CTC First Contact to be made into a joint subsidiary

BELLSYSTEM24 Holdings, Inc (Representative Director, President, CEO: Tsuge Ichiro; Headquarters: Chuo Ward, Tokyo; Referred to below as "BELLSYSTEM24") and ITOCHU Techno-Solutions Corporation (HQ: Chiyoda Ward, Tokyo; President and CEO: Kikuchi Satoshi; Abbreviation: "CTC") decided to make CTC First Contact Corporation (Referred to below as "CTCFC") a joint subsidiary in order to expand their presence in the BPO (Business Process Outsourcing) field. Currently, CTCFC is a wholly owned subsidiary of CTC, engaging in outsourcing services such as service desk support and contact center services. From July 3^rd, BELLSYSTEM24 will own 51% of CTCFC's stock.

BELLSYSTEM24 and CTC both signed a comprehensive agreement with ITOCHU Corporation in July 2015 to work together to expand their presence in the BPO market.

BELLSYSTEM24 will add aspects of CTC's BPO business that leverage information technology to its "Advanced CRM" and "Advanced BPO" portfolio, combining BPO efforts with AI and other new technologies. Along with using CTCFC's high-quality service desk knowledge management methods, BELLSYSTEM24 will leverage the aspects above to accelerate its growth strategy of "Expansion into New Areas" outlined in its Mid-Term Management Plan.

CTC will use CTCFC as a platform on which to expand its BPO business, making the most of BELLSYSTEM24's network of 30 centers around the country, various CRM and BPO solutions, and hiring and training know-how.

■Background and Role for Each Company

The BPO market is growing, with back-office and administrative work being outsourced to external venders in order to make efficiency improvements. Also, BPO is moving from regular outsourcing to the creation of new business divisions, the implementation of large-scale operational improvements, and BTO (Business Transformation Outsourcing), in which work itself is transformed through the latest information technologies.

BELLSYSTEM24 is the leading company in the CRM field, having run call centers for over 30 years, currently with a scale of 30 centers domestically and approximately 32,000 communicators. In addition to the normal contact center services, BELLSYSTEM24 is also proactively developing new BPO services using email, chat, social media, and other new channels.

CTC deals with a variety of contact center-related products, and has strengths in implementing and maintaining large-scale systems that integrate them together. CTC considers the expansion of BPO and other service-based business to be one of its key strategies.

CTCFC, which has an advanced level of IT knowledge, has deployed a number of back-office services including service desks with international HDI certification, contact center operation services, training, and manual creation.

* International HDI Certification:

This is a certification that companies can only acquire by passing a wide range of audits by HDI (Help Desk Institute), the largest membership-based organization focused on IT support services

■Overview of CTC First Contact Corporation CTC