Case Study

Regional Logistics: Killing 22 of 27 AI vendor evaluations.

A $240M regional logistics firm with four business units and no central AI thesis. A very tired CIO.

Situation

Four business units. Twenty-seven active AI vendor evaluations. Thirteen different sponsors. One very tired CIO, one nervous board.

The CFO had put a freeze on new AI spend until someone could explain what it was actually for. The CIO brought us in to do that job in six weeks.

What we did

Inventoried all 27 evaluations. Requested the business case, the owner, the expected P&L impact, and the next check-in date.
Of the 27, fourteen had no quantified business case on paper. Nine had overlapping scopes.
Ran a prioritization exercise with the exec team against two axes: dollar impact and buildability. Anything below the median on both got killed.
Wrote a one-page AI thesis the CFO could defend to the board. Left the company with a scoring rubric for the next time a vendor showed up.

Outcome

Canceled 22 of 27 evaluations. Consolidated three of the remaining five into a single procurement.
≈$1.8M saved in year-one committed software spend.
CIO got back a measurable chunk of calendar. The CFO got a document she could wave at the board. The board stopped asking for a Chief AI Officer hire.