Hakuhodo DY Holdings Launches Data Exchange Platform Development Division

Hakuhodo DY Holdings Inc. announces that it has established a Data Exchange Platform Development Division, aiming for secure, broader utilisation of the sei-katsu-sha and social data owned by companies and organisations.

The company has released the following statement to discuss their motivations for setting up this new department. 

The new division will aid better integration of the wide range of data held by companies and organisations and has been endorsed by Society 5.0, a basic plan on technology drawn up by the Japanese government, and Connected Industries, a concept advocated by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. Attention has been focused on improving the convenience of services and infrastructure, and developing innovative services, by integrating and utilising a wide variety of data from multiple data-holders. However, coordination of data among companies has made little headway as the actual use of data for marketing requires careful consideration and full compliance, including the handling of personal information and the protection of privacy.

Hakuhodo DY Group has promoted the use of various data, enhancing our capacity for sei-katsu-sha data-driven marketing  in line with the Group policy of using sei-katsu-sha insight. In so doing, we developed and obtained a patent on K-Statistics & Data Fusion, a technique for anonymising and integrating personal information. This patented technique helps resolve the issue of how to handle personal information when using data, and facilitates the broader use of data securely. Our decision to establish the new division was motivated by our desire to build a data exchange platform that enables us to integrate and use data in response to the diverse needs of companies and organisations. By participating in the platform, data-holding companies and organisations can expect to capture new business opportunities by leveraging data. Meanwhile, data-using companies and organisations will gain increased possibilities to develop marketing and services that leverage hitherto-inaccessible external data.

In addition, Hakuhodo DY Holdings has been engaging in collaboration and cooperation with the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), with the aim of becoming a society where we can distribute and utilise data securely. We are also a member of AIST's Artificial Intelligence Technology Consortium (Chairman: Yoichi Motomura), a collection of companies that are highly interested in using data by leveraging AI technology and machine learning in the era of big data. To help the Consortium achieve its aim of generating co-created values, we are leading its Data Platform Working Group. The Working Group engages with AIST on technological research and undertakes such activities toward societal implementation as carrying out demonstration experiments on using data in business and solving social issues, working with a wide variety of companies and organisations across industries through the Consortium.

Going forward, the Data Exchange Platform Development Division will explore possibilities for data integration with various data-holding companies and organisations, and continue to build the foundation for secure data processing, as part of our Group-wide effort for driving data utilisation.