Know What You Need Before You Talk to Vendors
42% of AI initiatives get abandoned. 62% never leave pilot purgatory. The vendors aren't the problem — choosing them before understanding your needs is.
The Vendor Evaluation Trap
There are hundreds of AI vendors, and every one of them promises transformation. You can't evaluate them all. So you run pilots with whoever had the best sales pitch — not whoever fits what your organization actually needs.
Here's the thing: vendors are economically incentivized to run pilots on their platform. Their revenue depends on your usage, not your outcomes. They're selling solutions looking for problems inside your business. And you bear the career risk when another high-profile initiative goes nowhere. McKinsey's research shows only 5% of organizations are capturing rapid revenue from AI — the rest are still figuring out where it fits.
The numbers tell the story. 42% of AI initiatives abandoned, up from 17% the year before. 62% stuck in what Gartner calls pilot purgatory. Your team is exhausted from scattered experiments that never connect to business outcomes. The real question isn't which vendor to pick. It's which capabilities your organization actually needs — and that's an information gap no vendor pitch deck can close.
Why Vendor-Led AI Pilots Fail
Misaligned Revenue Incentives
Vendors profit from platform usage, not your ROI. Their business model rewards running pilots — whether those pilots produce results or not. Your success is optional for their revenue.
Technology Looking for a Problem
Vendor-led pilots start with a product and search for business problems it can solve. This backwards approach explains why 62% of AI pilots never make it past the experiment stage.
Too Many Pilots, No Focus
Organizations running 6+ pilots simultaneously spread their teams thin. Research shows that companies focusing on 3-4 strategic use cases see 2.1x better ROI than the spray-and-pray approach.
The AI Readi Alternative
Business Goals First
Start with your strategic objectives and OKR frameworks. Map which capabilities matter, which processes are affected, and what readiness gaps exist — before any vendor conversation.
Vendor-Agnostic Requirements
Build requirements from 760+ contextually-filtered use cases with feasibility scores. Evaluate vendors against what you actually need, not what they're selling.
Fewer Pilots, Better Outcomes
Replace six scattered experiments with two well-chosen ones. Every decision backed by organizational readiness data and value chain impact analysis. Done in 2-6 weeks.
Figure Out What You Need First
Map your AI priorities before your next vendor call. It takes weeks, not months.
Start Your AI Discovery