ITOCHU Corporation (headquartered in Minato-ku, Tokyo; Yoshihisa Suzuki, President & Chief Operating Officer; hereinafter “ITOCHU”) announced today that it will enter into a capital and business alliance with WingArc1st Inc. (headquartered in Minato-ku, Tokyo; Jun Tanaka,President; hereinafter “WingArc”) and enter the data utilization support business.

In recent years, the Fourth Industrial Revolution has been advancing in a number of industries and data utilization by companies has become key to “realizing next-generation business,” specifically demand forecasts utilizing the results of data analysis. However, the ratio of the Japanese companies that “already utilize industrial data actively” is only about 16% (*1). The issues in this situation are “lack of a means for using and utilizing data collected and unknown cost effectiveness” and “shortage of human resources who can handle data.”

WingArc has for many years helped companies institute operational reforms through offering software and services for data utilization. It has achieved the largest share in the domestic markets of form tools and data aggregation/analysis/visualization tools (*2). In addition, WingArc currently operates a Data Empowerment business based on data aggregation/analysis/visualization tools and offers solutions dedicated to a specific industry, such as retail and manufacturing. Through these businesses, WingArc has provided support for the easy and effective maximization of the performance of workers at companies.

Meanwhile, ITOCHU has strengths in textile, machinery, food and other fields relating to life consumption. By combining the business know-how of different kinds of industries and the data utilization technologies of WingArc, solutions for each industry–for example, solutions for automated control of efficient line operations based on the operational data of machinery, targeting the machine tool business—will be developed and offered to the Group and business accounts. As these solutions are dedicated to a specific type of industry, introduction is easier than construction from scratch. Data utilization will be realized even if know-how on advanced data analysis is available internally.

ITOCHU, which is actively promoting digitization and data utilization at companies, will continue to expand offerings of new services utilizing the latest technologies in Japan and overseas.