Adverse effects of leaving issues unattended

When the number of products doubles or triples in the future, will it be possible to continue to implement the current method of product registration work and expand the business?
Many companies do not have a clear solution to this question.

"I can't increase the number of people in charge of product registration" "Product registration work is taking time"
Leaving these issues unresolved will be a major barrier to future business expansion.
Product registration work is a work that always occurs continuously throughout the year. As long as there is no major change in business conditions and no longer handling products, it is a task that must be continued for 10 or 20 years. Therefore, the importance of solving this problem is extremely high.

The product master database is an important information asset that will serve as the foundation for future DX. In the DX trend, various advanced marketing methods (personalized marketing, etc.) are emerging. In addition, some companies are conducting advanced analysis based on product attribute values, such as sales analysis and customer trend analysis. When conducting these marketing and analysis, it is necessary to hold the data to be analyzed by the company. In the first place, if there is little product information registered in the product master, it is not possible to implement those measures.
In conclusion, the product information registration work of the product master is (1) a work that will continue to occur in the future and (2) is the foundation of DX, and is an area of extremely high importance for problem solving. Therefore, it is necessary to prioritize solving problems in product registration operations before considering new initiatives in other areas.

"I can't increase the number of people in charge of product registration" "Product registration work is taking time"
In order to solve these problems, what kind of approach can be considered from the perspective of utilizing technology?

Problem-solving approach 1: Automation of routine tasks by RPA

The first thing that can be considered is an approach that utilizes RPA (Robotic Process Automation) tools. By automating routine work in product registration, you can reduce man-hours and shorten the lead time of product registration work. RPA can automate routine processing tasks with pre-determined rules and procedures. Therefore, if the number of business partners is small and the product registration work is performed in a fixed procedure every time, it can be expected to reduce a lot of man-hours and shorten the time for product registration work.

On the other hand, RPA also has its challenges. When the number of business partners increases or when the procedures for product registration work change, it is necessary to establish rules from scratch and design and set up the work. Also, if there are different rules for each business partner, the number of rules will increase with use, and as a result, management may not be possible and operation may become complicated. Therefore, it is necessary to continuously manage maintenance and rules, and it is necessary to consider the man-hours in advance. In addition, since maintenance requires a certain amount of business knowledge and knowledge of RPA, it is necessary to be careful not to make the work dependent on individual skills.

Problem-solving approach 2: Hyper-automation with AI

Another possible method is an approach that utilizes AI (Artificial Intelligence). As with RPA, by automating the work in product registration with AI, it is possible to reduce the number of man-hours and shorten the lead time of product registration work.

The advantage of AI is that there is no need to set rules for product registration, and the AI model itself finds rules through learning using training data. Therefore, even if the number of business partners increases, the AI model can be reused to a certain extent, realizing automation of more general product registration work, reducing many man-hours, and improving product quality. Registration time can be shortened. However, AI also has its own challenges, and whenever an AI problem-solving approach is taken, it is necessary to prepare training data for AI models to learn. However, in many cases, there is already product attribute information for products that have been registered in the product master in the past, so it is possible to develop AI models using them as training data.

The figure below is a schematic diagram of AI actually used by a major US retail customer. This company handled more than 1 million products in multiple categories such as fashion, home products, and processed foods. There were hundreds of business partners, and there were a huge number of catalog PDFs, Excel, images, etc. that were read during product registration. As a result, 3000 product registration personnel were engaged in product registration work. This company was able to automate many product registration tasks by using an AI solution that combines processing by multiple AI models. As a result, we were able to reduce the number of people in charge of product registration to 50 people, drastically shortening the time required for product registration, and succeeded in creating a large business impact. By shortening the product registration period, it is now possible to start providing products immediately after the supplier's product release.

This AI solution automates three product registration processes: (1) classification of sent product information, (2) extraction of attribute information according to category, and (3) creation of additional product information using the extracted information. The product master data generated by AI in this solution is subsequently used for personalized marketing, demand forecasting, product intelligence optimization, etc., and is used as an information asset that forms the basis of DX.

Macnica provides a fully customized AI service, CrowdANALYTIX, and one of them is the provision of AI that automates product classification and registration.

2nd Summary

1. Ignoring issues in the product registration process will become a major hindrance to future business.
2. RPAやAIによる課題解決アプローチは、大きなビジネスインパクトをもたらす。

In Part 3, we will look at the details of problem-solving approaches using AI.