As part of an effort to automate municipalities' hometown tax donation-related administrative work with AI, サイバーレコード announced that it will acquire part of the "Localco business" operated by NE. The company indicated that it expects to significantly reduce workloads by using 3 AI systems developed in-house.
サイバーレコード has agreed to acquire part of the "Localco business," a hometown tax donation support business operated by NE, which provides the "Next Engine" SaaS e-commerce backend platform. The move reflects the company's policy of improving the efficiency of hometown tax donation operations through the use of AI systems.
The company explained that using its 3 in-house AI systems could significantly reduce the staffing required to register return-gift information on portal sites. Specifically, work that previously required 5-6 people can reportedly be streamlined to a level that 1 person can handle. The 3 AI systems are HARV, Furusato Bot and FURUCRE, which handle information management, automated registration and image generation, respectively.
HARV centrally manages municipalities, businesses and the company on a single cloud platform. Furusato Bot automates the process from creating return-gift information through registration on each portal site. Processing capacity, previously approximately 10 items per hour, has increased to 70 items based on experience operating across multiple municipalities. FURUCRE uses generative AI to create images automatically, with measures in place for secondary checks and compliance with applicable rules.
The market has pointed out that hometown tax donation operations are highly labor-intensive and that reviews of traditional operating models may accelerate in light of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications' policy on appropriate expense management. The 3 AI systems are reportedly scheduled for completion in April 2026, when a cross-functional coordination framework will also be in place, and this is expected to drive future business expansion.