Ai Workforce built on Azure helps LayerX client save 570 hours of processing docs

Choosing Azure to power Ai Workforce

LayerX saw the strategic advantage of Microsoft Azure. “We chose Azure from day one because of its smooth integration with Azure OpenAI models through Azure AI Foundry,” says Ryuya Nakamura, Executive Officer at LayerX. 

To bring the platform to life, LayerX built Ai Workforce, a tool that lets a document-heavy organization mine its documentation, quickly develop presentations, and automate repetitive tasks. Built on Azure, the platform takes advantage of its scalable, highly secure cloud infrastructure.

By adding Azure OpenAI in Foundry Models, Ai Workforce facilitates fast and seamless data exchange within the Azure ecosystem. The core generative AI processing in Ai Workforce is fueled by Azure OpenAI for knowledge sharing. It includes three other Azure AI Foundry products: Azure AI Document Intelligence for accurate optical character recognition capabilities, Azure AI Search for improved search, and Azure AI Translator for translating text and documents across multiple languages. “The advanced AI products in Azure AI Foundry, like Azure AI Document Intelligence, Azure AI Translator, and Azure AI Search, outperform those of other cloud platforms,” notes Nakamura.

To host Ai Workforce’s back-end applications in a fully virtualized environment, LayerX uses Azure Container Apps. “The dynamic session capabilities of Azure Container Apps allow us to spin up isolated environments on demand and run rule-based Python code more securely and at scale,” says Fumiya Shinozuka, Engineering Manager at LayerX. A key differentiator and advantage: each session runs in its own Hyper-V sandbox, providing enterprise-grade security and isolation. Each environment includes a Python code interpreter to dynamically execute rule-based logic in real time—ideal for processing specific customer requirements and other computer-intensive tasks.

LayerX also uses Container Apps for migration and reminder emails, creating two beneficial outcomes. For migrations, the company saves on costs because it’s needed only when migrating database schemas. For reminder emails, LayerX can use the service to effortlessly create scalable cron servers.

By using a consumption plan with Container Apps, LayerX achieves efficient, serverless horizontal scaling. The service seamlessly manages this scaling, while Azure Cosmos DB takes care of vertical scaling to meet data demands. Processes are executed as asynchronous jobs, allowing dynamic scalability. The company employs various AI solutions, including Azure OpenAI and Azure AI Document Intelligence, to process documents and store them in Azure Cosmos DB.

All users can review and edit the results. Users can also recover older data from the application. The Azure AI Translator API helps with multilanguage translation by detecting and instantly translating input language. Although LayerX’s enterprise customers are in Japan, the documents they work with might be sourced in other languages, such as Chinese or English.

Earning trust through uncompromising security 

Trust is everything for financial organizations. These institutions operate under some of the strictest data protection standards in the world, so any technology adopted must meet that threshold. That’s why security and compliance are foundational to Ai Workforce.

LayerX uses private endpoints in Azure so Ai Workforce customers can use an encrypted connection to keep traffic over a private IP within the customer’s virtual network. These network interfaces increase data protection and help ensure data stays localized.

Because several of LayerX’s clients are using other Azure products, ecosystem compatibility and seamless interoperability offer cost and time savings while maintaining strict compliance.

LayerX determined Azure Cosmos DB and its enterprise-grade security will help uphold the rigorous demands of the financial sector. “We plan to use the row-level security in Azure Cosmos DB to add an additional layer of protection, further ensuring that no tenant can access another’s data,” explains Shinozuka.

Faster processes and smarter presentations with AI personalization

Today Ai Workforce is transforming how financial institutions handle documents and processes, like preparing loan approvals and settling accounts. It also lets businesses fine-tune the AI to match their specific workflows, resulting in flexibility and management cost reduction. Timely document analysis accelerates loan approval times. The time it used to take manually reviewing documentation is much shorter, so settling accounts happens at lightning speed.

Organizations also save time working on presentation materials. Bankers and salespeople build pitch decks featuring company logos and financial data to present to clients. Due to strict privacy laws, they can’t access another person’s presentation, even within the same company. Companies still want to circulate presentations without customizing each in a bespoke manner, and Ai Workforce allows sharing at scale while maintaining compliance.

To securely store presentations in the presentation data lake, the creator must first anonymize the file. Ai Workforce identifies all images and texts and recommends company names, logos, financials, or charts to mask. Once the user anonymizes the presentation, it is sent for a security check. Once approved, the presentation is stored as an anonymized, downloadable presentation. To search for a presentation, the user specifies tags, and the platform uses Azure OpenAI and Azure AI Search to explore the database for a similar presentation.

The innovation journey continues

With Azure at the foundation of Ai Workforce, LayerX clients are already seeing measurable impact. For instance, credit risk solutions provider Mitsui & Co. Credit Consulting is experiencing significant productivity gains since adopting Ai Workforce.

Today, employees refine AI-generated drafts instead of manually editing and creating documents from scratch, freeing time for them to focus on advanced analysis and creative tasks. “We anticipate a reduction of 570 work hours annually,” says Hiroaki Takizawa, Manager of the Innovative Product Development Department at Mitsui & Co. Credit Consulting.

To stay at the forefront of AI technology, LayerX is using Azure OpenAI o4-mini reasoning models. “Newer reasoning models always help us realize more difficult but valuable use cases and deliver faster,” says Nakamura. LayerX has expansion plans into other document-heavy industries but is keeping busy in the financial sector. “Once one team in a company adopts Ai Workforce, others quickly follow for deep adoption,” says Ken Wakamatsu, Product Marketing Manager at LayerX.

Looking ahead, Nakamura envisions introducing Ai Workforce into the automotive manufacturing industry. “I’ve always admired the dynamic between Jarvis and Tony Stark (from Marvel’s Iron Man comics). Jarvis brought Stark’s ideas to life. We want to give every engineer in auto manufacturing their own Jarvis, empowering them to innovate like Stark. This is my vision,” concludes Nakamura.

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