How Kowalah helps
Understand the key ways Kowalah supports your AI procurement journey
Kowalah serves as your dedicated AI procurement consultant, providing expert guidance throughout your journey of evaluating and implementing AI technologies.
Here’s how Kowalah specifically addresses the challenges faced by CIOs and IT leaders.
Specialized AI Category Knowledge
Unlike general buying tools or traditional consultants, Kowalah is specifically designed for AI buying processes with:
- AI-specific evaluation frameworks for comparing capabilities of vendors like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google
- Technical requirements templates addressing data quality, model training, and integration challenges
- Governance guidance covering security, privacy, compliance, and ethical considerations
- Implementation planning that anticipates common AI adoption challenges
Structured Decision-Making Process
Kowalah guides you through the six stages of AI procurement in a methodical way:
1. Problem Identification
Define the business problem you’re trying to solve with AI, validate its importance, and quantify its impact.
“Do we have a problem worth solving?“
2. Solution Exploration
Research potential AI approaches, compare different technical solutions, and identify viable vendors.
“What’s out there to solve our problem?“
3. Requirements Gathering
Document technical, business, and governance requirements while ensuring stakeholder alignment.
“What do we need this thing to do?“
4. Supplier Selection
Evaluate vendors against your criteria, run effective demos, and negotiate appropriate terms.
“Does this thing do what we need it to?“
5. Validation
Verify your choice through proof of concepts, reference calls, and implementation planning.
“We think we know what to do but need to be sure”
6. Consensus
Build agreement among all stakeholders and obtain final approvals to move forward.
“We need to get everyone on board”
Bridging the Knowledge Gap
One of the most valuable ways Kowalah helps is by bridging the knowledge gap between different stakeholders:
- For technical teams: Translates business requirements into technical specifications and evaluation criteria
- For business leaders: Explains AI capabilities and limitations in non-technical terms
- For security/compliance: Incorporates governance requirements early in the process
- For executives: Provides clear business cases and ROI projections for AI investments
Overcoming the “Blank Input Box” Problem
Kowalah actively helps you get started with your AI procurement process by providing:
- Suggested questions relevant to your current procurement stage
- Common tasks based on where you are in your buying journey
- Template documents you can customize for your specific needs
- Guided conversations that help you explore your requirements
Maintaining Institutional Knowledge
Throughout your AI procurement journey, Kowalah helps maintain continuity by:
- Documenting discussions so you never lose important context
- Organizing information in a structured, easily accessible way
- Providing summaries of previous decisions and their rationale
- Helping onboard new stakeholders who join the process midway
Practical Example
Consider an organization evaluating generative AI platforms for customer service. Kowalah helps by:
- Guiding them to define specific use cases and success criteria
- Helping them understand the technical differences between models like GPT-4 and Claude
- Creating a requirements document that addresses prompt engineering, API integration, and data privacy
- Developing vendor-specific questions to uncover limitations and true capabilities
- Designing proof of concept tests that reflect real-world conditions
- Building consensus documents that address concerns from different stakeholders
Next Steps
Ready to see how Kowalah can help with your specific AI procurement needs?
- Create your first project to get started
- See example procurement questions Kowalah can help with
- Learn about team collaboration for your buying group