The 117th Installment
Society, Information, and Technology
by Tokuro Matsuo,
Professor, Master Program of Information Systems Architecture
Popular, long-standing ryokan (traditional Japanese inns) endeavor to understand what their customers want and to provide services that give each individual customer the greatest of satisfaction. For example, instead of serving the exact same meals to repeat customers, they change the menu each time, provide variation, and strive to further satisfy the customer while keeping them from growing bored. They also sometimes prepare special gifts and meal presentations as a surprise for anniversaries or special occasions. Customers are greatly impressed by such services, which they cannot easily buy with money, and this enhances their satisfaction.
Technologies are now emerging that take advantage of high-speed networks and dramatic advancements in computing power to optimize services in the field of information engineering. Applied informatics is a field of research that connects society with basic and applied technologies in information engineering and information science. Service-related research, in particular, is becoming a target of attention. Designing off-the-shelf services and thinking about how to provide them is an approach that's now old-fashioned. For instance, computers make it possible to identify users' wants, which change hourly, based on past data and a variety of conditions and restrictions. For the work that service providers do, real time simulations allow for determining work content, level, and order in order to provide the best services. Going one step further, in the age of Society 5.0, the melding of the physical and cyber worlds should open up innovative solutions to social problems.
Maximizing service provider returns is also important. Utilizing things such as price setting models based on demand prediction and other service marketing logic, as well as yield management that uses assorted models, we are heading towards research results and their practical application in "optimizing society" by maximizing customer satisfaction and returns. In research fields such as service science, service economics, service marketing, and service management, there is strong compatibility with cloud computing, big data and data mining technologies, and mobile computing, presenting areas of potentially big business opportunities.
As these information technologies become accepted by and ingrained in society, they should not only allow us to solve a range of known problems but also help enhance convenience in our daily lives. At the same time, there are some jobs and services that only humans can do. It seems to me that, rather than the ability to computerize and automate everything, specialists will also need to be able to determine what technologies are needed and where.