pushed to lots of people who don't particularly want to have their email box cluttered via cc. In the end, most company knowledge ends up spread around different people's email boxes and most staff and management are unaware of all the relevant issues and context of these issues in their company. On top of this, when people leave or join the company, the knowledge is taken with them.

With Qortex, communication is more transparent, but less intrusive. People follow groups, say Marketing, or a specific project that a company is working on. Information posted to the group is available for all users that follow the group. Qortex has several features that allow users to filter out and escalate information to the people that should see the information, but at its root is a "pull" type of information platform, like Twitter as an example. People go to Qortex to see what is new in the areas that are important to them, participate in the discussions, and get stuff done.

Qortex also provides an easy way to turn ideas into actions. For example, Qortex supports chat and a topic you are discussing privately can easily be shared with others of your team and discussed as a group and then turned into actionable tasks. One of our core concepts is this "Evolution of Ideas", making it easy to move ideas forward.

There are lots of other very useful features for communication in a business context, but Transparency and Evolution of Ideas are two of the core concepts.

Have you had any problems with the mobile site for Qortex? Any areas that need improvement?

Mobile is a main area that we have invested in and it is getting better and better. As Qortex is a communications platform, you can't really claim to have a viable product these days without a solid mobile offering. We have just released iOS and Android native clients and they are already quite full-featured but will be getting more and more polish over the coming weeks.

Is educating potential clients a big part of what you do or are they all savvy? I imagine that some who not technically minded, need to be shown the benefits of something like Qortex in a simple manner.

Yes, definitely. The biggest barrier we have is getting people to understand the benefits and changing their habits. Most people do not see communication as a problem they have and have cobbled together a solution that they feel works for them good enough. In my opinion, most companies have massive benefits that can be gained from a better way to collaborate with their teams and get the best from their staff, but it is often not viewed as a pain point.

How do you market your company? Do you advertise or rely on word of mouth, networking, social media?

Up until now we have been 100% word of mouth. Looking at promoting Qortex, however, we will be looking at other marketing options.

How has 2014 been for you so far?

It's been a lot of work, but going well so far on both the client side and Qortex, our SAAS product.

How many staff do you have?

We have 30.

What is a typical day for you?

I generally arrive at work around 9:30 a.m. and get home around 8 p.m. or so. Lots of online collaboration, some meeting with clients, but honestly, I'm probably glued to the screen too much.

As an entrepreneur, are you optimistic about the Japanese economy?

I don't pay too much attention to the overall economic landscape; rather more that The Plant will be successful in whatever environment we find ourselves. We were founded in a period of a rather depressed economic environment which is potentially a point of strength since we do not expect favorable macroeconomic conditions in order to have a viable business.

When you are not working, how do you like to relax?

I've been pretty 2-dimensional recently: mostly the business and my family. On weekends, now that the weather has been getting better, I've been trying to get out of the city and go camping with my kid.

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