Asahi Soft Drinks adopts the product data platform “Lazuli PDP” — reducing product master registration time by approximately 470 hours and freeing up time to focus on creative work —
Press Release
Lazuli Inc. (headquarters: Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo; Representative Director: Seigen Hagiwara; hereinafter Lazuli) developed and provides the AI-powered SaaS product data platform “Lazuli PDP,” which was adopted by Asahi Soft Drinks Co., Ltd. (headquarters: Sumida-ku, Tokyo; President and Representative Director: Taichi Yoneme; hereinafter Asahi Soft Drinks) in September 2021, resulting in a significant reduction in work time.
At Asahi Soft Drinks’ Wide-area Mass Retail Sales Department, Category Management Group, the mission is to improve the efficiency and sophistication of sales support for mass retail chains through data utilization. Sales-support staff and staff responsible for enhancing services for mass retail chains work together on their tasks. At the company, the method used to classify items when registering them in the product master depended on individual expertise, and multiple product masters existed. In addition, they faced a problem in which classification and analysis perspectives were not aligned across all regions. Furthermore, because management of these multiple product masters was handled manually, a huge amount of work was required. To solve these issues, the company introduced “Lazuli PDP” in September 2021.
At many beverage manufacturers, registering product masters that are updated frequently is essential in line with new product launches, the increase in PB products, and the rollout of region-limited products. At Asahi Soft Drinks, this work required approximately 470 hours per year. After introducing “Lazuli PDP,” product master registration was fully automated, enabling staff at each branch to shift from routine tasks to creative work. In addition, automation and the standardization of registration rules made it possible to maintain product masters at a high level of quality. In particular, by automating the reconciliation of a huge number of product records and standardizing notation according to rules, “Lazuli PDP” helped transform the dependence on individual know-how in product master registration and create opportunities for developing new talent.
Lazuli will leverage the knowledge gained through its collaboration with Asahi Soft Drinks to help build a unified master that can be shared across the distribution and manufacturing industries in the future.
＜What is Lazuli PDP?＞
The “Lazuli PDP” developed and provided by Lazuli is a PDP that centrally manages product information scattered across multiple external databases and organizes and expands it into a format that makes the data easier to use. It uses AI to perform entity matching on diverse product master data held by manufacturers, retailers, pharmaceutical companies, and others, and adds meta tags and associations based on efficacy and product characteristics. This information is stored in “NINJA DB” and delivered to users as “Lazuli PDP.”
＜About Asahi Soft Drinks＞
Asahi Soft Drinks is the core operating company of the Asahi Group’s beverage business. It owns brands such as “Mitsuya Cider,” “Calpis,” “Wilkinson,” “Wonda,” “Jurokucha,” and “Oishii Mizu,” and develops products centered on carbonated drinks, dairy-based drinks, coffee drinks, tea-based drinks, and functional beverages.
*“Calpis” is a registered trademark of Asahi Soft Drinks Co., Ltd.
＜About Lazuli Inc.＞
Lazuli Inc. is a startup founded in July 2020. Harnessing advanced AI technology and the cloud, it is developing and providing SaaS that allows anyone involved in business to use product information from around the world as an AI-powered product master. Today, as products are manufactured, distributed, and sold, product-related data is not being synchronized smoothly between companies or even within companies. We believe this is one of the major factors hindering DX. To solve this, Lazuli develops and provides Lazuli PDP, a SaaS-based cloud product master that makes it easy for business professionals to access product information.
https://corporate.lazuli.ninja/
Interview article here: https://corporate.lazuli.ninja/case_study/asahi_beverage/
Press release here: https://prtimes.jp/main/html/rd/p/000000053.000068652.html