Case Study: ITOCHU Corporation achieves instant product recommendations with Microsoft Azure

ITOCHU deployed SAP on Azure to support a business evolution and streamlined system maintenance

ITOCHU Corporation launched a company-wide generative AI task force to improve FOODATA, its data analytics dashboard for food manufacturers, retailers, and restaurants. The challenge was to make data analysis faster and more useful, while also adding idea-generation capabilities that could support product planning and development. To address this, ITOCHU worked with Microsoft Azure using Azure OpenAI Service and Azure AI Studio.

Microsoft Azure helped ITOCHU build a proof of concept that automatically creates SQL for analytics and generates evidence-based product proposal drafts from entered conditions. By combining Azure OpenAI Service, Azure AI Studio, and Microsoft Fabric for data aggregation and cleansing, ITOCHU is creating a foundation for more accurate RAG-based AI responses and easier data processing for non-engineers. The initiative has already sparked more than 70 generative AI ideas across the company, with plans to expand the approach to other business areas.

ITOCHU Corporation

Shusaku Harada

Team Leader and IT Strategist