Meiji Yasuda Life Insurance Automates System Development Effort Estimation Using Salesforce's 'Agentforce'

Salesforce Japan Co., Ltd. (Chairman and CEO, Shuichi Koide; hereinafter 'Salesforce') announced that Meiji Yasuda Life Insurance Company (hereinafter 'Meiji Yasuda') has completed a proof-of-concept (PoC) for automating system development effort estimation using Salesforce's autonomous AI agent platform 'Agentforce,' and is now transitioning into the preparation phase for full-scale operations.

Background and Challenges

At Meiji Yasuda, business departments frequently requested effort estimates for system development projects from the Information Systems Department. However, estimating these efforts required specialized knowledge and experience, meaning only a limited number of experts could handle the requests after significant time investment. This led to increasing workloads within the Information Systems Department and prolonged response times for business units.

In response, Meiji Yasuda focused on system development project data aggregated and stored within Salesforce. By combining this data asset with Agentforce—featuring conversational user interfaces, advanced reasoning engines, and robust reliability—the company initiated a PoC to explore the potential for enhancing and accelerating estimation processes.

In this PoC, users input development requirements through conversational interaction with the AI. Agentforce then infers development components, searches Salesforce for similar past projects, calculates effort based on similarity scores, and automatically delivers estimation results—all as a seamless, end-to-end process.

Results

Phase 1 validation confirmed the following outcomes:

Workload Reduction: The AI agent autonomously estimates effort by referencing past projects, partially replacing manual tasks by Information Systems staff and reducing overall workload. Further benefits are expected if accuracy improves to enable direct use by business departments.

Requirements Clarification Support: Even for projects with unclear initial requirements, the AI agent engages users in chat-based dialogue to extract development needs and assist in identifying and organizing necessary requirements.

Future Outlook

Meiji Yasuda plans to launch company-wide full-scale operations by fiscal year 2026. Currently in Phase 2, the company is optimizing data structures, refining estimation granularity at the subsystem level, and controlling inconsistent terminology to improve accuracy. The next steps include trial operations within the Information Systems Department, followed by accelerated rollout to user departments and establishment of maintenance and operational frameworks.

Customer Perspective

Kunikatsu Ikeda, Information Systems Department, Meiji Yasuda, stated: 'Our company is actively promoting business transformation through AI and other technologies. Estimating development effort has traditionally required high expertise and significant time. With Agentforce, AI can autonomously leverage vast historical knowledge to deliver fast, objective estimates. This will not only reduce the burden on our IT team but also accelerate business decision-making, enabling us to deliver reliable peace of mind to our customers.'

Salesforce Perspective

Hidenori Tamura, Senior Managing Executive Officer, Enterprise Business Division, Head of Enterprise Public, Financial & Regional SX Sales Headquarters at Salesforce Japan, stated: 'We are honored that Meiji Yasuda has chosen our autonomous AI agent platform Agentforce as the foundation for next-generation system development processes. We are confident that by enabling AI agents to fully leverage valuable data stored in Salesforce, we can dramatically enhance productivity in development operations. Going forward, we will continue to support Meiji Yasuda as a transformation partner, contributing to their medium- to long-term business growth through the power of AI and data.'

About Salesforce

Salesforce empowers enterprises of all sizes to transform into an 'Agentic Enterprise.' By integrating people, AI agents, applications, and data on a trusted, unified platform, Salesforce enables unprecedented growth and innovation. For more information, visit salesforce.com/jp.

Salesforce's corporate website features the latest news and insights for Japan. Visit salesforce.com/jp/news/ for details.

This press release, along with other press releases or services and features officially mentioned, may not currently be available and may not be delivered as scheduled or at all. Customers are advised to make purchasing decisions based on currently available features.