The 3 Million Yen “External Wisdom” Now Costs 50,000 Yen. Is Your Company Still Relying on Gut Feelings?

To get straight to the point: the cost of a strategic report has dropped to one-sixtieth of its original price.

In the past, outsourcing the formulation of a business strategy would cost at least 3 million yen. It was not uncommon for major consulting firms to charge over 10 million yen. For small and medium-sized business owners, the option of “borrowing external wisdom” was practically non-existent. They relied on their own insights and, at most, free consultations from the Chamber of Commerce. That was the reality.

The AI startup “Rocket” is attempting to overturn this structure. They offer a strategic report that integrates competitive analysis, market trends, and product strategies for a monthly fee of 50,000 yen. From 3 million yen to 50,000 yen—a 98% reduction in cost.

While this number alone is impactful, what we should really consider is “what happens after costs decrease.”

Why Did Small and Medium Enterprises Lack a ‘Strategy’?

First of all, it’s not that small and medium enterprises lack strategies. Business owners often have a vague direction in their minds. However, they lacked the money and time to “verbalize” that direction, “back it up with numbers,” and “compare options.”

Large corporations have dedicated management planning departments and can also use external consultants. On the other hand, a manufacturing company with 30 employees does not have a dedicated management planner. The president also handles sales, recruitment, and cash flow management. The time to think about strategy is literally close to zero.

In other words, the problem is not that they lack the ability to formulate strategies, but that the costs (money, time, and expertise) of doing so were too high. Rocket has changed this cost structure.

What is Rocket Doing?

Rocket’s platform is not just a tool that pours data into static templates. Multiple AI agents collaborate to dynamically execute the following processes:

• Automatic Collection and Analysis of Competitive Information: Reading competitor trends from publicly available information on the web, patent information, recruitment data, and more.
• Understanding Market Trends: Cross-analyzing industry reports, news, and social media trends.
• Integration with Company Data: Combining sales data and customer information with external data to derive company-specific insights.

The important point is that this information is updated in real-time. Traditional consulting reports begin to become outdated the moment they are delivered. Many business owners have experienced the frustration of receiving a market data report that is already old by the time it is delivered after three months of work. AI-based reports update their analyses every time the data is refreshed, providing a “living strategy document.”

The Real Game Changer is the ‘Democratization of Decision-Making’

Now we get to the main point.

When the cost of a 3 million yen report drops to 50,000 yen, what happens? The boundary between “companies with strategies” and “those without” disappears.

Until now, it was almost unheard of for a local construction company with ten employees to have a competitive analysis report. However, at 50,000 yen per month, that adds up to 600,000 yen a year. This is a sufficiently affordable amount.

In other words, the “weapons that only large companies could possess” will now be available to small and medium enterprises. This is not just a story about cost reduction; it fundamentally changes the rules of competition.

Conversely, companies that continue to say, “We’re too small to have a strategy” will find themselves competing solely on gut feelings against insights that their competitors acquired for 50,000 yen. The gap will only widen over time.

What Business Owners Should Change is Not Their ‘Attitude’ but Their ‘Workflow’

Many articles often state that “business owners need to change their mindset.” Frankly, that won’t change anything.

What needs to change is the specific workflow.

Set aside time once a month to read the AI report. That’s all it takes. On the first Monday of every month, spend two hours reading the report generated by Rocket and comparing it with your company’s situation. If you have any questions, ask the AI for additional insights.

If you do this for 12 months, you’ll create 24 hours of “strategic thinking time” per year. What was previously zero will become 24 hours. The impact is immeasurable.

Another important aspect is how to “use” the AI report. Instead of taking the AI’s output at face value, use it as “material for questioning.” “Is this competitor’s movement real?” “Does this market trend apply to our business area?”—validate the hypotheses generated by the AI with real-world intuition. When this cycle begins, the quality of decision-making in small and medium enterprises will dramatically improve.

Risks to Be Aware Of

On the other hand, there are points that need to be viewed calmly.

First, the “accuracy” of the strategic reports generated by AI depends on the quality of the input data. If your company’s sales data is not organized, the output will also be vague. It’s not just about “solving problems by implementing AI”; it requires the mundane task of “organizing the data to feed into the AI.”

Moreover, as services like Rocket become more widespread, competitors will also use the same tools. If everyone is reading the same report, the differentiation point will shift from “the content of the report” to “what actions are taken after reading the report.” Ultimately, execution capability will be the deciding factor.

So, What Should We Do?

1. Try it out first. There are multiple AI strategy tools emerging, not just Rocket. If there’s a free trial available, try it out this week.
2. Organize your company data. Just summarizing sales, customer, and competitor information into a single spreadsheet is enough.
3. Schedule a monthly ‘strategy time’ in your calendar. Habit formation is key.
4. Use AI outputs as ‘questions’ rather than ‘answers.’ Value is only generated when combined with on-the-ground judgment.

The cost has dropped from 3 million yen to 50,000 yen. Will you end this realization with “That’s amazing” or will you change it to “Let’s start using it next month”? The difference will be made there.