SIer出身者が活躍する理由とは。Sansanを牽引するプロダクト開発に挑み続ける

At the development division of the sales DX service "Sansan," members with a wide variety of careers and backgrounds are thriving. Among them, a distinctive feature of the Sansan Engineering Unit is that people from SIer backgrounds are playing an active role. This time we spoke with department head Hiroto Sasakawa, along with Masanori Fujita and Hiromichi Hayakawa from the Product Enhancement group, both of whom have SIer experience.

Hayakawa: I worked at a web-focused development company, and in my previous job I was employed at a medical-sector SIer. Healthcare is something indispensable to society, and part of the appeal was being able to tell my own children with pride about what I do for work.

I was at my previous job for about ten years, but on top of having no chance to work with the latest technology, management tasks took up about 80% of my time, and I felt I was not picking up new engineering knowledge. So, aiming to grow as an engineer, I decided to change jobs.

Fujita: I once co-founded a small IT company with a friend. At first we aimed to launch a SaaS, but the service stalled and we pivoted the business into an SIer, taking on system-development contracts. But I really wanted to be deeply involved with a specific service, so I moved to a SaaS company that had been running its product for a long time. Wanting work of even greater specialisation, I decided to join Sansan.

Hayakawa: I work on the web apps and APIs of the sales DX service "Sansan." My SIer experience has also been highly valuable at Sansan. For example, systems used in hospitals integrate with all kinds of measurement equipment over networks, and the design was quite similar to the messaging server used in "Sansan."

Fujita: I belong to the same team as Hayakawa, working on web apps and APIs. Having worked at a SaaS company, I became able to imagine the user’s real needs. And because I worked at an SIer, I am relatively good at writing design documents. At Sansan, over the past few years there has been a strong push on creating and maintaining documentation, so that skill is very useful.

Sasakawa: Because "Sansan" has existed since our founding, it has grown into a service with very large-scale and complex features. Adding or modifying features on such a system without breaking anything demands advanced skills. SIer engineers often work on large-scale projects or refurbish long-running services, so I think they have an aptitude for "Sansan" development.

Sasakawa: In building a good service, it is desirable for the organisation to contain members with a variety of skills and experiences, so diversity becomes a real plus for development. That is precisely why we are asked to explain logically why we chose a given direction, and to convey things clearly to counterparts whose thinking, position, and work differ from our own.