Fujitsu Enforces 'Wide Learning' to Deliver Optimized Action Plan in Diverse Fields


Fujitsu Enforces 'Wide Learning' to Deliver Optimized Action Plan in Diverse Fields

Fujitsu, a leading Japanese information & communication technology (ICT) company has announced the expansion of its ‘Wide Learning’ technology with an innovative AI tool, which will automatically deliver the optimized action plans for users in a variety of fields and industries, which includes marketing, manufacturing, healthcare, and finance. Wide Learning forms a core component in Fujitsu Human Centric AI - Zinrai, a comprehensive portfolio that encompasses Fujitsu’s wide range of AI technologies & techniques.

Nowadays, AI is a buzzword in the field of marketing. AI marketing is a method of leveraging customer data and AI concepts like machine learning to anticipate the customer’s next move and improve the customer journey. While the use of AI to forecast behavior offers marketers an important way to better understand their customer base, determining actions that encourage purchases remains a challenge. To address this gap, Fujitsu has expanded its Wide Learning technology, initially developed in September 2018, introducing a new technique that can determine actions that yield a high percentage of purchasers with the minimum number of actions. The innovative technique is expected to streamline marketing operations by identifying important customers while simultaneously determining optimal marketing strategies automatically.

When preparing plans for how to approach a customer, marketing experts usually analyze their historical data using segments represented by a combination of data items. This process typically includes analysis of customer attributes and history of past activity, to estimate actions that may lead to a purchase for a segment with a high purchase rate and a high customer count. However, datasets in marketing often have more than 50 data items, all of which can be combined in quadrillions of potential segment combinations. In the past, it was only possible to estimate effective sales actions after selecting dozens of segments from the total range of possible combinations. Going forward, to create more effective marketing strategies, it will be essential to find the most efficient combination of data items that increase the purchase rate for the greatest number of customers with minimal action.

Fujitsu developed the Wide Learning AI technology in September 2018, which made it possible to accurately compute high-priority combinations of data items from all combinations even when the amount of data conventionally required for learning cannot be obtained. Now, Fujitsu has innovated a new technique that further narrows down a large number of calculated high-priority combinations to automatically generate efficient and effective action plans. The features of the new technology include identifying effective customer segments & actions, and choosing actions according to target outcome.

An experiment was conducted to recommend actions to increase the number of highly reliable customers, using anonymized data (21 attribute items, 49 action history items, 14 action items) stored in Fujitsu’s marketing automation tool. When Fujitsu’s marketing experts analyzed the data manually, they found that it was possible to determine 14 segments with actions that cover 17 percent of purchased customers and have 55 percent purchase rate on average. By applying the technique to the same data it became possible to determine three segments with actions that cover 47 percent of customers with an average of 92 percent purchase rate.

By the end of fiscal 2019 (March 2020), this technology will be used to automatically determine the best way to deliver information on products and services to customers, as well as to provide information on events hosted by Fujitsu. Furthermore, Fujitsu will also promote this technology in other areas including the automatic control of machines to reduce product defects, automatically setting credit limits to prevent default, and making recommendations for exercise and diet to help users maintain their health. Besides, Fujitsu has added this technique into its Wide Learning offering and is currently integrating it into various Fujitsu products and services with the aim of providing it as a Zinrai solution by fiscal 2020.

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