How to Find the Right Partner to Help Build Your AI Strategy

AI initiatives are often discussed as if they require one clear answer: the right model, the right platform, or the right vendor.

In reality, most organisations discover that AI work spans multiple disciplines, each with different risks and responsibilities.

The challenge is not whether to act, but how to assemble the right mix of expertise to do so safely and effectively.

A change as significant as AI implementation requires time, space, investment, cultural realignment, and ultimately a fundamental shift in how work is done across the organisation.

The capabilities involved in AI transformation

In practice, AI transformations typically sit at the intersection of four areas:

• Strategy - focuses on clarifying the problem to solve, the value to be created, and the business case that justifies investment.

• Design - ensures teams understand what customers and employees actually need, validate assumptions with evidence, and build a shared view of what is being designed.

• Operations - determine how AI-enabled processes will run in practice, including governance, oversight, escalation, and testing.

• Capability - ensures the organisation has the skills required to build, assess, and operate AI safely and effectively.

Each area plays a different role, but progress depends on how they come together rather than how any one is optimised in isolation.

SOrai's Three-Pillar Approach

The challenge of working across strategy, design, operations, and capability is what led Sorai to develop its three-pillar approach.

Rather than treating AI work as a sequence of disconnected phases, the model is designed to support organisations through decision-making, delivery, and long-term adoption as part of a single, coherent effort.

Having worked in business, product and technology consultancies, we realised quite quickly that a business shouldn't have to rely on a suite of partners to develop a robust strategy and take its services to market. More importantly, retaning the knowledge internally is also key. Our three pillars are designed to support that - one partnership to take you through the entire process and ensure that your teams can continue the great work. That's how we measure impact.

Niharika Hariharan, Sorai Partner

• Strategy - focuses on shaping direction and confidence early on. This includes clarifying where AI should be applied, testing assumptions using data and hypotheses, and ensuring ideas are viable for both customers and the business. The emphasis is on making choices that are grounded, defensible, and aligned with organisational priorities.

• Implementation - Led by our design, product and technical teams, we bring those choices into real products, services, and workflows. Drawing on experience across product development, customer experience, and service design, this pillar focuses on translating intent into practice - designing journeys, launching MVPs, and embedding AI and data into systems that teams can actually operate.

• Capability - recognises that lasting progress depends on people, not just solutions. This pillar is focused on strengthening internal teams through practical training and by finding the right talent, so organisations can oversee, adapt, and evolve AI-enabled work with confidence over time. With over 3000+ experts globally, we've helped build teams for some of the most ambitious businesses in the world.

Together, these pillars help organisations bring the right capabilities together at the right moment, rather than approaching AI through a single lens.

Deciding whether you need external support

Consultancies offer a wide range of support, and deciding whether to bring in a partner is not always straightforward. A useful starting point is to ask a small set of practical questions:

• Do we have a clear strategy and business case that justifies this investment?

  
  

• Do we understand what customers and employees need, and is this grounded in evidence?

  
  

• Do we have a shared and agreed understanding of what is being built?

  
  

• Can we define the governance and operational model, and test it safely?

  
  

• Do we have the right teams and skills in place?

  
  

• Are ownership, success measures, and leadership accountability clear?

How confidently these questions can be answered often determines whether external support is needed, and what type of support will be most effective.

Reasons organisations choose external partners

Organisations typically bring in external partners when internal capacity is stretched, when key capabilities are missing or uneven, or when an outside-in perspective is needed to challenge assumptions and unblock progress.

External support can help create focus, structure, and momentum—particularly when teams are balancing AI exploration alongside day-to-day delivery.

Example: We worked with a client to build their future strategy building our team to include Designers, Business consultants, AI engineers, futurists and industry experts. The data, business capability, markets, competitors and recommendations were vetted from these different lenses, and the strategy therefore distinctive - something the business couldn't have done internally or with a business consultancy. In a world where it is becoming increasingly important for businesses to remain distinctive - the best approach to develop your AI strategy is to combine creativity with the probability of data.

Anish Joshi, Partner at Sorai and leader of our Future Strategy and Innovation Practice

A common mistake: starting with technology

Many organisations assume that Digital initiatives, especially those that focus on AI, automatically require a technology partner. While technical expertise is often necessary, the more important consideration is not the technology itself, but whether a partner can solve the underlying problem and support delivery in a way that works for the organisation.

While technology is essential, the more complex challenges sit at the intersection of business intent, customer impact, data readiness, and governance.

Partners who focus narrowly on one area often struggle to deliver outcomes that are sustainable in practice.

Why partner capability matters more than technology

AI solutions rarely succeed when business goals, customer needs, data realities, and governance considerations are addressed separately. Sustainable outcomes depend on how these areas are handled together.

Different types of consultancies tend to focus on different parts of this picture:

• Management consultancies often bring strength in business strategy and governance, but may struggle with technical delivery or detailed design.

  
  

• Technology consultancies are well-suited to building systems, but may place less emphasis on customer experience or operational ownership.

  
  

• Design consultancies excel at front-end experience, but can lack the business or operational rigour required to scale AI safely.

Partners who can work across business, customer, data, and governance considerations are better positioned to deliver solutions that are workable in practice and sustainable over time.

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What to look for in the right partner

When choosing an external partner to support AI initiatives, organisations often benefit from being explicit about what matters most. In practice, this usually comes down to the following considerations:

Cost - The right support does not need to be expensive. What matters is whether the engagement is proportionate to the problem being solved and delivers value without unnecessary scale or complexity.

Expertise - Focus on the people, not just the brand. It is important to understand who will actually be doing the work and to ensure each member of the team has relevant, hands-on experience.

Values - The best outcomes tend to come from partnerships where internal teams and external partners work as equal thought partners, with mutual respect and shared responsibility for decisions.

Scale - Consider whether the partner can support you on an ongoing basis as needs evolve, or help you build internal capability so reliance on external support reduces over time.

Knowledge transfer - Ensure there is a clear approach to sharing knowledge and ways of working, so your organisation retains value and confidence long after the engagement ends.

Build versus buy - If you are deciding whether to build solutions internally or use existing tools, it is worth understanding whether a partner has the experience and relationships to guide these choices, rather than defaulting to bespoke builds.

Sorai's Vision is to Build Long-Term Partnerships

Long-term partnerships matter because AI work does not end at delivery. Choices made early on shape how systems are governed, how teams work with them day to day, and how confident organisations feel adapting over time.

Sorai works alongside teams across strategy, implementation, and capability, bringing together business, AI, and risk and compliance expertise in a single partnership.

The aim is not just to deliver outcomes, but to build the conditions for sustained progress, with knowledge staying where it belongs, inside the organisation.

If you are looking for a partner who can help you build an AI strategy today while strengthening your ability to lead tomorrow, a conversation with Sorai is a natural place to start.

Contact Niharika directly to learn more: niharika@soraiglobal.com