BEFORE YOU BUY AI - The Executive Due-Diligence Kit

Before approving an AI investment, test the problem, the vendor, the data, the economics and the risks with a practical decision system.

The slide deck looks wonderful. The graph points upwards. The vendor says the system is enterprise-grade, autonomous and ready to transform your operations. One question remains conspicuously absent: what, precisely, are you buying — and why?

Before You Buy AI: The Executive Due-Diligence Kit is a practical publication for senior managers, company owners, directors, procurement professionals and anyone asked to sign off an artificial-intelligence investment. Rather than teaching the history of AI or celebrating the latest fashionable tools, it gives you a disciplined method for deciding whether a proposal deserves your money.

Bob Mazzei draws on decades of business and technology experience to examine solution-first thinking, seductive demonstrations, weak vendor evidence, unreliable data, hidden manual labour, inflated productivity claims, poor project economics and risks nobody has costed. Real cases include a discontinued automated-ordering trial, consequential errors in legal research and documented productivity gains. The tone is direct, sceptical and occasionally mischievous; the financial and operational questions are entirely serious.

Twelve original worksheets transform the argument into action: a problem-definition canvas, an anti-AI decision test, fifteen vendor questions, evidence and data assessments, workflow analysis, a multi-year total-cost worksheet, ROI reality check, risk register, pilot contract, viability scorecard and final executive decision form.

The result is a clear GO, REWORK or NO-GO recommendation, with hard-stop conditions that no impressive score can override. It is designed to be used in the meeting where money changes hands, not left unread in a downloads folder.

Five practical benefits

• Reject solution-first proposals before they become expensive commitments.
• Demand relevant vendor evidence rather than accepting sales claims.
• Calculate realistic ownership costs and distinguish time saved from money saved.
• Define safety controls, accountability and genuine pilot stop conditions.
• Record a reasoned approval, rework request or rejection using reusable worksheets.

Toolkit assets: 12 printable worksheets contained within the publication.