Agoop Corp.: Value-added solutions with Big Data

The inception of Agoop has been a cornerstone in the space of big data. This IT company was founded as a spinoff of the SoftBank Group in 2009 to develop and offer GIS services and data analytics solutions. With their vision “Apply Big Data to spark happiness around the world~Big Data as a value~”, Agoop has valorized big data where organizations can leverage not just the sheer volume of the data but also solutions built on top of it to solve business problems. Agoop has 10+ years of experience in SDK development for crowdsourcing data, cloud infrastructure for real-time data processing and storage, location data science to valorize data, and dashboard development technologies, which are all essential for efficient utilization of big data. Even prior to big data gaining its popularity in 2011, Agoop was already building on these technologies. Agoop crowdsources petabyte-scale mobile-network user-experience data from consumers all over Japan, which has been significantly aiding SoftBank Corp in improving its network and emerge as the leader in Japan. This is one of the world’s first pioneer success stories of advanced big data. Assembling their technological capabilities, Agoop has devised Mobile-Network Services and Dynamic Population Solutions, which not only provide the voluminous data to the customers but add value to the data and offer AI algorithms, dashboards and analysis reports, facilitating the companies to utilize them to the fullest. “The strength of Agoop is that we are not just a data provider. Rather than leaving it up to the clients to utilize the data, Agoop does the value-addition to enable clients to maximize the use of the data,” mentions Kazuhisa Shibayama, President and CEO and Yusuke Kato, Director and CTO.

Agoop’s Mobile Network Experience Analyzer (MNEA) is the primary service that helped SoftBank Corp to prosper. Using patented technology, Agoop collects petabytes of mobilenetwork user-experience data from smartphones, based on the connection status and throughput in real-time across all carriers. This location-based data enables MNOs to capture hidden dissatisfaction level of users to prevent customer attrition and accordingly detect the priority areas that need improvements. It allows MNO’s management and board members to understand where their users’ experience stand relative to their competitors, thereby making better business decisions to achieve a maximum outcome with minimum investment.

Agoop also provides Dynamic Population Solutions using their GPS data, including user-content, and aids in analyzing people’s behavior to utilize them in a wide range of applications. Today, this solution has proved to be very useful for crafting the counter measures for COVID-19 by the Government. To add on, Point-of-Interest (POI) data, demographics, land type and transportation are some of the few key examples of data collected by Agoop, to produce reports and dashboards for tracking changes in human traffic, general mass behavior, and detailed human behavior.

These facilitate commercial area analysis, store management, disaster management, and sales forecasting to help store openings, relocations and closings. “If you need a better understanding of people’s behaviors that results in low/high sales or the changing behavioral patterns due to COVID-19, Agoop’s Dynamic Population Data & Solutions are the remedy,” adds Kazuhisa.

Substantiating Agoop’s contribution to telecom carriers, they mentioned an example of a client who faced challenges in continuous surveying and understanding of mobile network conditions. With Agoop’s MNEA that crowdsourced data from users’ smartphones, the client was able to obtain accurate information of the mobile network, which helped identify the areas to be prioritized with a significantly reduced human cost. Additionally, such quality data can be used for 5G investments as well. Another notable instance is their substantial contribution in channelizing their Government’s efforts for combating COVID-19. The Government is using Agoop’s data to help understand the impact of their measures by monitoring the daily changes in human mobility and people’s behaviors in each priority area. Agoop’s data were also published on 500+ TV and media platforms in hopes to allow the public to view the extent to which they have abided by the rules and have been able to combat the pandemic. Besides, this data has immense potential to be utilized for economic recovery as well.

Agoop’s services have simplified the application of big data for businesses and maximized their use. They have made data collection easier by providing the SDK+SaaS, which allows the organizations to avoid the initial investment risks involved in setting up the SDK and cloud infrastructure in-house. Along with this, they also promise personal data protection of their clients, enhancing their market reputation. Moreover, the data they acquire are completely cleansed, ready-touse with verified accuracy, making its utilization easy. Additionally, Agoop’s expertise in location data AI analysis helps them provide the right services and algorithms according to the customers’ needs. For every stage of the client’s workflow, they have lined-up products like reports for data beginners, dashboards for intermediate users, and data and AI solutions for the advanced users.

With their strong team and expertise, winning over the market has been smoother for Agoop. They are backed by a team of proficient data scientists and data engineers who are experts in location data and real-time data processing. They have moved beyond the cookiecutter approach towards big data and are able to offer relevant solutions for their clients to solve business problems more efficiently and swiftly. Ahead in time, as the world expects the wave of Internet of Things (IoT) to take over, Agoop is moving towards generating IoT data to cover a more comprehensive range of information related to people’s lifestyles and help businesses improve their decision-making. “We envision to become a company that grows together with the society, by constantly inventing new values across various business sectors and industries through targeted solutions and cutting-edge technologies,” comments Kazuhisa.