Delivering Services in the AI Age

In the past, building a services business meant building an office.

You needed people to handle scheduling, payroll, customer support, invoicing, compliance, marketing — an entire layer of coordination before anyone even started the actual work.

That era is ending.

Thanks to AI, nearly all of this “office work” — the coordination, verification, and communication between customers and workers — can now be automated.

What once required a company full of managers can now be handled by intelligent agents.

This is the foundation of a new paradigm: the Direct Service Platform.

What Is a Direct Service Platform?

A Direct Service Platform (DSP) is both a digital and legal model that allows customers and independent service providers to make agreements directly — without an intermediary company controlling prices, employment terms, or taking large commissions.

The platform itself acts only as a technological facilitator. It automates matching, booking, payments, and invoicing between the two parties.

The service provider remains an independent business — free to set their own prices, working hours, and terms.

In short: the platform removes the middleman company entirely, replacing its functions with automation.

Why the Old Model Is Breaking

Traditional service companies are not technology companies.

They rely on people sitting in offices — dispatchers, accountants, and administrators — to manage the flow of work.

Each of these layers adds cost.

Customers end up paying for management, office space, software licenses, and profit margins long before any payment reaches the person actually doing the job.

Even modern staffing agencies or gig platforms still act as middlemen. They set prices, hold customer funds, and often behave like employers in practice. Their structures were built for a time when human coordination was essential.

But AI changes the economics.

If coordination, verification, and compliance can be automated, there’s no justification for 30–60% in-between costs.

The market no longer needs a human office to mediate work that is now fully digital by nature.

How It Differs from Other Models

The direct model combines the freedom of self-employment with the automation of a platform — removing overhead while preserving compliance, trust, and ease of use.

It’s not freelancing.

It’s not gig work.

It’s direct work, supported by automation.

Built for the AI Age

In a Direct Service Platform, AI replaces the traditional office functions:

AI Hiring: interviewing and verifying new partners

AI Support: resolving disputes, refunds, and compliance issues

AI Compliance: applying country-specific tax, VAT, and labor rules

AI Sales: matching customer requests to qualified providers

These systems make the platform self-operating.

Instead of a company full of managers, it becomes a digital ecosystem where independent workers and customers interact safely and efficiently — guided by intelligent agents instead of office clerks.

The Economic Shift

This model doesn’t just change how services are delivered — it changes who captures the value.

Under the old structure, a worker might receive only 40–50% of what the customer paid.

Under a Direct Service Platform, they keep nearly 100%, paying only a small flat fee to the platform to cover automation and infrastructure.

For customers, prices drop.

For workers, income rises.

For society, efficiency increases.

It’s the AI dividend applied to real-world labor.

Why This Matters

The last 30 years of digitalization transformed office work.

The next 30 will transform field work.

Platforms like Nuuduu — and others that will follow — demonstrate how AI can enable a new kind of economy where human labor connects directly with demand, without layers of administration or ownership in between.

When the office becomes code, work becomes direct.

About the Author

Antti Kaipila is the founder and CEO of Nuuduu, a next-generation Direct Service Platform built from the ground up for AI agents.

Nuuduu already employs more than 40 AI agents to automate its operations across Europe, bringing the Direct Service Platform model into reality.