Can we do a short assessment and then a strategy engagement?

Yes, and it is usually the better order. The assessment produces numbers, and a strategy built on measured numbers is a different document from one built on a workshop. It also means the broader engagement can be scoped more tightly, because the obvious candidates are already priced.

Is a maturity model useful?

As a shared vocabulary, sometimes. As a plan, no. A maturity model tells you which stage you are at relative to a scale somebody invented. It does not tell you which of your nine candidate projects is worth an engineer next month, and that is the decision you are actually facing.

How do we compare two proposals fairly?

Ask both the same question: how will we know in six months whether this was right? A proposal that names a number and a measurement method is comparable. One that describes deliverables is not, because deliverables can be produced without anything changing.

Compare

AI assessment or a strategy consultancy?

The short answer

Buy a strategy engagement when the problem is agreement. A large consultancy is very good at getting forty stakeholders to sign up to one direction, and that is real work that a small specialist cannot do. Buy an assessment when the problem is a decision. You get a ranked list of what is worth building, priced in hours and money, from people who will also build it. The failure to avoid is buying a strategy when you needed a decision. You get a document everyone agreed to and nobody can act on, because nothing in it was costed against your own systems.

Why this comes up

The situation, before the answer

01
The board has asked for an AI strategy, and nobody is sure whether that means a direction or a plan.
02
Two proposals are on the table. One is a large firm quoting a discovery phase, the other is a small team quoting a fortnight.
03
The large proposal covers every department. The small one covers two processes and says the rest is not worth doing yet.
04
Whichever you pick, in six months somebody will ask what it produced, and only one of the two answers will have a number in it.

Side by side

The comparison, on the dimensions that decide it

Shapes rather than figures. Salary bands, day rates and vendor prices move by an order of magnitude between markets, and a number here that you held us to would be worse than none.

AI assessment or a strategy consultancy?
Dimension	A specialist assessmentTwo to three weeks, a ranked list, priced against your systems.	A strategy engagementLonger, broader, and built to produce agreement across the organisation.	Do it internallySomebody senior spends a fortnight on it instead of their day job.
What you hold at the end	A ranked list, a baseline number per candidate, and a longer list of what not to build.	A direction, a roadmap, and organisational buy-in. Frequently a maturity model.	Whatever that person had time to write, which is often better than either and rarely finished.
Breadth	Narrow on purpose. Two or three processes, in detail.	Wide. Every function, at the depth wide allows.	Whatever they already understand, which is usually the right places to look.
Who you actually get	The person who did the sales call. In a small practice that is the whole point and also the risk.	A partner sells it, a team delivers it. Ask who is on the team and how senior.	Somebody whose real job is waiting for them.
Can it be checked afterwards	Yes. Each candidate carries a number measured beforehand, so somebody can grade the work later.	Rarely. A strategy is judged on whether it felt right, which is why so few are ever graded.	Only if they took a baseline, which they usually did not.
Getting the organisation to agree	Weak. A small firm has no political weight, and a recommendation nobody feels ownership of stalls.	Strong, and it is the thing they are genuinely best at. Do not dismiss it.	Depends entirely on who they are.
Will they build it	Usually yes, which is a conflict worth naming: a firm that builds has an incentive to find things to build.	Sometimes, through a separate arm, at a separate price.	Yes, and they will own it afterwards, which is the strongest argument for this column.

Deciding

Which one, and when

01
A specialist assessment
- The question is which two things to build this quarter.
- You need it decided in weeks.
- Somebody will ask in six months what it produced, and you want a number rather than a slide.
02
A strategy engagement
- The real obstacle is that four departments want different things.
- The decision needs weight behind it to survive an executive committee.
- The scope genuinely is every function, and you have the budget for depth across all of them.
03
Do it internally
- You have somebody senior who knows the operation and can be freed for two weeks.
- The candidates are already obvious and the question is only sequencing.

The limit

What this comparison gets wrong

We sell the first column, so read the row about incentives again and apply it to us. The comparison also treats these as alternatives when the sequence often works better: a short assessment to produce the numbers, then a broader engagement to get the organisation behind them. What no comparison captures is that the quality of either depends almost entirely on who turns up, and you can only judge that by asking to meet them before you sign.