Tokyo-based NTT DATA Group, a global IT services firm active in consulting, systems development and operations, has shifted its growth approach from adding headcount to creating greater value through AI. As part of that shift, the company deployed ChatGPT Enterprise across the organization and launched programs to help employees adopt AI in their daily work.
Building on the ChatGPT Enterprise rollout, NTT DATA Group extended access to Codex to roughly 9,000 employees. Both technical and nontechnical teams now use the tool not only for conversational idea exploration but to perform clearly defined tasks.
Partnership with OpenAI and internal Center of Excellence
Following the start of a global strategic partnership with OpenAI in May 2025, NTT DATA Group deployed ChatGPT Enterprise companywide and established an internal OpenAI Center of Excellence (CoE). The CoE supports adoption through license distribution, technical validation, events, use case development, usage monitoring, knowledge resources, and the systems employees need to get the most from AI.
As a result, ChatGPT Enterprise has become one of the primary AI tools for daily work across the company. In an internal survey, more than 96% of respondents said they were satisfied with ChatGPT Enterprise, and over 95% reported productivity gains.
From three days to 30 minutes: a critical incident analysis
Everyday use helped employees gain experience using AI for research, writing and content creation, preparing the organization to delegate defined tasks to Codex. One of the earliest and most visible successes was automating a complex incident analysis for a critical system that had previously required five experienced engineers and three days to complete. With Codex, the entire process was finished in 30 minutes.
This result quickly drew attention from senior leaders and became an early proof point of Codex’s capabilities. Codex can independently investigate, execute, test, and revise based on instructions — a level of agentic capability that accelerated adoption across the company.
Hiroaki Sato of NTT DATA Group’s AI Technology Department commented: “Codex has changed how people across the company think about AI. The idea that AI can take the lead in carrying out work has had an impact similar to the arrival of ChatGPT.”
Use cases beyond software engineering
Under its “Client Zero” approach, NTT DATA Group treats its own organization as the first customer and encourages employees to test AI in their daily tasks. As a result, Codex adoption has spread beyond engineers to nontechnical staff in many functions.
Nontechnical employees are already using Codex to build lightweight tools, organize large volumes of files, analyze data in Excel, summarize documents, and script repetitive processes — tasks that would be too time-consuming to handle manually.
For example, Codex is used to extract transportation expenses from credit card statements and populate travel expense forms. It can work across multiple files, understand each sheet’s structure and input rules, and help verify the completed transfers, streamlining a previously manual process.
Another important change is that nontechnical staff can now perform work that formerly required engineering support. Preparing an analytical report once involved shaping data in a business intelligence tool and building dashboards; with Codex, employees can analyze raw data directly and create the reports they need, improving efficiency and reducing reliance on specialized tools and skills.
In this way, Codex lowers barriers to work that previously required specialized expertise and enables employees without development experience to produce practical outputs for their roles.
Security, governance and scaling
NTT DATA Group recognized the need for an environment where everyone can use Codex safely and confidently, not just a few teams. This foundation is important both for its own employees and for the customers across the wide range of industries the company serves.
To prepare Codex for enterprise use, the OpenAI CoE developed and rolled out security guidelines and practical adoption guidance. The guidelines clarify what data can be used, which systems Codex can connect to, how network traffic is managed, which sandbox modes to apply, what level of automation is appropriate, and where human review is required. That framework enabled employees in technical and nontechnical roles to explore Codex with confidence.
With security and governance in place, Codex adoption has moved beyond a small number of advanced use cases. Today, Codex is steadily becoming part of the daily work of roughly 9,000 employees.
Results and outlook
Codex adoption at NTT DATA Group has progressed past experimentation and is delivering tangible results across the organization. The company highlights five lessons for embedding Codex across an organization, while its broader ambition goes beyond increasing efficiency on individual tasks.
Through its “AI Driven Company” vision, NTT DATA Group aims to amplify every employee’s knowledge and expertise, create new services and business processes, and help customers transform operations and grow. By demonstrating AI’s value within its own organization, the company plans to extend that impact to customers and society more broadly.
