Tim Davies warns against trusting self-styled "AI consultants" without proven experience and urges businesses to prioritize demonstrated heritage: who has put solutions into production and for how long. He recommends diagnosing real business problems (e.g., website traffic, conversion, purpose) before choosing AI solutions, noting many requests (like chatbots) are often inappropriate. Instead, he advises fixing fundamentals—data flow, system integration, and applying AI in small, meaningful, trusted ways—to create an "unfair advantage." He closes by cautioning against "snake oil sellers" and reiterates the importance of proven impact.
Chapters
So in the last 90 seconds, about 100 people have declared that they are an AI consultant or AI expert. And you probably know three or four of them. They're spinning up everywhere. They've decided that this is a wave that they need to be part of and they've been made redundant, or they've decided to leave their job to become an AI expert. So what should you be looking for in an AI consultant or an expert to help your business? Well, for me, one of the most important things is demonstrated heritage. What have they actually done? What solutions have they put into production? Who have they helped already and how long have they been doing it for? Because if their first exposure to AI was using ChatGPT 18 months ago, then they really don't have a fundamental understanding of the principles of what can be done here, how to use the tools and technologies and how to integrate them into business processes. We like to look at challenges in terms of what are the problems within a business and what's the most appropriate way to apply technology to that. Quite often that isn't actually AI. So we'll have businesses come to us and say, I want a chatbot, want a chatbot on my website. And we'll say, I don't think you do. How many people have you got coming to your website? Which pages are they landing on? What's the conversion rate? Where are they coming from? And what purpose is the chatbot going to serve? And quite often when we ask those questions, we'll get a lot of face pulling. I'm not sure, I don't know. And so then we're interested in understanding what's the fundamental challenges within the business, what are the things that are holding them up, what's sucking the most time and how could we solve that? Through helping to smooth their data transfer, through connecting different systems together and through applying artificial intelligence in a small but meaningful and trusted way to move the business forward. So while AI might be the big banner that people flow to us for, quite often they just need some of the fundamental sorting to help them on that journey towards becoming AI first. So don't trust snake oil sellers, you don't all need chat bots. But if you want to talk to a consultancy that understands how to actually make a real impact from this technology, make sure you're looking at the heritage. Make sure you're looking for the ones that will help you create unfair advantage in your business.
