In 2020, Fujitsu confronted a challenge increasingly familiar across corporate Japan: how to modernise decades of accumulated technology infrastructure without disrupting the business itself. The company’s operations were spread across more than 4,000 legacy systems, with multiple CRM and HR platforms operating in parallel and critical data trapped in organisational silos. In sales operations alone, roughly 300 employees were required to process 20,000 contracts annually.
The timing was hardly incidental. Japanese companies have spent the past several years grappling with what policymakers and industry analysts have termed the “2025 Digital Cliff”: the risk that ageing enterprise systems, rising maintenance costs and shrinking technical workforces could undermine competitiveness and productivity.
One academic study warned that unresolved legacy infrastructure could cost Japan as much as US$65 billion annually after 2025 through lost productivity and delayed digital transformation. The Japanese government has been similarly motivated to push a automation and AI-programme since 2021.
For Fujitsu, the problem extended beyond operational inefficiency. Global rivals including IBM, Accenture and cloud-native enterprise software providers have accelerated the shift towards AI-enabled business operations and cloud-based ERP environments, placing pressure on traditional IT services groups to evolve beyond legacy system maintenance. Japanese conglomerates such as Hitachi and NEC have also intensified restructuring and mid-career hiring efforts as they attempt to reposition themselves around digital services and AI capabilities.
Against that backdrop, Kohei Toyama, Fujitsu’s chief digital transformation officer, launched YLP Plus, a company-wide transformation initiative aimed at standardising applications, data and workflows across Fujitsu’s global operations.
At the centre of the programme was the creation of what Toyama described as a “global single instance”, a unified operational architecture designed to replace fragmented regional systems with common standards and real-time visibility.
Beyond technical debt
The overhaul reflected a broader shift occurring across the ERP market. Many large enterprises remain dependent on heavily customised legacy systems that are costly to maintain and difficult to modernise.
Migration to newer cloud-based ERP environments such as SAP S/4HANA has often proven slower and more contentious than vendors anticipated. Gartner estimates cited in industry discussions suggest that only around 39 percent of SAP ECC customers had licensed migrations to S/4HANA by early 2025, despite mounting pressure ahead of SAP’s support deadlines.
The hesitation is understandable. Large-scale ERP transformations frequently involve years of integration work, redesign of custom code, and operational disruption. In many organisations, the original architects of legacy systems have long since departed, leaving businesses dependent on poorly documented infrastructure that few fully understand.
Fujitsu’s own transformation illustrates the scale of that challenge. Internally, collaboration had become difficult because business-critical functions, from pipeline tracking to employee onboarding, operated across multiple disconnected systems. The company adopted SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP) to modernise workflows while preserving core SAP infrastructure, while SAP Build Work Zone consolidated access to 750 applications used by roughly 16,000 employees globally.
The technical integration, however, was only part of the exercise. Years of siloed reporting structures and department-specific workflows had created deeply entrenched habits inside the organisation. Fujitsu paired the systems overhaul with extensive retraining initiatives intended to push employees towards standardised, data-driven decision-making and greater use of AI-enabled tools.
Resistance emerged as established processes came under scrutiny, according to Toyama, underscoring a broader tension confronting many Japanese corporates: whether operational reform can occur without challenging longstanding organisational culture.
AI Moves into the core business
The company’s sales operations became one of the clearest test cases for automation. Tasks previously handled manually, including contract verification, compliance checks and reconciliation, were gradually shifted to AI agents, OCR systems, and generative AI tools introduced under YLP Plus.
According to Fujitsu, AI systems now generate management reports, build analytical dashboards, run simulations and integrate external benchmarking data during executive meetings. More than 80,000 employees are using AI-enabled systems across the organisation, while SAP BTP continues to support approximately 750 enterprise applications globally.
The company has adopted what it calls a “Customer Zero” strategy: deploying and stress-testing technologies internally before commercialising them externally. The approach reflects a growing emphasis among enterprise technology providers on proving operational value within their own organisations before marketing AI capabilities to customers increasingly sceptical of inflated transformation claims.
Competitive pressures intensify
Fujitsu’s transformation also reflects a strategic repositioning within the broader technology market. Historically, Japanese IT groups generated substantial revenue maintaining bespoke on-premise systems for domestic clients. But the rise of hyperscale cloud providers, AI-driven automation, and subscription-based enterprise software has weakened the economics of traditional systems integration work.
In response, Fujitsu has increasingly focused on AI-enabled ERP modernisation and cloud transformation services. The company has expanded its SAP S/4HANA migration and “clean core” offerings while repositioning its ERP portfolio around AI-supported decision-making and automation.
Earlier this year, Fujitsu launched Glovia One, an AI-enabled ERP platform aimed at mid-sized Japanese enterprises facing labour shortages and widening digital capability gaps. The platform integrates accounting, HR, sales and production data into a unified architecture supported by AI agents and real-time analytics.
The move signals how Japan’s large technology groups are attempting to reposition themselves for an AI-centric enterprise market in which simply maintaining legacy systems is no longer sufficient.
For Fujitsu, the transformation remains ongoing. But its experience illustrates a broader reality confronting large enterprises globally: modernisation is no longer primarily about replacing software. It increasingly involves redesigning workflows, consolidating fragmented organisations and redefining how decisions are made inside the business itself.
