How approaches differ
Not all automation work is the same kind of work
This page sets out where Nawate's approach differs from broader consulting arrangements, and where the difference matters to the people involved.
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Why the comparison matters
Organisations considering AI often receive proposals that are either very broad — covering entire departments — or too abstract to evaluate. Understanding the difference between those approaches and a narrower, task-level engagement makes it easier to decide what is proportionate for your situation.
The comparison below is not intended to dismiss other approaches. Different contexts call for different scales of work. It is intended to be useful to someone who is trying to understand what they are actually buying.
Side by side
Two approaches to the same category of problem
Dimension
Broad consulting
Nawate
Scope at start
Often defined during the engagement itself; may expand as work proceeds
Defined and agreed in writing before any build begins; does not expand without a new agreement
Duration
Ongoing retainer or phased project, often six months or longer
Fixed at four, seven, or ten weeks depending on the service; ends when deliverables are complete
What you receive
Reports, recommendations, and sometimes a prototype; implementation may require a separate engagement
A working integration, the constraint documentation, and comparison figures covering before and after
Human override
Depends on implementation; sometimes requires additional configuration to restore
Retained throughout; built into the system design as a non-negotiable requirement
Measurement
Often projected from industry benchmarks or estimated from interviews
Drawn from your actual task data, measured before the integration begins and compared at handover
Price structure
Day-rate or retainer, variable total
Single fixed fee per service; stated on the service page before you contact us
Distinctions
What we do differently, and why
Task-level thinking
Large automation projects often start from the organisation chart and move downward. We start from individual recurring tasks — the kind you could time with a stopwatch — and work from there. This produces a clearer picture of what is actually changing and what is not.
Constraints before code
Our first deliverable in any engagement is a constraints document. It records what the system must do, what it must not do, where human review is required, and what counts as an error. Building against this document rather than against a general brief produces a more predictable result.
Parallel operation
For scheduling and translation work, we run the new system alongside the current one for a defined period before any handover. Your team sees the outputs, compares them, and asks questions before they carry any operational weight.
An honest scope
We do not offer services we cannot deliver within a fixed timeframe, and we decline to take on tasks where the variability is too high for reliable automation. The back-office review service exists specifically for situations where that judgement needs to be made before deciding whether to proceed.
Outcomes
What differences in approach tend to produce
Clarity of result
When scope is defined at task level before the engagement, the result is specific: a system that handles a particular task, with documented exceptions. There is less ambiguity about what was delivered.
Team readiness
A parallel period allows the team to build familiarity before the system is in use. Questions that surface during comparison tend to be practical rather than anxious, because staff have seen the outputs for themselves.
Measured progress
Comparison figures drawn from your own data before and after the integration give a concrete basis for evaluating the outcome, rather than a general estimate of likely improvement.
Investment perspective
Understanding the cost relationship
Fixed fees and what they mean
Each of our services is priced at a single amount, stated before you contact us. The fee does not change based on the size of your organisation, the number of staff involved in the parallel period, or the time taken to document constraints. You are paying for a defined outcome.
Service fees
Scheduling System Implementation
¥41,000
Translation Workflow Integration
¥32,000
Back-Office Task Review
¥29,000
The longer view
Scheduling and translation tasks are often performed weekly or daily. A modest reduction in time per cycle compounds meaningfully over months. The task review service helps you understand whether the mathematics work in your specific case before committing to an integration.
We do not publish projected return figures because they depend on variables we cannot know before an engagement begins. The comparison data we provide at handover allows you to make that calculation from your own numbers.
The experience
What working through an engagement looks like
Typical consulting arrangement
- Discovery workshops take several weeks before any technical work begins
- Multiple stakeholders involved in sign-off at each stage
- Deliverable at the end is often a recommendation document rather than a working system
- Cost tends to increase if the project takes longer than projected
Nawate engagement
- Initial conversation and constraints documentation happen in the first one to two weeks
- One contact person from your team is sufficient for most of the engagement
- You receive a working system and documentation, not a plan for a system
- Fee is fixed; agreed before work begins
Longevity
What happens after the engagement ends
What stays with you
At the end of each engagement you receive the working system, the constraints document, the terminology base or task register where applicable, and the comparison data. These are yours to maintain, adapt, or share with whoever takes over responsibility for the area.
The handover process includes a review session where we go through each component and confirm that the responsible person in your organisation understands how to work with it.
Dependency and independence
We build systems that your team can operate and modify without returning to us. This is a deliberate choice. A system that requires the original implementer to make any change is a liability, not an asset.
Where future updates are likely to be needed — for example, when a terminology base grows — we document the process for making those updates internally.
Clarifications
Things worth addressing directly
"AI automation means staff will be replaced"
The tasks we automate are ones where the person doing them typically finds the work repetitive and would prefer to spend time on other things. We do not design around workforce reduction, and we do not take on engagements framed around that outcome.
"Automation removes the need for human judgement"
Our systems handle well-defined, recurring tasks. Anything that requires judgement — customer-facing correspondence, contractual documents, atypical situations — is either excluded from scope or routed to a human review stage.
"Small organisations don't benefit from AI integration"
Some of the clearest benefits appear in smaller teams, where one person carrying a repetitive task represents a higher proportion of their available time. Scope at task level suits organisations that are not large enough for department-scale transformation projects.
"You need a technical team to work with AI systems"
The systems we build are operated by the people who currently do the task. If a scheduler or an administrator couldn't use it without help after a short handover, it falls outside what we deliver.
Summary
When a narrower approach is the right fit
Nawate's approach is appropriate when you have a specific recurring task that takes a measurable amount of time, when you want to see what changes before committing further, and when you prefer a fixed cost and a defined endpoint over an open-ended engagement.
It is not the right fit if you need a strategic review of your entire operation, a roadmap for a multi-year programme, or a system that integrates across multiple departments simultaneously. We can say this clearly because our scope is narrow enough to know its edges.
You may be a reasonable fit if
- A specific task occupies a manager or staff member for several hours each week
- You translate recurring internal or supplier documents between Japanese and other languages
- You have received broad claims about automation and want a specific picture of your own situation
- You prefer to keep control and oversight at every stage
Next step
If the comparison raises questions, we are happy to discuss them
The initial conversation is free of charge and places no obligation on either side. We can discuss whether your situation aligns with our scope, or simply answer questions about how a particular service works.