AkurAI-Platform / docs/POSITIONING.md

Latest change 0c236c0a909a7e427ba31e516b9f4fa15cbcd6ce - OLI-100: align positioning doc with OLI-150 site copy by Chief of Staff

# AkurAI positioning: target customer (OLI-100)

Direction (board, from the launched akurai.olibuijr.com): **AI agents and AI services for Icelandic SMBs (5-250 staff), hosted in Iceland/EU, delivered as a managed service.** Keep site copy (OLI-150) consistent with this doc.

## Decisions
- **External customers**, not internal-only. Internal use is the reference deployment.
- **Sales-assisted onboarding, self-serve billing.** A human scopes the first agent; the subscription (myPOS modular plans) and workspace provisioning are self-serve after that.
- **Size:** 5-250 staff. Sweet spot 15-80 (enough repeatable admin work, too small for an in-house AI team).
- **Managed service:** we run, monitor, back up and update. The customer never operates infrastructure.
- **Residency:** data and models hosted in Iceland/EU; no customer data used for third-party training.

## ICP
Icelandic company, 5-250 staff, with repetitive text/document/email/booking work, no dedicated AI or platform engineers, and a concern about where data lives (GDPR, customer contracts).

## Personas
1. **Owner/Managing director (economic buyer).** Wants hours back and lower admin cost; cares about price, risk, no lock-in.
2. **Operations/office manager (champion, daily user).** Drowning in bookings, invoices, email triage and reporting; needs Icelandic support and their existing tools.
3. **IT/finance/compliance lead (approver).** Part-time IT or the CFO. Cares about data location, access control (OIDC/SSO), backups, audit trail, vendor viability.

## Top 3 sectors
| Sector | Typical pain | First agent |
|---|---|---|
| Tourism (hotels, tour operators, guesthouses, car rental) | Multilingual inquiries, booking changes, seasonal peaks, review replies | Multilingual inquiry/booking agent, review responder |
| Seafood (processors, exporters, fleets) | Export documents, catch/quota reporting, traceability, buyer email | Document/compliance agent, shipment reporting |
| Professional services (law, accounting, consulting, engineering) | Drafting/review, intake, time and billing admin, confidentiality | Private document assistant, intake/summary agent |

## Buying triggers
- Seasonal peak or staff shortage; hiring is hard in Iceland.
- A client or regulator asks where data is processed.
- Staff paste client data into public chat tools (shadow AI).
- Big-vendor AI add-ons judged too costly or generic.
- Year-end or export reporting crunch.

## Objections and answers
| Objection | Answer |
|---|---|
| Where does our data go? | Iceland/EU hosting, per-customer workspace, no training on it, verified backups. |
| AI makes mistakes. | Human approval on outbound actions, audit log, scoped permissions. |
| We are too small / no technical staff. | Managed service: we build, run and maintain; you describe the task. |
| Icelandic quality? | Pilot on your own documents before committing beyond the first month. |
| Lock-in / price creep. | Modular monthly subscription, data export, cancel any time. |

## Three core offers
1. **AkurAI Agents:** custom AI agents for one workflow (inquiries, documents, reporting), built and run for you.
2. **AkurAI Private Workspace:** managed Iceland/EU workspace (identity, mail, files, notes, secrets) with AI built in.
3. **AkurAI Assist:** ongoing monitoring, updates, backups, tuning and support, with a named contact.

Packaging: 30-day single-agent pilot, then modular monthly subscription per agent/workspace.

## Consequences for other work
- Pricing page: per-module monthly ISK price, pilot entry, no per-seat complexity.
- Landing narrative: lead with agents + Iceland/EU hosting, sectors as proof, Icelandic first.
- The current platform.olibuijr.com page ("modular private software suite") is developer-oriented and should move to this narrative.

## Consistency with site copy (OLI-150)
- Audience, size band and Iceland/EU hosting match the site brief.
- Engagement flow mirrors the site: discovery, pilot, run (managed-operations retainer).
- Agent types on the site (customer service, inbox triage, document intake, knowledge search) map onto the first agents above.
- Retail is a secondary sector on the site; the top 3 here stay tourism, seafood, professional services.
- Pricing, legal entity and contact details are placeholders pending board answers; do not invent them.