CJ O Shopping Strengthens Digital Competitiveness ... Expands IT Infrastructure and Workforce

200 Billion Investment in Full-Scale MSA Sales System Implementation
Virtualization of T-Commerce Operation System and Establishment of DT Organization

[Asia Economy Reporter Jo In-kyung] CJ O Shopping is investing 20 billion KRW to build a next-generation sales system and plans to hire around 100 IT personnel. This is a strategic move to shift its existing TV home shopping-centered business structure to mobile through digital transformation (DT).

CJ O Shopping announced on the 20th that since early this year, it has been building a sales system fully adopting the MSA (Micro Service Architecture) method with an investment of about 20 billion KRW. MSA consists of multiple small applications forming the system, allowing partial updates to individual systems without affecting the entire system, enabling more flexible operation and maintenance.

Virtualization technology will be introduced to the T-commerce operation system. To implement T-commerce broadcasting, applications must be installed on set-top boxes in each household by channel. Currently, about 120 different set-top box models in commercial use require different versions of applications. With this technology, only applications with minimal functions will be installed on set-top boxes, while detailed functions will be implemented on virtualization servers, providing a more stable and flexible T-commerce service.

To strengthen mobile business competitiveness based on digital infrastructure, CJ O Shopping established a DT (Digital Transformation) promotion team under the mobile business division (now e-commerce business division) in January. This is to specialize core DT capabilities and respond swiftly to business changes.

They also plan to recruit about 100 personnel in IT fields such as service planning and data science. In particular, they will focus on hiring leadership-level talents whom young developers can trust.

To seek new growth engines, CJ O Shopping will implement an 'open innovation' strategy that shares ideas and resources needed to strengthen mobile capabilities without internal or external distinctions. They will actively invest directly or indirectly in startups expected to create synergy, including the five major categories preferred by female customers aged 35-54?fashion, beauty, living, infant and child products, and health supplements?as well as e-commerce platforms targeting the MZ generation and data analysis. In addition to indirect investments through existing venture capital and CVC, direct investments or M&A will be considered when business synergy is needed.

An AI system will be introduced in the broadcasting review field. Technologies such as speech-to-text (STT) and text analysis (TA) will support review tasks that previously relied on individual reviewers' capabilities. This will enable automatic detection of inappropriate broadcast content and the creation of a database of broadcast content to assetize review information.

A CJ O Shopping official said, "Building IT infrastructure and securing talent are essential for successful digital transformation," adding, "We will focus on strengthening digital competitiveness through continuous and aggressive investment."