Spiderplus Leads Asia’s Digital Construction Shift

By Daniel de Bomford

The Galapagos Islands found their place in modern history when Charles Darwin stepped onto the archipelago. Despite the proximity, each island had evolved unique endemic species, from tortoises with unique shells to a diverse array of finches, which altered the course of natural sciences.

In Japan, however, Galapagos is associated with technological challenges faced by exporting Japanese software in international markets. “Galapagos phones” are the perfect example of this challenge, highly sophisticated devices, perfectly tailored for Japanese users that were never adopted abroad. This has been a particular issue for the Japanese software industry, which has struggled to find mass market appeal in the global market.

Spiderplus is bucking that trend with its highly intuitive construction management software. President and CEO Kenji Ito says that the most important factor is UI and UX, especially in an industry where workers typically have low IT literacy. “The guiding principle was: if it isn’t simple, it won’t be used,” he says.

The result has been an incredibly intuitive interface, where everyday tasks require virtually zero instructions. This has been a key differentiator in Asian markets, where companies have reported that Spiderplus is “easy to understand and quick to adopt.”

The company has established operations across Southeast Asia and the Middle East and has received an exceptionally positive response where English is widely used, such as Malaysia, the Philippines, the UAE and Qatar. “Over the past year, we have built strong connections in these regions, and more than a dozen large firms—ranging from 1,000 to 10,000 employees—are already trialing or adopting Spiderplus,” Ito says.

SPIDERPLUS Workplace

Population Decline

As Japan’s labor pool shrinks, Ito says that digital transformation (DX), ICT, Building Information Modeling (BIM), robotics and AI are “essential for survival.” Currently, Japanese construction remains profitable, but industry-wide IT literacy needs to increase if the sector is to deliver the same volume of projects.

Ito says that many companies are investing in custom in-house tools and integrating them with Spiderplus through APIs, while others are ordering bespoke solutions. The real challenge, however, is ensuring company-wide adoption, rather than just a subsection of employees, to ensure maximum value. Digital tools are also a recruitment issue, with young digital native recruits being somewhat analog averse.

Spiderplus’s vision for DX integration is comprehensive. “AI will play a larger role in automating tasks within our products, while BIM integration will simplify workflows even further,” Ito says. The company is connecting all of these elements through its Spiderplus workplace, an integrated end-to-end platform.

When processes remain fragmented, productivity suffers. Ito points to Google as an example of a platform that integrates multiple services under one account, citing it as the reason the platform is so ubiquitous in day-to-day workflows. “That’s why we created the Workplace concept: a unified platform that integrates not only our own products but also third-party tools,” he says.

Spiderplus makes breaking free of Japan’s Galapagos technology look easy. The company is centering the user in the design and observing universal truths about human behavior, rather than relying on entrenched norms in much the same way a young naturalist observed the environment when he stepped onto the Galapagos Islands in 1835.

For Ito, the evidence is seen in the pilot trials happening in countries across the world. “What excites me about Spiderplus is that within our vertical—construction digital transformation—our product is already receiving strong interest from across Southeast Asia.”

To hear more from President Kenji Ito of Spider Plus, check out this interview with him.