Choosing the right AI consulting company — an enterprise framework.

Most AI consulting briefs are bought on the demo. Most regret happens at the audit. This is the structured rubric we have shared with procurement teams who have asked us how to evaluate partners — including how to evaluate us.

Three questions, in order

1. What does the outcome look like in the auditor’s words? Not in marketing words. Not in slide words. Audit-grade words.
2. Who owns the lineage? If the answer is “the model”, walk away.
3. What does “production-ready” mean for them? Be specific: SLOs, runbooks, on-call, incident protocol.

If the prospective partner cannot answer those in writing within a working week, the partnership is unlikely to survive the first regulator letter.   Most AI consulting briefs are bought on the demo. Most regret happens at the audit. This is the structured rubric we have shared with procurement teams who have asked us how to evaluate partners — including how to evaluate us.

Three questions, in order

1. What does the outcome look like in the auditor’s words? Not in marketing words. Not in slide words. Audit-grade words.
2. Who owns the lineage? If the answer is “the model”, walk away.
3. What does “production-ready” mean for them? Be specific: SLOs, runbooks, on-call, incident protocol.

If the prospective partner cannot answer those in writing within a working week, the partnership is unlikely to survive the first regulator letter.