ITOCHU Corporation (headquartered in Minato-ku, Tokyo; Keita Ishii, President & COO; hereinafter “ITOCHU”) announced today that it has reached an agreement with BELLSYSTEM24 Holdings, Inc. (headquartered in Chuo-ku, Tokyo; Shunsuke Noda President, CEO and Representative Director; hereinafter “BELLSYSTEM24”) and BrainPad Inc. (headquartered in Minato-ku, Tokyo; Takafumi Kusano, CEO & Representative Director; hereinafter “BrainPad”) to collaborate over the creation of new services to support businesses in pursuing digital transformation (hereinafter “DX”) in the marketing domain.

The COVID-19 era has brought about dramatic changes in the way consumers perceive lifestyles and workstyles, and products and services. To decipher increasingly complex consumer needs, businesses are turning their attention to the vast amount of unstructured data^*1 available, such as "conversation data" which is stored at contact centers and contains end user specific qualitative information about interests and preferences, in addition to digital data such as about online activities including social media activities. At the same time, unstructured data is often unmanaged and there is growing demand for data management and real time data analysis and utilization among businesses pursuing DX.

The three companies ITOCHU, BELLSYSTEM24 and BrainPad have agreed to collaborate in creating new services to support businesses in pursuing DX in the marketing domain, combining BELLSYSTEM24's operational knowhow of recording and managing the content of more than 500 million conversations a year to meet the specific needs of more than 1,000 clients and BrainPad's expertise in developing a platform for analyzing and utilizing more than 50 billion data records per year generated at digital touchpoints.

[Envisaged content of new services]
<Aiming to enhance customer experiences, using data as a starting point>

By combining BELLSYSTEM24's proven track record in dealing with customers at contact centers and operational knowhow in the BPO business built up over more than 30 years with the vast data analysis expertise of BrainPad as a group of specialists on data utilization, as well as its digital marketing platforms featuring tools such as Rtoaster^*3 and Probance^*4, the three companies will support clients with the realization of various DX initiatives, primarily in the marketing domain, ranging from unstructured data management to the building of a platform for data analysis and utilization, as well as a framework for its continued operation. The services will be rolled out to each Division Company within ITOCHU, each ITOCHU Group company and partner companies and will also be proposed and introduced to clients of BELLSYSTEM24 and BrainPad across a range of sectors, including manufacturing, communications, retail and distribution, insurance and finance.

ITOCHU formed a capital and business alliance with BrainPad in November 2020 to strengthen the framework for promoting DX. Meanwhile, BELLSYSTEM24 committed to "providing high added value by data analysis" and "enhancing the use of consumer data with new partner companies" in its Mid-Term Management Plan announced in October 2020, and this initiative forms part of these strategies. Moving forward, BELLSYSTEM24 will leverage its strengths which lie in its "operational force of 30,000 employees" and "immense knowledge of operations" to provide its clients with a framework for sustainable operation and business execution and will collaborate with ITOCHU and BrainPad to create new services which meet needs for both the in-house development of DX resources and outsourcing.