The most expensive moment in an enterprise AI program is the demo, because a good demo reframes your question. You walked in asking “which of our workflows should move to AI first?” and you walk out asking “where could we use this product?” Those are different questions, and the second one belongs to the vendor.
The defense is to rank your workflows before anyone shows you anything. The method is not complicated. Score each candidate on four axes, honestly, with the people who actually do the work in the room.
Definability. Can you write down the inputs, the rules, and what a correct output looks like? If three experienced people describe the workflow three different ways, it is not ready, whatever the technology can do. Workflows with clear inputs and explicit rules automate well. Workflows that are actually a bundle of judgement calls wearing a process name do not.
Volume. The economics of AI-run work are volume economics. A workflow that runs two hundred times a day can prove itself against a baseline within a quarter. A workflow that runs twice a month cannot, no matter how painful those two occasions are. Save the low-volume pain for later phases.
Verifiability. Can a person, or a second system, check the output cheaply? Verifiable work lets you run the AI in parallel with the current process and compare. Unverifiable work forces you to trust, and trust is not a deployment strategy.
Baseline honesty. What does this work cost today, per unit, all-in? If the work is outsourced, you have an invoice, which is the cleanest baseline there is. If it is insourced, you will need to build the number, and the organization will argue with it. Prefer candidates where the baseline is already an agreed fact.
Score your top ten workflows on these four axes before the first vendor meeting. The ranking will be boring, and the top of the list will not be the project anyone wants to present at the town hall. That is usually the sign you have done it right: the modest workflow with the clean before-and-after is the one that funds everything that follows.