Five Questions to Ask Before You Buy Your Next 'AI-Powered' Tool

The Tool That Promises Everything

A vendor shows up. "We have an AI tool that solves your data problems." They demo it. It's impressive. Before you buy, ask these five questions.

Question 1: "What Specific Problem Does This Solve?"

Not "What problems can it solve?" Be concrete: "Right now, our sales forecasting is inaccurate by 30%. This tool claims it can improve forecasting to within 10%. That's our problem." If you can't articulate the specific problem, don't buy the tool.

Question 2: "Do We Have Good Data for This Tool to Work?"

AI tools are only as good as the data they use. Does the tool need clean data? Do we have it? If not, how much work is cleaning our data vs. buying the tool? If tool costs $50k/year and cleaning costs $30k/year, total is $80k/year. If we can't afford both, the tool won't work.

Question 3: "Can We Pilot This Before Full Commitment?"

Ask: "Can we try this for 30 days with a small group first?" Good vendors say yes. A 30-day pilot tells you: Does the tool actually work? Will the team adopt it? Is the ROI real? Cost of pilot: Usually free or $1-2k. Value: Know if the $50k+ investment is worth it.

Question 4: "What Happens When the Tool Doesn't Work?"

Ask: What's the SLA? What if the tool breaks? What's your backup? What if it doesn't solve the problem — can we get a refund? If the vendor can't answer clearly, it's a red flag.

Question 5: "What's Our Exit Strategy?"

Can we export our data easily? If we switch tools later, how hard is migration? Are we locked into a 3-year contract? Good vendors make it easy to leave. Bad ones make it hard.

The Evaluation Process

Step 1: Can you pilot? If no, move on. Step 2: Prepare for pilot — define success: "Success looks like [metric] improving by [amount] in 30 days." Step 3: Run pilot 30 days. Step 4: Evaluate. Did the metric improve? Decision: Buy, don't buy, or negotiate.

Red Flags

"This will solve all your problems." "You have to buy now (limited time)." "We can't do a pilot." "It requires our consulting team ($50k)." "You need to clean your data first." (Your data is messy; they should handle some of the mess.)

The Budget Reality

Budget for: Tool cost; implementation (often another $X-2X); training ($5-10k); support. Total: Tool cost is often just 30-40% of the actual cost. If you can't afford the full cost, you can't afford the tool.

The Downloadable Resource

We've created a Tool Evaluation Checklist that includes: The 5 key questions (expanded); a pilot definition template; a cost calculator (all-in cost); a success metric template; a comparison sheet; red flags checklist; a pilot runbook.

Download it here: aiforbusiness.net/resources/tool-evaluation-checklist

What's Next

Once you've decided whether to buy tools or build solutions, you need to know when your current infrastructure can no longer handle growth. The next article, "How to Know When You've Outgrown Spreadsheets (And What Comes Next)," covers the inflection points.