NTT DATA Group is a Japan based global IT services company spanning consulting, systems development, and operations. As AI reshapes the business environment, the company is evolving its growth model from expanding revenue by adding headcount to creating greater value through AI.
To support this transformation, NTT DATA Group rolled out ChatGPT Enterprise across the company and introduced programs that help employees make AI part of their daily work. Building on that foundation, the company has expanded Codex to approximately 9,000 employees. Teams across technical and nontechnical roles now use AI not only to explore ideas through conversation, but also to carry out clearly defined tasks.
After beginning a global strategic partnership with OpenAI in May 2025, NTT DATA Group moved to deploy ChatGPT Enterprise across the company. It established an internal OpenAI Center of Excellence, or CoE, to support 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 supporting daily work across NTT DATA Group. In an internal survey, more than 96% of respondents said they were satisfied with ChatGPT Enterprise, and more than 95% reported productivity gains.
Through everyday use, employees built experience working with AI for research, writing, and content creation. Those habits and skills prepared the organization for the next step: delegating clearly defined tasks to Codex.
One of the first successes to demonstrate the potential of Codex was the automation of a complex incident analysis for a critical system. The work had previously required five experienced engineers and taken three days to complete. With Codex, the full process was completed in 30 minutes.
The result quickly gained attention from senior leaders and became an early proof point for what Codex could make possible. More than a coding assistant, Codex can independently investigate, execute, test, and revise based on an instruction. That agentic capability helped build momentum across the company.
“Codex has changed how people across the company think about AI,” says Hiroaki Sato of NTT DATA Group’s AI Technology Department. “The idea that AI can take the lead in carrying out work has had an impact similar to the arrival of ChatGPT.” Since that early success, teams across NTT DATA Group have continued to identify new use cases that draw on the distinctive capabilities of Codex.
“Codex is about more than helping developers write code faster. As ChatGPT Enterprise has become part of how our employees think, explore ideas, and solve problems, Codex opens the door to a new way of working. By enabling AI to research, organize, execute, and validate work, it empowers every employee to transform how they approach their role.”
—NTT DATA Group, Head of Global AI Office, Yuji Shono
The potential demonstrated in incident analysis extends beyond software development. Under their “Client Zero” approach, NTT DATA Group treats their own organization as the first customer and encourages employees to test AI in their daily work. As a result, Codex adoption is expanding beyond engineers to nontechnical employees across a wide range of functions.
“Through our Client Zero approach, we actively promote the use of AI within our own organization,” Sato explains. “Codex has significant potential, and employees across many departments are finding ways to apply it to their own work.”
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. These are often tasks that people want to automate but that would be too time consuming to handle manually.
For example, employees use Codex to extract transportation expenses from credit card statements and transfer them into travel expense forms. Codex can work across multiple files, understand the structure and entry rules of each sheet, and help verify the completed transfer, streamlining work that was previously manual and cumbersome.
Another important shift is that nontechnical employees can now complete work that once required support from engineers. Creating an analytical report, for example, previously required preparing data in a business intelligence tool and building a dashboard. With Codex, employees can analyze raw data directly and create the reports they need, improving efficiency while reducing dependence on specialized tools and skills.
In this way, Codex is doing more than supporting software development. It is lowering the barrier to work that once required specialized expertise and enabling employees without development experience to create practical outputs they can use in their roles.
To expand the use of Codex across the organization, rather than limiting it to individual teams or employees, NTT DATA Group recognized the need for an environment where everyone can use it safely and with confidence. This foundation is important not only for its own employees, but also for customers across the wide range of industries the company supports.
To prepare Codex for enterprise use, the OpenAI CoE has developed and rolled out security guidelines alongside practical guidance for adoption. These guidelines clarify what data can be used, which systems Codex can connect to, how network traffic is managed, which sandbox mode to apply, what level of automation is appropriate, and where human review is required. This has created an environment where employees across technical and nontechnical roles can confidently explore new ways to use Codex.
With this foundation of security and governance in place, Codex adoption is moving beyond a small number of advanced use cases. Today, Codex is steadily becoming part of the daily work of approximately 9,000 employees.
“Creating a secure and well governed environment is essential for employees to use Codex with confidence. Our vision is for Codex to become more than a tool for engineers. We want it to be a natural part of everyday work for every employee, including those in nontechnical roles, helping people turn their expertise and ideas into greater impact.”
—NTT DATA Group, Head of Global AI Office, Yuji Shono
Codex adoption at NTT DATA Group has moved beyond experimentation and is already delivering tangible results across the organization.
- Completed in 30 minutes a complex incident analysis that previously took five experienced engineers three days
- Increased weekly active Codex users by 1.4 times after publishing a usage guide and conducting hands on training
- Automated internal system operations using Playwright, reducing time spent on routine daily tasks, and enabled organization-wide adoption by packaging the automation as Skills
NTT DATA Group’s experience highlights five lessons for embedding Codex across an organization.
- Make ChatGPT Enterprise part of daily work and help employees build the habits needed to collaborate with AI
- Deploy ChatGPT Enterprise broadly to create network effects through peer learning and word of mouth
- Create an environment where employees can use AI safely with appropriate security and privacy protections
- Treat deployment as the beginning, then continuously improve adoption programs using usage data, surveys, and employee interviews
- Have the CoE identify and generalize high impact use cases, then share them as reusable best practices with appropriate safeguards
NTT DATA Group’s ambition goes beyond making individual tasks more efficient. By embedding AI into everyday work, the company is creating an environment where people and AI can each contribute their strengths and generate greater value, faster.
Employees use ChatGPT Enterprise to deepen their thinking and Codex to carry out tasks toward a defined objective. People set the direction and evaluate the results, while AI interprets information and moves the work forward. By bringing this collaboration to technical and nontechnical employees alike, NTT DATA Group is expanding individual capabilities and strengthening execution across the organization.
Supported by its CoE, employee communities, and strong security and governance, the company identifies high impact use cases within individual departments and turns them into reusable processes and best practices that can be shared more broadly.
Through its “AI Driven Company” vision, NTT DATA Group aims to amplify the knowledge and expertise of every employee, create new services and business processes, and help customers transform their operations and grow. By demonstrating the value of AI within its own organization, the company plans to extend that impact to customers and society more broadly.
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