AI & automation
21 questions to ask an AI consultancy before signing
A demonstration does not tell you the full cost, who maintains the system or what you can take away if you leave. Use these questions to discuss the proposed work and compare the written terms.
Written by Jessica Gardner, In-house Editor, Reeve Consult · 4 min read
Updated
What should you establish before hiring an AI consultancy?
Establish the task and deliverables, the systems and data involved, the complete setup and running costs, and who handles failures and changes. The agreement should also explain ownership, access and what happens when the engagement ends. A supplier’s verbal answer is a starting point; the proposal and contract need to reflect the arrangement you intend to buy.
- Custom work, a supplier’s existing software and third-party licences can have different ownership terms.
- Ongoing support should define what is covered and the response arrangements.
- Leaving requires usable exports, account access and documentation, not just a promise that you own the build.
Before hiring a supplier, you need to understand the work, the cost and the responsibilities your team will keep. A demonstration can show an idea; these questions help you establish the arrangement you would actually buy.
Take the questions that matter to your project into the conversation. Record the answers, ask for evidence where appropriate and compare the proposal and contract with what was discussed.
Capability: what will be built?
1. Which task would you improve first, and why? Ask how the proposed workflow addresses the difficulty your team described and what a useful completed result would look like.
2. What similar work have you completed? Establish the systems involved, the supplier's actual role and how any reported result was measured. A relevant example is more useful than an unexplained percentage.
3. Who will do the work? Find out who designs, builds and reviews the workflow, and how responsibilities are shared with any subcontractors.
4. How will it connect to our exact systems? Give the product names, versions and account tiers. Ask which required actions are supported and what still needs investigating.
5. How will you check it before and after launch? Discuss representative cases, missing information, duplicate requests, failed connections and the approval needed before live use.
6. How will failures reach the right person? Agree the support route, monitoring, response arrangements and what your team does while the system is unavailable.
Commercial terms: what are we paying for?
7. What will the written scope include? Identify deliverables, dependencies and acceptance criteria. If discovery is needed first, establish what that phase produces and how the later scope is agreed.
8. Which costs are fixed and which vary? Include software, usage, integration, training and support. Ask what activity would increase the bill.
9. How will we measure whether the work helps? Agree a baseline and a finished-task measure that includes review and corrections. Generation speed alone may not represent time saved.
10. How are changes to scope agreed? Establish how a request is assessed, priced and approved before the supplier performs additional work.
11. What evidence or references can support the proposal? Ask for a relevant demonstration, documentation or a reference where available. Respect any client's confidentiality rather than assume every supplier can disclose a name.
Understand AI, automation and agents, then choose a task to trial with clear rules and someone checking the result.
Information and oversight: what will the system handle?
12. Which information goes to each service? Identify storage, processing locations, suppliers and transfers. A hosting country alone does not explain the complete arrangement.
13. How will personal or confidential information be handled? Establish the business's responsibilities, the supplier's role and the contractual and operational controls. Involve the person responsible for that assessment in your organisation.
14. How will incidents be reported and handled? Agree contacts, notification responsibilities and the process for containing a failure or inappropriate disclosure.
15. What records will show what happened? Ask how inputs, actions, approvals and changes are recorded, and what you can inspect without exposing more information than necessary.
16. What information will be retained, and for how long? Include logs, backups and supplier copies, not just the main customer record. Establish deletion and access arrangements.
Leaving: what can we retain or transfer?
17. What rights will we have in the delivered work? Distinguish custom work from existing supplier software, templates and third-party licences. Confirm continued-use rights in the agreement.
18. What rights apply to our information and the outputs? Ask about access, reuse and any model-training terms. Do not infer those rights from the account name or the hosting location.
19. What will the handover include? Identify exports, workflow configuration, documentation and access to accounts established for you. Plan an authorised transfer of access rather than informal sharing of credentials.
20. What support remains after the engagement ends? Agree the period, scope and price, including any transition work. There is no single support window suitable for every project.
21. What would another supplier need to take over? Establish transferable components, licence restrictions and anything that would need rebuilding. Ownership alone does not guarantee portability.
How should you use the answers?
List unresolved points beside the proposed terms. An unclear answer may need further discovery, specialist advice or a more specific scope; it is not automatically evidence of dishonesty. Material responsibilities should be understandable before you commit.
If you want to discuss these questions with Reeve Consult, request a 30-minute call. Bring the task, current systems and the point you want to improve so the conversation can address an actual piece of work.
Frequently asked questions
Straight answers
Does owning custom work guarantee that it transfers unchanged?
What should a paid discovery phase produce?
Next step
What would you want an AI supplier to build?
Bring the task and systems you want to discuss. We can explain the work involved, your team’s responsibilities and what a scoped proposal would include.
Discuss a projectJessica Gardner is the in-house editor at Reeve Consult. She writes and edits every guide, blog post, and resource published on the site, making sure the writing is plain-English, the facts check out, and the advice is genuinely useful for the UK independent business owners we work with. Jessica spent eight years in editorial roles across UK trade and business publications before joining Reeve Consult.