When planning an investment in Japan, whether it’s an M&A move, or a venture capital investment, it’s not always so easy to find the right answers to the technology questions that come up.

Japanese companies have invested heavily in IT over the past few years—but have they invested wisely?

It’s our job to help potential investors find out. Let us help with expert assessments, including the following:

• Capability and stability analysis
• Risk analysis
• Gap analysis
• Management analysis
• Compatibility analysis

Why Japan?

Analysts agree that Japan is coming out of recession. With the majority of bad debt disposed of, and surplus infrastructure trimmed away, investments in Japan are now a smart move. But Japan still remains a mystery to many outsiders.

Entering Japan and the Japanese market for the first time, you may be struck forcefully by the contrast of Japan’s superficial similarity to a Western country, and its profound and fundamental distinctive differences.

Why technical due diligence?

Over the past few years, many Japanese companies have made large investments in IT, making up for the “lost decade” of the 1990s, when the emphasis was on survival rather than growth.

The IT-related sectors of a company may make up a substantial portion of the total value of a company, and should always be considered when assessing any partnership or investment.

Unfortunately for those coming from a non-Japanese background, technology in Japan is often not an exact equivalent to Western practices and cannot be judged by the same rules.

Why j-views?

Naturally, there are companies and groups who can guide you through the intricacies of Japanese accounting. They may even be able to explain the mysteries of Japanese marketing and product placement. However, unbiased technical expertise with a local Japanese flavor is still hard to find.

j-views offers you a team of specialists to work with businesses moving into Japan, providing the needed answers to technical questions. As long-term residents of Japan, with extensive work experience in a wide variety of technological fields, we are the leaders in this new emerging field of technical due diligence.In any M&A transaction, there is always a “hidden element”.

Where j-views can help you

Those making investments in the new resurgent Japan owe it to themselves, their business partners and to their shareholders to apprise the true value of their investment, which is not always available, even following the most comprehensive analysis carried out from a purely financial perspective.

For outsiders, the technology side of Japan can be a minefield, fraught with deeply-buried risks. This is true not only when the investment is being made in technology companies, but also in "ordinary" companies, in the manufacturing, pharmaceutical and service industries, and especially in the financial services sector. The IT component of a Japanese company represents a far higher proportion of an enterprise's value than ever before, since Japan Inc. has invested heavily in its IT infrastructure over the past few years. What is not always apparent to outsiders is that the IT "nuts and bolts" holding a modern Japanese enterprise together can be surprisingly different, often bearing similar names to their non-Japanese counterparts, but implemented in very diverging ways.

Accordingly, j-views has assembled a set of consultancy skills for the purpose of helping newcomers to Japan, or those with Japan experience but limited technology expertise, assess and evaluate the IT assets of Japanese partners, joint ventures, or acquisition targets, by providing due diligence, IT audit and discovery services. Basing its operations on the ITIL® concepts, j-views takes an "end-to-end" approach to IT, evaluating the different aspects of an enterprise's IT operations, as they relate to the business. Using the 4P concept of Product, People, Processes and Partners, a j-views report provides much more than a simple counting of PCs on desktops and servers in data centers and running a straight-line depreciation analysis on their resale value.

Hidden assets - or liabilities?

The "intangibles", such as the management of capacity, change, availability and release functions within an IT department, are precisely those variables capable of affecting the success or failure of an enterprise, making up a significant proportion of any IT risk assessment. With a combined experience of nearly 100 years working in the IT field in Japan, the core members of the j-views team are in a unique position to look at these, and other related factors, and conduct a full discovery process, interpreting the findings in plain easy-to-understand non-technical English to j-views clients.

Additionally, a j-views report can evaluate and explain the technical aspects of a Japanese entrepreneurial venture in which a venture capital investment may be considered. By helping separate hot air from hot products, j-views can help to minimize the risk for Japan-centric investments.