GiXo: Maximize the Thinking Capacity of the Enterprise World

Data and analytics, the two elements that serve as the life-forces of today’s enterprise landscape, often fall short of delivering businesses a true decision-making capability—the combination of ‘traditional artistic decision making’ and ‘data-driven decision making’. The former artistic piece relies on intuition, experience, and courage, the latter data-driven decision-making aspect hinges on existing information, predicted data sets, and optimized output. Normally, the former piece exists in the company and the latter piece is missing, which is when most organizations consult analytics professional to fill this component. While consultee (companies) and consultant (analytical professional) are both capable in their own field, GiXo—a firm comprised of strategic consultants and analytics experts—believes that emphasis on blending the components is lacking. GiXo has forged the perfect combination of artistic and data-driven decision-making components, which paves the way for a more resilient business-critical function –‘Data-Informed Decision Making (DIDM).’ Shintaro Hanatani, Chief Business Officer (CBO) of GiXo, says, “Companies hoping to integrate data and analytics functions tend to believe that these two aspects form the almighty solution. At GiXo, we believe that this is only one half of the solution, alongside artistic decision-making capabilities that consultees possess.” GiXo’s spirit is not to overwrite decision making process by data analytics, but rather to enforce companies’ decision-making process by informing the situation using relevant data.

GiXo’s approach to redefining decision-making capabilities maximizes the thinking capacity of businesses, expressed through technological tools such as the Mygru. An example that showcases the merits of Mygru is the improvisation of the ‘stamp rally’- a popular marketing methodology employed across Japan. Stamp rally involves the supplier setting up multiple tasks for the consumer to gain a particular reward. ‘The process of consumers achieving the tasks and collecting the approval stamps is the origin of its name.’ The idea was designed to enable visits to supplier stores and spend a certain amount of money – a program resembling customer loyalty avenues, with multiple tasks for spontaneous marketing campaigns. “Stamp rally is effective because it stimulates the consumers’ desire to complete the punch card. It also creates a journey for the consumer to know more about the supplier,” adds Mr Hanatani. Despite these advantages, a stamp rally has a definitive weakness – the lack of personalization. The tasks designed for the consumer lacked a personal touch and were repetitive in nature (the same for every consumer), causing fewer engagements within the society as a whole.

Due to this nature of stamp rally – lack of personal customization – it is considered as a retro method among marketing strategies. While social media strategies is focused as new norm of marketing, GiXo approached this problem differently…

The Fusion of AI and Behavioral Psychology

By allocating tasks for customers based on the preferential data (of their likes and dislikes), Mygru customizes stamp rally tasks differently for each customer. At glance, the logic resembles personalized ads; Mygru embeds the merits of the “Variety Logic.” When unfolded, Variety logic plays into the notion that ‘premium spending customers tended to purchase multiple varieties of goods.’ GiXo observed this tendency among clients in the retail and credit card industry through an extensive array of data diagnosis projects. Mygru, unlike personalized ads often proposing products in the same category, creates task for customers to expand their purchasing experience into different categories. This philosophy not only served as the foundation to the Mygru product but also resonated the strength and ideology of the company, rightly exemplified at the shopping centre subsidiary of West Japan Railway Company (JR-West)who uses the tool. Mygru is ideal for conglomerate companies such as JR-West, providing a solution to extend their customer journey into various sectors of the business.

GiXo works as a semi-in-house consultant for JR-West, to which it supplies a wide range of analytics functions across multiple infrastructure development projects, with Mygru as one of the projects. From IoT to railway engineering and marketing related issues, GiXo scans through the actual data set in 2-4 weeks to completely comprehend the concern and suitably deduce a resolution for the same. Likewise, the company solves more than ten such use cases annually. “We observed high satisfaction levels across the JR-West company, showcasing greater engagement and inquiries coming into the digital hub of the company,” highlights Mr Hanatani. Through this engagement, GiXo has documented exceptional results, both for itself and its client.

Decision-Making Crafted Perfected

Alongside Mygru, GiXo’sTochikachi is a noteworthy example of understanding local preference characteristics for better-informed decision making. Tochikachi dynamically captures information about population movement in real-time, providing critical information about the demography. For instance, the system is capable of visualizing “predicted non-COVID case” and “real COVID cases,” calculated using machine learning algorithms.

The system has also shown great promise for the enterprise arena, aiding organizations in the management, planning, development, commercial operations and leasing functions, in addition to several other capabilities as well. Tochikachi is powered by ‘mobile spatial statistics’ from NTT Docomo—the largest cellular network in Japan—to offer web-based services. Users can select any 500m grid in Japan to analyze population characteristics, categorized by age group, gender, home city, and specific periods.

“Our unique selling point is in how we assist clients along the whole journey, across the planning phase, PoC, and analytics, in addition to constructing the actual analytical infrastructure”

These decision-making capabilities—particularly in the age of IoT and Big Data analytics—prove to be highly beneficial for businesses, supplementing comprehensive data-driven insights, sophisticated prediction, and mathematical optimization methods. And, the speed with which these services are orchestrated provides companies with an added advantage over the competition.

“Our unique selling point is in how we assist clients along the whole journey, across the planning phase, PoC, and analytics, in addition to constructing the actual analytical infrastructure,” says Mr Hanatani. “We assist clients with the fusion of Strategical Consulting, Analytics and Technology, in addition to a profound understanding of any given issue and its rapid analysis for a quick resolution.” GiXo conducts a comprehensive and in-depth discussion with clients while engaging with them to leave no stone unturned before providing a suitable resolution. Such an approach allows the company to refine their analytical processes to speed up data structuring and visualization functions through ‘rapid analysis, which in turn, enables them to take the full advantage of the latest could based technologies. Besides, GiXo has also been developing machine learning algorithms continuously, thereby catering to the full spectrum of data-informed decision requirements by offering a fusion of strategic consulting, analytical capabilities, and innovative technologies. This philosophy resonates the founding principles of the company and upholds the ideologies garnered by its founders in the analytics domain. “As we observed the evolution in cloud technology, our dedication and efforts into our line of work have also resulted in GiXo to grow rapidly in the past years. This history has led us to evolve our strength in applying analytics and technology in supporting our clients,” explains Mr Hanatani. “Our purpose is to maximize the thinking capacity of the enterprise world through Data- Informed Decision Making culture.”

True to the CBO’s words, the company has played a catalyzing role in the enterprise journeys of its clients, helping them resolve management issues through strategic consulting and energize their business architectures for both maximum efficiency and utility.