What does this company need AI to do?

Imagine a fund looking at AI for a distributor and a business-services company. The deal team wants faster research. The distributor’s controller wants fewer unresolved invoice problems. At the services company, staff need to find approved client procedures. Putting all three into the same value-creation plan does not make them the same purchase. Before asking for a platform proposal, name the result each team needs, who will approve it and the rules they will use.

Hebbia addresses investors and deal teams, with document findings that can be traced to their sources. Glean describes a platform built on company context that enforces the source system’s permissions.^1,2,3,4,5

Let those differences shape the brief. An investment reviewer checks the research pack. The controller checks the invoice exception. The policy owner checks the answer about a client procedure. A supplier may cover several jobs, but a good result on one should not pass the others. Also separate the fund’s request for a report from permission to inspect the records behind it. The examples here are proposed buying exercises, not deployments we have observed.

Take the distributor’s invoice that does not match its purchase order. A first version might find the permitted records, explain the mismatch with source references and draft an exception for the controller. In this example, it may neither post an adjustment nor release payment. Describe success in terms the controller can check: enough reliable information to resolve the exception without assembling the evidence again from scratch.

Write down how the job happens today beside the proposed steps. Include the types of records, applications, approvals and reasons an exception gets rejected. Choose difficult examples too: a duplicate invoice, a missing purchase order or an unclear company identifier. Get permission to use them and remove information the exercise does not need. Agree the examples before the demonstration, so the comparison does not depend on the supplier picking its easiest cases.

Put the case on a simple sheet: what starts it; permitted inputs; expected output; forbidden actions; where exceptions go; who approves the result; and evidence kept. If a reviewer rejects the answer, record why and who takes over. An incomplete case should remain visibly incomplete. It should not look successful merely because an agent has produced a plausible explanation.

Nexus describes an engineer building alongside the customer and continuing to improve the workflow. Relevance AI describes launch help followed by training the customer’s team. WRITER describes custom-agent services and embedded deployment engineers.^6,7,8,9,10

Have each supplier name who investigates the process, arranges access, sets things up, tests the work and handles support and changes. Buying help still leaves decisions with the company. A handover still needs someone ready to take over. For the invoice example, name the controller who judges the answer and the system owner who authorizes access. Do not assign both jobs to an operating partner who cannot approve either.

Ask suppliers to quote the same work, with the company’s own staff time made visible. Then ask what would change at a second company using another ERP or another approval path. A long integration list cannot answer how much setup that will take. The proposal should name the supported actions, any custom development and the person who maintains the connection when an upstream system changes.

Finish the brief with the company’s aim, the case sheet, requirements it cannot compromise on, named responsibilities and open questions. Beside each supplier answer, mark what you have: documentation, a demonstration or something still unresolved. Attach the evidence. A published feature is a reason to ask for a demonstration, not proof that your setup works. Keep proposed dates and the things they depend on beside each request.

The meeting should end with a clear next step: run the agreed trial, ask for missing evidence or reject this route for this company. For the distributor, unanswered questions about access between companies mean sensitive data stays out of the trial. A polished invoice draft does not resolve that issue. Keep another supplier in the comparison if it helps examine a weak point, such as the handover or enforcement of source permissions.

Write the brief so a new company executive can understand it without attending the earlier meetings. Explain why this job was chosen, what it excludes and who decides next. That gives another company something useful to review later. It does not presume that the other company wants the same workflow or can use the same setup.