Japanese tech giant Fujitsu has launched Uvance for Retail, integrating data and agentic AI onto a robust and secure cloud.

By seamlessly connecting fragmented data and operations across retail sites, Fujitsu aims to enhance both on-site execution capabilities and management decision-making and support the sustainable growth and competitiveness of Japan’s retail industry.

Even as AI and digital technologies evolve rapidly, the Japanese retail industry faces complex and structural challenges such as population decline, intensifying competition, labour shortages and rising costs. Underlying these is the overwhelming amount of data required for decision-making compared with other industries, coupled with the current situation where systems are fragmented by operation and data are scattered. Furthermore, data structures differ among manufacturers and wholesalers, leading to data silos, making cross-sectional use difficult.

As a result, people are forced to make decisions without fully using vast amounts of data. This undermines the agility the retail industry has traditionally demonstrated, leading to a decline in competitiveness.

For over 50 years, Fujitsu (global.fujitsu) has supported the Japanese retail industry, and possesses an understanding of the business and related data structures developed through discussions with numerous customers and various business endeavours.

Furthermore, by welcoming GK Software (www.gk-software.com) and BrainPad into the group, Fujitsu has strengthened its comprehensive support system, integrating industry-rooted knowledge with technology. By providing this accumulated retail industry knowledge and technology, Uvance for Retail transforms on-site execution and management decision-making. Thus, Fujitsu aims to enhance corporate agility and support the sustainable growth of the Japanese retail industry.

Uvance for Retail provides the capabilities for retail business growth, with data and AI at its core. Fujitsu’s retail-specialised consultants define management and operational challenges, leveraging their years of industry expertise to design a state that includes business processes and core systems. Subsequently, offerings incorporating agentic AI are implemented by system engineers with deep retail knowledge, ensuring their effective use in daily operations.

AI rooted in business processes enables decision-making and operational autonomy. Fujitsu also provides a platform that safely connects operations, systems and data for supporting these. Through Uvance for Retail, Fujitsu says it aims to innovate experiences for consumers and employees, enhance supply chains, and advance the future of retail.

For companies struggling to provide personalised experiences to all customers due to labour shortages, thereby missing opportunities for loyalty improvement, Fujitsu will support a deeper understanding of customers using its causal inference AI. This is characterised by its ability to clarify not just correlations but the “why” behind customer actions and outcomes, based on vast and complex operational and customer data.

Using a proprietary algorithm, it can rapidly explore causal relationships even in data involving thousands of variables and a mix of operational, customer and external factors.

Apparel merchandisers are required to grasp the situation of each store accurately and issue optimal instructions promptly. However, due to data fragmentation across different operations and systems, decision-making takes time, leading to missed opportunities.

Fujitsu enables multiple AI agents with different roles to collaborate, making cross-functional judgments and providing support across the entire operation. It presents the analysis results of each agent in an easy-to-understand manner and facilitates subsequent actions based on human judgment, enabling swift and effective decision-making.