Before the '30 Million Yen Vendor Estimate': NOVEL Launches 'Business System Health Check' for Mid-Sized Enterprises to Solve Excel/Access Dependency via AI

NOVEL Inc. (Headquarters: Chuo-ku, Tokyo; CEO: Toru Okada) is launching a new service, 'Business System Health Check,' in May 2026 to fundamentally resolve the 'Excel/Access/Spreadsheet dependency' in mid-sized enterprises. The service uses AI to diagnose and convert business systems into actionable specification documents within 2 to 4 weeks, assisting companies in addressing resignation risks of key personnel, BCP risks, and audit compliance issues.

Turning 'Running but unreadable' internal systems into readable assets.

Background: The 'What if they quit?' scenario is being ignored in mid-sized enterprises.
The most pressing business system issue for management and IT managers in mid-sized enterprises (100-1,000 employees) is 'dependency on specific individuals.'

Specific examples include:
- 'It has been running on Excel VBA for 20 years, but the creator is about to retire.'
- 'No one in the company can handle the Microsoft Access inventory system anymore.'
- 'Google Sheets have proliferated to over 10 sheets, and no one knows who is updating which.'
- 'Audit/Compliance pointed out it is a 'black box,' but there is no one to deal with it.'
- 'The veteran employee's implicit knowledge is at risk of vanishing entirely upon retirement.'

The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) estimates economic losses of up to 12 trillion yen annually due to legacy system neglect, referred to as the '2025 Cliff.' However, modernization support from major SIers assumes budgets in the tens of millions to hundreds of millions, which is out of reach for mid-sized companies. Meanwhile, there were almost no services in the market focused solely on resolving 'Excel/Access dependency' at an affordable price.

'Business System Health Check' aims to diagnose and enable the handover of mid-sized enterprise business systems at a low cost, in a short period, and with the ease of a medical check-up.

Service Overview: Three stages: 'Check-up' -> 'Diagnosis/Report' -> 'Treatment'

Business System Health Check checks, records, and treats systems in the same flow as a human medical check-up.

Four Steps of the Check-up (Asset receipt -> AI analysis -> Document creation -> Reporting session)

- Step 1 / Check-up Phase
The provided source code for Excel VBA, Access, and legacy internal systems is fully analyzed by AI. Functions, data structures, business flows, and dependencies are all visualized. Turning 'Running but unreadable' states into 'Readable and manipulatable' ones.

- Step 2 / Delivery of Diagnostic Report (Specifications)
Delivered as a Word/PDF diagnostic report (approx. 25-40 pages) with seven chapters plus appendices. These are not consulting summaries but professional specifications ready for use by development teams, including database definitions, functional specifications, business flow charts, data flow diagrams, and recommended action reports.

- Step 3 / Web Transformation Treatment (Optional)
Only if desired based on the check-up results, we proceed to 'Web Transformation Treatment' (modernization). We provide end-to-end support from design based on specifications to implementation and handover, taking 3-6 months and starting from 3 million yen. 'Ending at the check-up' is also an option; we do not engage in aggressive sales tactics.

Four Key Features:

1. Short Period, Low Price (Check-up Light starts at 500k yen, 2 weeks)
Adopts a pricing structure that is affordable to start, similar to human medical check-ups. The 'Light' plan is completed in 2 weeks for 500,000 yen. Compared to traditional modernization (tens of millions of yen, 1+ year), it achieves approx. 80% cost reduction and 50-60% time reduction.

2. Solving Dependency with AI
Replaces the manual work of reading code and creating specs—which previously relied on the tacit knowledge of experienced engineers—with high-reproducibility AI automation. Fundamentally resolves resignation and knowledge dependency risks.

3. Professional Specifications Ready for Development
The delivered material is not a 'report' but 'specifications ready to be used by development teams.' Even if you ask another company for Web transformation, handing them the diagnostic report significantly reduces rework in requirement definition.

4. End-to-End Support from Check-up to Treatment (Second opinions welcome)
If the diagnosis reveals that Web transformation is necessary, we provide responsible support through 'Treatment' (modernization development).