Enterprise AI vendor selection: a procurement checklist

Short answer

Choosing an enterprise AI vendor should be done with written questions, a measurable pilot and a scoring sheet — not with the impression a demo leaves. Split the questions into six groups: business, technical, security, legal, commercial and exit. Give each group an owner, get answers in writing and base the decision on the pilot result. The group most often forgotten is exit: what happens to your data when the contract ends?

Why choosing an AI vendor is different

With ordinary software the feature list is mostly fixed: a report either exists or it doesn't. With AI, the result depends on your data, your scenarios and your language. A bot that looks perfect in a demo can behave differently with your knowledge base and the way your customers speak. That is why in AI selection the pilot is the evidence and the demo is only a presentation.

The second difference: an AI vendor processes your customer conversations, call recordings and knowledge base. That makes security and legal questions more important than in an ordinary purchase.

Steps in the process

1. 1Write down the problemOne sentence: which process, which metric, which target.
2. 2Group the requirements"Must have" and "nice to have" across the six groups.
3. 3ShortlistThree or four vendors; more wears the team out.
4. 4Written questionsThe same question list to every vendor.
5. 5PilotWith two or three vendors, on your data, with the same metric.
6. 6ScoringAnswers and pilot results in one sheet.
7. 7ContractWhat you found goes into the contract.

1. Business questions

• Which problem does it solve, and how will we measure that?
• How well does it fit our sector and our languages?
• Can we talk to reference customers?
• How much time, and which people, do we need to give for implementation?

2. Technical questions

• Which systems have ready integrations, and which need the API?
• What do the API docs, limits, error codes and webhooks look like?
• Is there a test environment?
• What happens when the AI cannot answer or the system is down?

We give a detailed list of technical requirements in API integration requirements, and cover test environments in AI sandbox.

3. Security questions

• Where is the data stored, and in which country?
• Is it encrypted in transit and at rest?
• How is our data separated from other customers?
• Is our data used to train AI models?
• How are access rights and logs managed?
• Which certifications do you hold, and which not?

On isolation specifically: tenant isolation; on access rights: SSO and role-based access.

4. Legal questions

• Is there a data processing agreement, and what does it cover?
• How quickly are you notified of a breach?
• Who are the subprocessors?
• Who owns the data — recordings, transcripts, analytics?

Write these questions together with your legal team; this list is a starting point, not legal advice.

5. Commercial questions

• What is the price based on: users, conversations, minutes or a package?
• How does the price change as volume grows?
• Are implementation and training charged separately?
• What are the contract term and renewal terms?

Work out the price for three years on a realistic usage scenario, not for one year: with AI, cost often grows with volume.

6. Exit questions

• When the contract ends, in what format can we get our data?
• When and how is data deleted — backups included?
• Can the knowledge base and scenarios be moved to another system?
• Does service continue during the transition?

How to run the demo

Do not leave the demo to the vendor's prepared script. Send your own scenario in advance: three typical customer questions, one hard case — a complaint, say, or a question not in the knowledge base — and one integration step. Ask the vendor to show that scenario live, not explain it on slides.

Have the same people attend every vendor's demo, and have each fill in the same short scoring form. Otherwise the comparison rests on memory and impressions. Watch closely how the AI handles a question it cannot answer: "I don't know, passing you to an agent" is better than an invented answer.

Making the pilot comparable

To compare two vendors' pilots, the conditions must be the same: the same knowledge base, the same test question set, the same period and the same metric. Pick test questions from real conversations and do not show the answers to vendors in advance. Record the result both as a count and with examples: which questions went wrong, and why.

A scoring sheet

Give each group a weight — for example, business fit and pilot result weighted highest — and score each vendor on a 1–5 scale. A vendor that fails a "must have" drops out whatever its score. Write a short reason next to each score: "4, because in the pilot it answered most of the 50 test questions correctly."

We explain how to set up a pilot in omnichannel automation pilot — the same logic applies to comparing vendors.

Red flags

• No pilot on your own data allowed.
• Only verbal answers to security questions.
• "AI does everything" — nothing said about limitations.
• No clear answer on exit and data deletion.
• Pricing clear only for the first year.

Who should be at the table

The business owner judges the problem and the metric, IT the integration, the security owner data protection, legal the contract, and finance the total cost. Day-to-day users — agents or sales managers — should take part in the pilot: their view decides whether adoption succeeds. For working with people after the choice, see change management in AI automation.

How to approach Vexvon

Assess Vexvon with the same list. What the security page states: data is stored in the European Union (Nuremberg, Germany), transfer is encrypted with TLS, customer data is kept separate from other customers and not used to train general AI models, access is managed at role level, and the B2B agreement includes a commitment to notify within 24 hours of a breach. If you need a certification, ask about it directly. More on security; we can plan a pilot through a demo.

Next step

Assign an owner to each of the six groups, collect the questions into one document and send it to the shortlisted vendors at the same time. More integration articles are in the enterprise integration section.