Start the shortlist with a real job

“Adopt an AI platform” leaves a supplier too much room to choose the demonstration. Start with the event that begins the work, the information needed and the result someone must accept. Imagine an account review: read approved customer records, identify missing evidence and send a draft to the account owner. The draft needs source references. Publishing it or changing a customer record is a separate permission. Now every supplier has the same job to discuss.

Before replacing the process, write down how it works today. Who handles each step, where do difficult cases go and what makes a result acceptable? Use measures the business already trusts. A draft produced sooner may still leave colleagues with more checking to do. Decide whether you want quicker drafting, less total handling effort or another result, then write the rule for accepting the work before watching a demo.

Glean describes enterprise search and an assistant. Hebbia addresses investors, bankers and other professionals working through documents. WRITER emphasizes marketing and revenue teams.^1,2,3

Use those differences to choose what to ask each supplier to show. For finding an internal policy, check relevance and permissions. For deal research, follow a finding through a difficult set of documents. For recurring marketing work, look at whether product knowledge and approval rules still apply after a revision. A common buying brief is useful; a demonstration unrelated to the job just gives you another feature to put in a table.^1,2,4,3

Also keep a different way of getting the work done on the shortlist. Nexus describes building with business teams. Relevance AI describes an embedded team followed by training. Dify offers self-hosting. These options leave different responsibilities with your staff. Compare who does the work as carefully as the interface they use.^5,6,7

Separate requirements a supplier must meet from preferences you can discuss. A particular hosting arrangement or access to a protected source may be essential. The interface may be negotiable. Write that distinction down before an attractive demo makes it easy to forget. In the account-review example, restricting access to the correct customer team could be essential, while the draft’s visual format could change without spoiling the result.

Dify Enterprise explicitly describes deployment in a customer’s VPC, on premises or on an air-gapped network. Google distinguishes the Gemini Enterprise app from an Agent Platform bought separately.^8,9

Ask exactly which product and edition the supplier proposes, including partners, add-ons and custom work. Those examples show why a broad answer about a product family is not enough. Keep a requirement marked as unanswered until the supplier provides the evidence you need. A missing answer is a reason to ask again or pause the purchase; it does not prove that the product lacks the feature.^8,9

Give each supplier the process, representative inputs, required actions, access limits and the person who accepts the result. Request a plan in stages, a division of work and a full quote. Keep the assumptions beside the answers. Missing access, the quality of source records and the staff you can make available can all change the proposed work. A useful response separates what is included, what depends on you and what still needs to be demonstrated.

Leave the shortlist meeting with a decision sheet someone else can read. For each supplier, record the proposed approach, essential requirements supported by evidence, work left to your team and the next demonstration needed. Keep the alternative that most clearly challenges the leading proposal’s weak point. That could be control over hosting, a better fit for specialist work or a clearer handover to your staff. The sheet should explain why the next meeting is worth having.