While you're browsing, the vendor is already working. They're mapping your organizational structure, profiling your budget, and figuring out who they need to get it to close. Meanwhile the business case is vague, the requirements are soft, and nobody internally has agreed on what success looks like. By the time procurement gets involved, you've lost on both sides of the table.
Twenty years ago I took a job in procurement by accident and ended up spending my career negotiating enterprise software, at GE Vernova, GE Company, BlackRock, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Moody's, and Macmillan. Trading platforms, OEM licensing, audit defense, post-M&A consolidation, the works.
Business users found a tool they wanted, started talking to the vendor before anyone had written a real business case, and by the time procurement showed up the deal was already half-built, on the vendor's terms. The requirements were soft. The stakeholders weren't aligned. The budget was either a guess or already disclosed. And the vendor had been running the play since the first demo.
I built Acuity because that pattern is fixable, and almost nobody is fixing it. The work that matters happens before the vendor ever sees a procurement person, and most organizations don't have anyone doing that work. Acuity is a boutique shop focused on exactly that: requirements, business cases, and the internal alignment that makes everything downstream actually work.
Read the full story →Two ways to work together
Same thesis, different delivery. For the deals that move the needle, there is Acuity Advisory. For the buyer who needs the methodology without the consultant, there is Pario.
For decisions where the wrong move costs millions, the timeline matters, and the room needs someone who has done this before. Three specialties, all built on the same playbook.
Major decision in front of you
Deal strategy and negotiation support from inside the room.
Compliance or audit exposure
Forensic work on what you own and where the risk is.
Building internal capability
Training and coaching that installs the methodology in your team.
All three sit on the same method.
Start a conversationFor the decision that does not justify a consulting engagement but still deserves a real method. Pario walks the buyer through scoping, requirements, vendor research, and a business case in about 30 minutes. The methodology, productized.
Built for departmental software purchases.
See Pario →Services
Software sourcing advisory across the full range — eight-figure renegotiations and inherited contract messes alike. Renewals, RFPs, redlines, license cleanup, business cases. The engagement scales to the problem, not the prestige.
See how I can help →Establish what your organization actually needs from a platform, before any vendor is in the room. Requirements drive everything that follows.
Compare alternatives against your requirements, model the all-in cost of each path, and identify the decision that holds up under scrutiny.
Build the governance and review cadence that keeps the platform decision strong through every renewal cycle and market change.
The methodology is the same across all three services. The scope and depth changes based on your situation.
Essays on software procurement, vendor strategy, and the structural forces that make enterprise deals work.
Enterprise software pricing is not transparent. Vendors build layered pricing structures that exploit information asymmetry: the Requirements Tax (you don't know what you need), the Attention Tax (you can't evaluate everything), and the Leverage Tax (you're always negotiating from weakness). This essay breaks down how each tax works and where the real negotiating leverage actually lives.
Read essay →Let's talk about what that looks like.
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