Question 1

How much does an AI pilot actually cost?

Accepted Answer

Pilot builds typically land between NZD $30,000 and $80,000 + GST, fixed price. Smaller automations (a single workflow with one or two integrations) sit at the lower end. Voice agents, full mobile apps, or anything touching multiple enterprise systems sit at the upper end. The operations audit (1-2 weeks, from $8,500 + GST) produces a precise quote before you commit to any build.

Question 2

Who owns the IP of what you build?

Accepted Answer

You do. Every line of code we write for you is yours, transferred under our standard engagement agreement on full payment. No ongoing licensing, no hostage architectures, no proprietary frameworks you can't extend without us. The only exception is general-purpose tooling we've open-sourced or use across clients, which stays under its existing licence.

Question 3

Where does our data live?

Accepted Answer

Wherever you want it to. We deploy in the cloud region you choose: AWS or Azure Sydney for NZ businesses that need data resident in the AU/NZ region; Google Cloud Auckland or Sydney; or your existing hyperscaler if you have one. We tell you exactly which AI providers process which data, what they retain, and for how long. If you have specific compliance requirements (ISO, HIPAA-equivalent, government), we work to those.

Question 4

What happens when the AI gets something wrong?

Accepted Answer

It will, sometimes. We design every system with that assumption baked in. For high-stakes workflows we add human review checkpoints; for lower-stakes ones we add confidence thresholds and graceful fallbacks. The pilot phase explicitly tests failure modes before you scale. Anyone who tells you their AI has 100% accuracy is selling something.

Question 5

Which AI model do you use?

Accepted Answer

Whichever fits the job. We're model-agnostic and work fluently with OpenAI (GPT family), Anthropic (Claude), Google (Gemini), and open-source models like Llama where they fit. Cost, latency, accuracy on your specific task, and where the data needs to live all matter. We benchmark candidate models during the audit so you understand the trade-offs.

Question 6

Is my data used to train AI models?

Accepted Answer

Not under our default architecture. We use the commercial APIs of OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google, which are explicit about not training on customer inputs. We can also deploy models locally or in dedicated cloud instances if your data sensitivity requires it. We never share client data with anyone for training purposes, and we never use your data to train our own internal models.

Question 7

How long does a typical engagement take?

Accepted Answer

Discovery is 30 minutes. The operations audit runs 1-2 weeks. A pilot build runs 4-8 weeks depending on scope. From first call to working software in production: usually 6-10 weeks. After that, ongoing improvements and new workflows happen continuously under a retainer or as discrete projects.

Question 8

What's the difference between an AI agent, an automation, and an integration?

Accepted Answer

An agent is software that can make decisions and take actions on its own (e.g. a voice agent that handles an inbound call, deciding what to ask, when to escalate, when to book a meeting).

An automation is a deterministic pipeline that runs a fixed sequence of steps when triggered (e.g. a form submission triggers an email, a CRM record, and a Slack notification).

An integration is the plumbing between systems (e.g. connecting your CRM to your accounting software so they share data).

Most real solutions combine all three. Where you draw the lines matters less than picking the right pattern for the job.

Question 9

Do you work with companies outside New Zealand?

Accepted Answer

Yes, but most of our work is with NZ businesses. Our default cloud regions and data sovereignty defaults are NZ/AU oriented. If you're based elsewhere we can still work with you; we just default the conversation to NZ business hours and tooling.

Question 10

We already have an internal team. Why would we hire a consultancy?

Accepted Answer

If your team has shipped two or more production AI workflows and feels confident, you probably don't need us for ongoing build. You might still want us for a specific capability (voice agents have particular pitfalls; multi-agent orchestration is its own discipline) or as a sounding board on architecture. Our embedded build sprint exists exactly for this case: we work alongside your team, transferring knowledge as we ship, so the capability stays in-house.

Question 11

What if AI doesn't fit our business?

Accepted Answer

Then we'll tell you, on the discovery call, and you'll save the cost of an audit. Honestly, AI is a poor fit for plenty of workflows: highly creative work where consistency matters, low-volume tasks where the ROI doesn't clear the build cost, and processes where the existing manual approach is genuinely working well. If we don't see the leverage, we won't pretend it's there.

Question 12

Can we just buy the trial workspace?

Accepted Answer

The trial is a demonstration suite, not a SaaS product you can subscribe to. The components inside it (the spatial operations app, the field-capture voice forms, the meetings transcription, the sales coach) are pattern templates we customise per client during a pilot build. If one of them is close to what you want, that pilot will likely run faster and cheaper.

Question 13

Do you do voice agents in te reo Māori?

Accepted Answer

Honestly: not yet, well. Mainstream TTS engines (ElevenLabs, OpenAI, Google) all mispronounce te reo Māori vocabulary. The technology will be there in 12-24 months but isn't today. We do voice agents in English (NZ accent) and other major languages well; if te reo Māori is mission-critical for your use case, talk to us and we'll be straight about what's currently possible.

Question 14

What about security and compliance?

Accepted Answer

We sign mutual NDAs at the discovery stage. We work to ISO 27001 patterns for data handling. All of our infrastructure and the major AI providers we use carry SOC 2, ISO 27001, and (for relevant ones) HIPAA-equivalent certifications. For specific regulated industries (financial services, health, government) we shape the architecture to meet your regulator's requirements; that conversation happens during the audit.

Question 15

What if we want to take the diagnostic and shop it around?

Accepted Answer

Genuinely fine. The audit document is yours, and several past clients have used it as the basis for an internal build or a competitive RFP with another vendor. We'd rather you make the right call for your business than feel locked in. Our hit rate on follow-on engagements is high enough that we don't need to play games to keep clients.

Question 16

Do you have references we can talk to?

Accepted Answer

Yes. We won't share them publicly, but on a discovery call we'll connect you with two or three past clients in similar industries who've agreed to speak with prospects. Most of them are happy to be candid about what worked and what didn't.

Honest answers to the questions everyone asks

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