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May 13, 2014

Fujitsu Unveils Operational Data Management & Analytics

TOKYO, Japan, May 13 — Fujitsu today announced the upcoming release of FUJITSU Business Application Operational Data Management & Analytics, a solution that helps sales departments, business strategy departments, and other business units use their own big data to transform business processes or bring greater sophistication to their marketing initiatives. The new solution, a part of the ongoing FUJITSU Big Data Initiative that systematizes the company’s big data products and services, will be available in Japan from June. Fujitsu will be releasing additional offerings in the future that meet the needs of the global market.

Operational Data Management & Analytics is a solution that combines data from a company’s internal mission critical systems with data from external sources, such as social networks. This enables sophisticated, real-time big data analyses that can be easily performed even without specialized analytics know-how. Now, as a first step, Fujitsu has taken analytics models for which business needs are especially high, including demand forecast modeling, customer behavior analysis modeling, and management analysis modeling, and applied its long-cultivated data-analysis method know-how to provide optimally combined analytical software tools for each type of work.

In addition, FUJITSU Integrated System Analytics Ready, one of the data-management platforms part of Operational Data Management & Analytics, has also been updated with enhanced integration, supporting big data utilization in business units.

As part of the FUJITSU Big Data Initiative, the company aims to continue offering its ICT technology and integration know-how in the form of global products and services that accelerate the pace of innovation for its customers and society as a whole.

Until now, the use of big data has largely been restricted to experts in IT departments, data scientists, and other people who are professional analysts, but sales managers and other people working in business units have an increasing need for big data to help them formulate sales strategies and solve other immediate business problems.

Accordingly, there is a clear need to make big data easier to use for people without specialized know-how in data analysis, enabling them to collect and use the information they need to make decisions in their jobs in real time.

In June 2013, Fujitsu systematized its products and services related to big data in its FUJITSU Big Data Initiative, and in October 2013, it rolled out a menu of ten offerings, each with clear benefits to customers.

For three out of those ten offerings where the needs of business units are especially high, Fujitsu has now incorporated its own practical knowledge to enable front-line managers to make effective use of data by themselves. While providing a solution comprised of optimal software for each type of work, Fujitsu also supports them with the data-management platform and integration services.

About the New Services and Products

1. Operational Data Management & Analytics: A solution for employing big data to produce business innovation driven by business units

1) Demand forecast modeling

Designed for the sales departments of manufacturers, this uses detailed data of a company’s past retail sales results and other internal data with point-of-sale information from targeted regions and stores, weather information, and data from other external sources. Then it incorporates this data into 15 types of analysis scenarios (e.g. store location and characteristics analysis, cost and market share analysis) as a product that makes it easy to perform sophisticated demand forecasts.

This makes it easy to prepare sales strategies based on precise demand forecasts, rather than designing sales activities based only on experience and hunches.

2) Customer behavior analysis modeling

Designed for marketing units of retail stores, this uses a store’s existing information on customers and products, along with online information, including social networks and web sites, and incorporates them into 32 types of analysis scenarios (e.g. decile analysis and related purchasing analysis) for a product that that can easily perform multi-faceted analyses of customer buying behavior.

This makes it possible to reach individual customers in ways suited to their individual tastes, rather than taking a one-size-fits-all approach.

3) Management analysis modeling

Designed for the sales departments of companies involved in manufacturing on a global scale, this uses the sales and profit information of a company’s overseas sites, along with detailed sales information and project bidding status, and incorporates them into 15 types of analysis scenarios e.g. profit and loss analysis by segment across five individual items; region, specific location, customer, product, and type of business. It incorporates this into a product that makes it easy to perform global management analysis for devising sales strategies.

This makes it possible to share and tie together sales programs between locations or group companies, enabling more robust and better coordinated global sales efforts.

When this model was put to the test in Fujitsu’s own global sales management department, it brought about an increase in sales in the global market.

2. FUJITSU Integrated System Analytics Ready

This is a data-management platform that combines hardware and operations-management software into a column-store big data engine designed for real-time information utilization in business units. The platform employs technology developed by the globally acclaimed company SAP. It performs analyses using a variety of data sources, including a company’s existing business data and other internal and external sources, at speeds 500 times faster than conventional databases (average performance in Fujitsu’s test), allowing for high-speed processing, and with visual support that lets the user zoom in or zoom out on the data being analyzed or change the analysis logic. This also prevents personal information and other data that must be kept confidential from being displayed, depending on the role and organization, to prevent data breaches.

This product serves as one of the platforms within Operational Data Management & Analytics and can tie in with analysis solutions from other companies.

3. Enhanced integration

Seeking to develop optimal systems to utilize big data, Fujitsu increased by 100 the number of specialized technicians it employs within the 800-person Big Data Initiative Center, an organization established in June 2013 to specialize in bringing together existing systems with external data, development of additional analytical scenarios and other such system building, operation, maintenance functions in demand forecast modeling, customer behavior analysis modeling, and management analysis modeling in Operational Data Management & Analytics.

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