Acall: supporting hybrid work and expanding the possibilities of how we work
Against the background of a shrinking workforce due to the declining birthrate and aging population, globalization, and the evolution of information technology such as the internet, people’s lifestyles are becoming more individual and diverse. In how people work, too, all kinds of options are needed depending on individual circumstances and values, such as “I want to work while raising children or caring for family,” “I want to choose my own hours and place,” or “I want to take on several jobs.”
Then in 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic changed the world dramatically. With the arrival of the new normal and its new ways of living, the diversification of work is accelerating further.
Amid these changing times, Acall Inc., led by Naganuma, is attracting great expectations and attention. WorkstyleOS (now called Acall), released by the company in 2020, is a platform that connects all kinds of spots with workers, letting people freely choose the “time” and “place” of work and achieve a more fulfilling workstyle. As a service for realizing new ways of working, including hybrid work, it has been introduced by about 6,000 companies, mainly large corporations.
“Today, the place of work is not limited to the office. Homes, coworking spaces, cafés, hotels, and all kinds of places become ‘spots’ for work. By registering them in Acall and having ‘workers’ check in through a PC or tablet, all members can share when, who, and where people are working,” says Naganuma.
By digitally visualizing and sharing each person’s check-ins and check-outs and their productivity in between, it can clear up the problems of “well-being” and “collaboration” that have been issues with remote work.
Naganuma says, “Acall is meant to let each worker work in their own way, in a more fulfilling form, and as a result raise productivity and lead to better business results and organizational growth. It is an OS for making both workers and companies happy.”
Acall Inc.’s vision is “Life in Work and Work in Life for Happiness”: “As a technology company, we aim to realize a world where people can freely design how they live and how they work.” Toward a new era, it proposes new value that expands the possibilities of how we work.
Choosing the path of entrepreneurship to build an exciting sci-fi-like future with one’s own hands
Naganuma set out to become an entrepreneur as a student. A big fan of science fiction, Naganuma says the appeal lay especially in worldviews like those of The Matrix and Minority Report, where people move back and forth between virtual and real spaces.
“I thought that kind of future would come true someday, and I remember being very excited. And I came to want to work on building that future with my own hands.”
To make that dream come true, Naganuma first jumped into the IT industry, joining IBM Japan after graduating from university. While keeping starting a business in view and learning cutting-edge technology, Naganuma founded BALANCE&UNIQUE Inc., the predecessor of Acall, in 2010.
Another thing driving Naganuma to start a business was doubt about “the joy of working.”
“Most people join a company after graduating from school. Then everyone wears similar suits, takes the train at the same time, and goes to similar workplaces. That is the ‘normal picture’ of a working adult in Japan, but I wondered whether a uniform way of working is really right. Working takes up a huge part of our lives. That is why I always felt that if that part is not happy, life will not be happy either.”
A system that can make working people happy should be achievable through the evolution of technology. And combining it with a sci-fi-like worldview would definitely be interesting. That feeling was the starting point that drove Naganuma down the path of entrepreneurship.
Continuing to share with the world the new value born from practicing and experiencing it ourselves
There is something Naganuma has consistently valued since founding the company. It is the stance that is also Acall Inc.’s mission: “Practice and Spread New Workstyle: be the first to practice new workstyles ourselves and share the experience of trial and error with society.”
Right after starting the company, Naganuma took on contract system development for corporations while releasing one prototype product after another developed in-house. The concept leading to WorkstyleOS was already in Naganuma’s head, but proposing a grand transformation all at once would be hard for most companies to follow, and actually building it would take enormous time and effort, so it was not realistic. So, to start with something easy for anyone to understand and get into, the company first began developing systems to improve its own workstyle. One of them was ACALL, released in 2016, which digitized the visitor check-in experience.
At the time, the company was a small, engineer-centered organization with the problem that work was interrupted every time a visitor came and needed to be attended to. To solve it, the company developed an app that made office reception unmanned, managed meeting rooms, and linked with security. Among reception systems of the time, which required expensive installation and effort, ACALL, which used the cloud and linked with an iPad app, stood out for how easy it was to introduce. It quickly became a hot topic and the company’s main product. In 2017, the company changed its name to ACALL, the same as the product, to unify its business.
Of course, that was just a waypoint. What Naganuma aims for is improving “how people work” itself. Expanding the domain from check-ins at a limited place, the entrance, to the entire workplace, and the view to the whole of life, including working hours, the company announced in 2019, as the “ACALL VISION,” its aim to build a society where everyone can work happily by diversifying ways of working through broader options for places to work, achieved by “digitizing places” at a higher level. WorkstyleOS was then born. And in 2023, the service and the company were renamed Acall.
“Since the launch of ACALL, both the number of adopting companies and sales grew significantly, but we had a strong belief that the value we could provide to society was not limited to inside the office. Japan has mountains of problems to solve, such as packed trains, long commutes from far away, and the double burden of caring for both children and older relatives, and at the root of them was ‘work that depends on place.’”
What is more, the spread of COVID-19 triggered a fundamental rethink of conventional ways of working in today’s society. Acall is attracting attention as a powerful support tool for realizing the workstyles of the new era, breaking free from dependence on place and greatly expanding the options for how people work.
Eyes on the world and the future beyond: a drive that will not stop
Since its release, Acall has made a smooth start. But Naganuma says, “As a business, we have only just started. We want to evolve it much further.”
“Because users can freely customize settings from the OS, all kinds of arrangements are possible; for example, playing automated voice announcements prompting the start and end of a meeting when checking in. We also sometimes propose new ways of using it. By adding new experiences, we can keep evolving Acall, so we want to support that firmly while communicating with our users.”
Naganuma also predicts that in the near future more people will work in the metaverse, a virtual space on the network, and that moving back and forth between real and virtual spaces will become common. The company is eager to take on new possibilities for the service, combining robots and other cutting-edge technologies so that even essential workers, for whom remote work is said to be difficult now, can have more diverse ways of working.
Starting with Singapore in 2021, the company is also expanding into global markets. As if responding to the demands of an era in which people’s lifestyles and values are changing dramatically, its momentum shows no sign of stopping.
“The sci-fi world I once dreamed of with excitement will finally become reality in the next 10 to 20 years. In that world, I want to, and believe we should, run our business while looking not only at technology or efficiency, but at what a truly rich way of living is for people, and what happiness is.”
Wanting to build truly interesting and fun things with one’s own hands and share them with the world.
The aspiration set as a student remains the sure driving force moving Naganuma toward the future.
Interview date: January 19, 2022 (revised February 10, 2026)
(Interview and text: Mitsuko Yamashita)