Hook
She had 14 AI tools on the team's expense reports.She had approved 3 of them.A CMO at a growing tech company asked me to help her pick the right AI writing tool.So I asked one question first:“Which tools is the team already using?”She guessed four.We pulled the expense reports and the browser extensions. It was 14.Nobody was hiding anything. They were solving problems faster than the approval process could move.But nobody could say:
→ Which tools could see customer data
→ Which outputs went out unreviewed
→ Who decided the brand voice inside each promptSo we didn't pick a tool that week.We wrote one page instead:
→ Approved tools, and what each one is for
→ Data that never goes into a prompt
→ The outputs that always get a human review
→ Who to ask when a new tool looks usefulTwo tools got cut. Three got paid team plans. The rest moved to a “request” list.The writing tool decision took 20 minutes after that.Reality: You can't choose the right tool until you know which ones you already have.How many AI tools would you find on your team's expense reports?
