# The four questions a CFO should ask any AI vendor. — Radexus

> None of them are technical. All four are difficult to answer if the answer is bad.

*Source: https://radexus.com/journal/cfo-question/*

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[The Radexus Journal](https://radexus.com/journal/)  /  Measurement

# The four questions a CFO should ask any AI vendor.

- Topic: **Measurement**
- Published: **10 July 2026**
- Reading time: **5 min**

In this essay

None of them are technical. All four are difficult to answer if the answer is bad.

We are on the receiving end of these often enough to know which ones hurt. If you are evaluating anyone, including us, these four separate the proposals worth reading from the ones that are not.

## One. Which single number moves, and who owns it?

Not a category of benefit. One line, with a definition, its exclusions and a person whose figure it is. If the answer includes the word productivity without an hours figure attached, the number does not exist yet.

## Two. Computed from what, that we already keep?

If measuring the benefit requires a new data collection process, the benefit will never be measured. Everyone means to. Nobody does, once the project is live and the team has moved on.

## Three. What happens if it does not clear the metric?

Ask what the contract says, not what they intend. A vendor whose commercial model requires the pilot to succeed will find a way for it to have succeeded.

## Four. In year three, what does the company know that it does not know today, and where is that held?

This is the one that separates capability from productivity. If the honest answer is that individuals got faster, price it as a tool: short payback, hours-based, no compounding assumed. If the answer is a set of written claims about your own business, owned by your people and surviving their departure, price it as an asset.

**Want to argue with this?**

We would rather be corrected than agreed with. The first meeting is an hour and produces a real result.

[Start a discovery](https://radexus.com/start/)

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