Announcement of Succession through Company Split of LINER Business of Phone Appli Inc.

SHIFT Inc. (“SHIFT,” headquartered in Minato-ku, Tokyo, Japan; Masaru Tange, CEO and Representative Director) announced today that its wholly-owned subsidiary, ADX Consulting Inc. (“ADX Consulting,” headquartered in Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo, Japan; Tetsuya Hasegawa, Representative Director and President) decided to succeed LINER Business (“LINER”), an add-on app of Salesforce which enables to disseminate information according to customer attributes and strengthen sales capabilities through cooperation between LINE official accounts and SMS and Salesforce, from a SaaS company Phone Appli Inc. (“Phone Appli,” headquartered in Minato-ku, Tokyo; Shinya Okuzawa, Representative Director and President), which develops and sells apps and services that support to change well-being management and communication of companies and develops consulting business.

1. Reason for the succession of LINER
In 2009, SHIFT recognized that the software testing market is 5.5 trillion yen blue-ocean market and launched a software quality assurance and testing business. Currently, as a comprehensive service provider for DX (Digital Transformation), SHIFT has expanded the range of services beyond software testing, including upstream consulting, PM/PMO, security, development, and customer support.
In order to expand its market share in the software testing market, SHIFT is working to provide high-value-added services to customers in order to meet further industry demand as it promotes “SHIFT3000,” which aims to achieve net sales of ¥300 billion.

ADX Consulting is engaged in ERP/EPM/CRM systems and other consulting businesses. Since its founding, it has set its mission to contribute to the promotion of DX by individual companies by developing the information systems into “an integrated information platform that grows sustainably in response to business changes.” ADX Consulting has been working to promote DX in sales and customer-management, including the consulting business for the introduction of cloud ERP (back-office transformation) and Salesforce.

LIINER that ADX Consulting will succeed is an add-on app for the CRM app that boasts the large share worldwide. Because it connects customer data on the CRM app with messaging apps such as LINE and SMS, it is possible to strengthen sales capabilities and acquire new sales channels by automating dissemination of information according to customer attributes and by managing inquiries while utilizing customer data from CRM apps. In order to register as an add-on function for the CRM app, it needs to satisfy the strict guideline and regulatory requirements set by the CRM app. Not only it is a technologically reliable app in this way, but also it already has more than 100 customers in a wide range of fields, from sports to financial industries, since its launch about two years ago.
SHIFT believes that ADX consulting that has strengths in ERP/EPM/CRM consulting will be able to enhance their service capabilities through succession of LINER. Moreover, as LINER has two types of earnings structure both SaaS revenues and related businesses, such as initial support, it will contribute to further stabilizing earnings in ADX Consulting.

The SHIFT Group is further enhancing service capabilities in ERP area with ADX Consulting and LINER, in order to further expand its share by appropriately responding to customers’ issues and demands in ERP market which is expected to grow even more. Aiming to support the “creating sellable software services / products for customers” with one-stop service, the SHIFT Group will continue striving to increase corporate value.

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Announcement of Succession through Company Split of LINER Business of Phone Appli Inc.