How to choose an AI vendor: ten questions to ask first.
Before you compare vendors, check your own readiness, then ask every vendor the same ten questions below. A vendor who cannot answer them plainly is telling you something.
Step zero: know where you stand
Every vendor demo looks good on the vendor’s data. Yours is different. The free Manufacturing AI Readiness Pulse (25 questions, about 15 minutes, no login) scores your manufacturing plant in nine areas and names the three weakest, so you walk into vendor meetings knowing what they will run into.
The ten questions
- What exactly do you need from us before this works? Data, system access, people’s time, a clean process. Ask for it in writing, with dates.
- What does it run on today? Ask to see it on data shaped like yours, not their demo set.
- How does it connect to the systems we already have? Name your systems. “We integrate with everything” is not an answer.
- Who on our side owns it after the pilot? A tool with no owner stalls.
- How will we know it worked? One measure, agreed before the start, that you already track.
- What happens to our data? Where it is stored, who can see it, whether it trains anything, how it is deleted.
- What does it cost in total, in year one and year two? Licences, setup, integration, support, your people’s time.
- What does a pilot that fails look like, and what do we keep? Ask what you walk away with.
- Who else like us uses it, and may we speak to them? Ask for a reference you choose, not one they choose.
- What would make you tell us not to buy this yet? A good vendor has an answer.
What does a good answer sound like?
Specific, written down, dated and tied to your systems. A weak answer is general, hurried or changes the subject to the roadmap.
Where do we fit?
We do not sell a tool. Our work is the step before: the readiness score, then, if you want it, the Readiness Report ($1,199, plus applicable sales tax) with every area scored, three areas in depth and 70+ numbered actions you can hand to any vendor as your requirements. Every level uses the same method and the same 0–5 scale.