NIPPON EXPRESS HOLDINGS has acquired a stake in VALT JAPAN, the developer and operator of the NEXT HERO digital transformation platform designed for people facing employment challenges, through the NX Global Innovation Investment Limited Partnership.
The two companies signed a capital and business alliance agreement on August 24.
VALT JAPAN operates with a vision of creating an era where people facing employment challenges thrive, running a business model that simultaneously creates active roles for individuals whose employment options are limited due to disabilities or intractable diseases while addressing corporate labour shortages and improving productivity.
Its core NEXT HERO platform collaborates with more than 2,000 continuous employment support facilities nationwide and has secured business process outsourcing contracts across administrative and digital domains from a cumulative total of over 400 companies.
VALT JAPAN also operates its own NEXT HERO Digital Innovation Centres, offering comprehensive support from practical skills training through to direct company employment.
The partnership will be developed across three stages.
First, a dedicated Digital Innovation Centre operated by VALT JAPAN exclusively for the NX Group will identify back-office administrative and routine computer-based tasks, handling process design, day-to-day operations and quality control in a system enabling individuals with disabilities to perform at a high level.
Second, following the establishment of best practices at the dedicated DIC, people with disabilities will be directly employed at NX Heartful, a special-status subsidiary within the NX Group, with operations gradually transferred to them to build a sustainable direct employment system.
Third, the two companies will at a future point consider offering the administrative and digital outsourcing services developed through the initiative to logistics operators and other clients, extending the benefits across the broader logistics industry.
The NX Group aims through this investment to combine VALT JAPAN’s talent matching capabilities and BPO expertise with the Group’s nationwide logistics hub network and back-office infrastructure to build a new business model in which people with disabilities contribute as valued participants.
