AI for CIOs
What should a CIO ask an AI vendor to show, not just promise?
SimplSolutions editorial team · Vendor evaluation · 4 min read
Published
AI-assisted original editorial guidance. Calculations and scenarios are illustrative, not customer results.
Bring your own acceptance cases
A vendor's successful example demonstrates that one example can succeed. It does not establish that the product handles your audience, sources or failure conditions. Before the meeting, choose a permitted synthetic question, a restricted question, an outdated guide and an unsupported request. Write the expected result for each. Give the vendor the task context without private company records.
Ask the presenter to identify what is real, mocked, preconfigured or manually approved. A prototype can still be useful, but it must not be presented as a production integration. Record who operates each step, which systems it touches and what evidence confirms the final action. A connector logo is not that evidence.
Replace yes-or-no claims with artifacts
| Ask to see | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Data-flow diagram for your proposed task | Identifies source copies, processors and logs |
| Denied-user test with harmless synthetic data | Tests the actual audience boundary |
| Source change followed by the same question | Exposes refresh and stale-answer behavior |
| Failed downstream action | Shows whether success is invented |
| Export of your maintained configuration | Makes exit and ownership concrete |
| Cost assumptions by task volume | Exposes what the headline quote omits |
An artifact is not automatically sufficient. A diagram must describe the proposed deployment, not an unrelated reference architecture. A security report may apply to a particular product, period and scope. Your reviewers decide whether the evidence applies to the actual service and whether gaps need contractual treatment or technical testing.
Illustrative editorial photograph, not a customer result.
Separate read access from action authority
Ask which exact objects the system can read and which exact mutations it can request. Who supplies the identity? Is the connection delegated per user or operated through a service account? Who approves a consequential write, and how does the destination enforce that approval? Do not accept the model's promise to behave as the authorization boundary.
Use a harmless unsupported write in a test environment. The product should say the action is outside scope and should not fabricate a completed result. For permitted writes, inspect the destination confirmation, duplicate prevention and recovery behavior. The employee seeing a green check is not enough if the destination never accepted the work.
Ask who maintains the ordinary day
Who updates the source register, retests after a model change and investigates failed answers? Ask for the proposed operating responsibilities in writing. If those tasks fall to your team, include their time in the comparison. Ask how incidents reach an accountable support owner and what information is needed without disclosing unnecessary private payloads.
Then examine the broken day. If the vendor or source is unavailable, can employees find the approved manual path? Who determines whether a previous instruction is safe to use? These questions are especially important when the demonstration suggests that the assistant will become the only practical route to company knowledge.
End with a decision record
Use three outcomes for each requirement: demonstrated, pending evidence, or outside scope. Do not turn a verbal yes into demonstrated. Record the artifact, reviewer, date and next action. Price the scope that was actually evaluated rather than every capability mentioned during the call. A limited first project can be a good decision without becoming an enterprise endorsement.
Download the AI Connection Scope Worksheet before your next meeting. The NIST AI RMF provides broader voluntary governance context; this question set is our suggested procurement aid, not a certification checklist. Request a relevant demo and use the same evidence standard with SimplSolutions. We should identify the sources, actions, review points and dependencies in the proposed scope too.
Put this to work this week
Send your synthetic cases before the meeting and ask which can be demonstrated in the proposed deployment. Reserve time for an unavailable source and an unsupported action. Write pending beside any requirement answered only verbally. Request the missing artifact with an owner and date. Review the production release gates before deciding whether the demonstration supports a trial or a live rollout.
