Renewal sprint
€8k to €15k, fixed. Single contract, 4 to 6 weeks, from baseline to signed renewal. Best fit for a telecom MSA, a major SaaS renewal, or an OEM refresh.
IT Procurement Consulting · operator-run
IT procurement consulting, run by an operator who signed the contracts.
Your IT spend grew 30%+ last year. The renewal calendar is a wall of dates, the SaaS portfolio expanded sideways, the telecom contract auto-renewed before anybody read the bill. Meanwhile every IT vendor's commercial team knows more about your renewal cycle than your procurement lead does.
Honest disclosure up front: I have not spent 10 years inside SaaS, OEM or cloud sourcing. What I do have is 10 years of indirect-procurement negotiation, a €25M+ EMEA telecom MSA signed at Amazon (Vodafone, 27 countries), and a daily practice on the stack itself — LLMs as working tools, Claude in build, a critical read on the AI vendor market as it's forming. The bet is simple: a trained negotiator who lives in the stack beats a category specialist who cannot hold a negotiation table.
IT procurement, negotiated by a tech-fluent operator. Not benchmarked by a junior, not pitched by a partner who will not run the table.
Book a 15-min renewal call →No deck. Just your contract on screen.
The paradox
IT is the fastest-growing indirect category, and the one most procurement teams understand the least.
Most CFOs and CIOs I work with cannot answer three basic questions on their IT contract portfolio: which contracts auto-renew in the next 90 days, which OEM and software vendors hold a price-uplift clause, and which SaaS seats are paid but unused. None of these answers live in a slide deck. They live in the contracts themselves, and almost nobody opens the contracts.
On the other side, IT vendors invest more in their commercial teams than your procurement team does. Their account executives know your renewal date, your closest competitor's deal, and your CIO's promotion cycle. You are negotiating asymmetric information at the worst moment of the cycle: 30 days before contract end.
IT procurement consulting is not about adding methodology on top. It is about reading the contracts, modelling the should-cost, and walking into the negotiation with the same information the vendor already has on you.
Workstreams
Five IT workstreams I run end to end.
Each workstream is a distinct entry point. You can pick one (a renewal sprint) or chain several (a portfolio sprint that combines SaaS rationalisation and OEM negotiation). Triggers, scope, and outcome levers are below.
1 · SaaS portfolio rationalisation
Trigger event
Renewal cycle approaching, SaaS bill growing 25%+ year on year, seats unused but still paid.
Scope of work
Licence audit across 30 to 200 SaaS tools, usage data extraction from each platform, redundancy mapping, renegotiation calendar with priority order.
Outcome lever
A defensible negotiating position on every renewal: leverage map per contract, redundancy view, calendar your CFO can plan against. The savings come from the discipline applied; the bracket depends on your starting point and how the existing contracts were written.
2 · Telecom and connectivity MSAs
Trigger event
Master Services Agreement up for renegotiation. Fixed line, mobile, MPLS, SD-WAN, or all of the above.
Scope of work
Contract baseline reconstruction (the bill is never the contract), service-level mapping, market-rate benchmarking, RFP or directed renegotiation, contract drafting and sign-off.
Outcome lever
Documented savings, cleaner SLAs, exit clauses you can actually use. The one workstream where I have direct track record: €25M+ EMEA scale, all 27 EMEA countries on a single MSA, 30%+ savings signed off.
3 · OEM hardware negotiation
Trigger event
Server, storage, network, or end-user device refresh. OEM is squeezing the discount band, channel partner is opaque on margin.
Scope of work
Should-cost modelling on the configuration, multi-OEM RFP, three-bid commercial alignment, contract clauses on price holds, mid-life price re-opener, and end-of-support.
Outcome lever
Discount band defended, channel margin made visible, multi-year price hold instead of annual surprise. Same negotiation discipline I have used on €600M+ of indirect spend, applied to the OEM channel; not a category I have lived in for 10 years.
4 · Cloud and data centre
Trigger event
AWS or Azure Enterprise Discount Programme negotiation, colocation contract up for renewal, reserved-instance commitment review.
Scope of work
Workload baseline, commitment shape (1y vs 3y, RI vs SP vs EDP), price-per-unit modelling, alternative-architecture costing as leverage. Colo: power, space, cross-connect, and exit clauses.
Outcome lever
Right-sized commitment, no over-commitment lock-in, exit cleanly priced. The discipline is to negotiate against the workload roadmap, not last year's invoice. Industry analyses widely cite 10 to 25% over-commitment on poorly-structured EDPs; the playbook for fixing that is the same playbook I run on any indirect category.
5 · AI tooling procurement
Trigger event
Model API spend going from experiment to production, GPU compute commitment requested by an internal team, AI vendor selection on a new use case.
Scope of work
API pricing benchmark (input vs output, cached vs uncached), commitment modelling, DPA review, data residency, fall-back vendor strategy.
Outcome lever
This is the workstream I write about most and live in daily. LLM as working tool, Claude in build, a live read on the AI vendor market as it forms. The negotiation discipline plus the active tech literacy lines up here better than anywhere else. See /series/ai-digital for the underlying frame and /services/ia for the procurement-of-AI maturity model.
Public thinking
Where the tech-fluent claim is visible.
The honest version of the IT pitch is that the negotiation discipline travels, and the tech literacy keeps it current. Both are public, on purpose. Read what I write, sign up for the monthly take, then judge.
AI & Digital series
Long-form writing on procurement after the AI noise: vendor pricing, agentic workflows, what is real vs theatre, what to put under contract. Updated as the market moves.
Read the series →Indirect, Augmented · monthly newsletter
First Tuesday of each month, 07:30 CET. One map per issue on AI applied to indirect procurement. No fluff, no sponsor slots, one-click unsubscribe.
See the latest issue →
Case in focus
Vodafone EMEA MSA, renegotiated end to end.
Amazon EMEA needed one telecom contract that worked across 27 countries, with 25,000+ lines, fixed and mobile, including the long tail of country-specific regulatory quirks. The legacy footprint was a patchwork of country contracts, none aligned on SLA, all renewing on different dates, with no portfolio-level reporting.
Across 18 months I ran the full re-negotiation: contract baseline reconstruction, country-by-country service mapping, structured RFP across two finalists, commercial alignment session-by-session, and final MSA drafting with the legal team. The MSA went live as one document, one renewal date, one set of SLAs, one reporting line.
Headline outcome: 30%+ savings, documented and verified. Operational outcome: a portfolio that Amazon EMEA could actually manage post-signature, instead of a contract that needed three FTEs just to interpret.
Other IT-adjacent engagements
Three more proofs, different angles.
IT procurement bleeds into adjacent categories: procurement tech, e-procurement, and infrastructure procurement. Three engagements where the work was IT-shaped but the perimeter was wider.
- Digital S2P · BPO
Procurement-tech selection and S2P transformation, including the ERP-side change. Procurement of procurement, run end to end.
S2P live, on time - E-procurement · Tail
Tail-spend channelled through Amazon Business with a custom catalogue, automated approval rules, and supplier consolidation. E-procurement architecture from scratch.
40%+ tail consolidated - Telecom infra · EU build
Stood up the procurement function for a new telecom infrastructure build in Europe. From supplier panel to MSA portfolio, across hardware and services.
Procurement live in 90 days
How it starts
From renewal email to first negotiation lever.
- Week 1
Contract and spend baseline
I read the contracts. All of them. Then the invoices for the trailing 12 months. Then the support and incident logs if relevant. Output: a 4-page baseline note that maps every commercial lever in the current portfolio, with priority order.
- Weeks 2 to 3
Market position and leverage map
Benchmark against comparable EMEA deals (public S-1 disclosures, Gartner pricing where credible, my own database of negotiated deals). Output: a leverage map showing where you are over-paying, where you are at market, and where you have hidden negotiation room.
- Week 4 onward
Negotiation execution
Either I run the negotiation directly (recommended for renewals under €10M ACV) or I prep your CIO and procurement lead with talk tracks, BATNA, walkaways, and a session-by-session script. Every session documented, every concession traced.
Pricing posture
What it costs.
IT procurement consulting is priced by sprint, not by hour. Brackets up front, no scope creep, no surprise multipliers.
Portfolio sprint
€25k to €60k, fixed. 5 to 15 contracts across categories, 8 to 12 weeks, full SaaS-portfolio rationalisation or cloud EDP renegotiation included.
Embedded operator
Bespoke, anchored on perimeter spend. 3 to 6 months full-time-equivalent on your IT procurement perimeter. For multi-track renewal calendars or post-merger consolidation work.
Advisory retainer
€2.5k per month. Light advisory line after a sprint closes: I review your negotiation prep, I read the contracts before you sign, I do not run them for you. Best fit for teams who have learned the playbook and want a second pair of eyes.
Pricing is anchored on the spend at stake, not on the hours billed. If your renewal is €50k ACV, a renewal sprint does not make sense and I will tell you. If it is €5M, the sprint pays for itself before the first session.
Who this is for
CIOs, IT Directors, CFOs sponsoring an IT cost-out programme.
You have a telecom contract on the renewal calendar, a SaaS portfolio growing 25%+ per year, or an OEM refresh that you suspect is over-priced. You want a specialist, not a generalist, and you want the specialist to sign off on the result, not just on the methodology.
If your IT procurement team has a senior, technical, vendor-fluent bench, you do not need this service. You need market intel and benchmarks, which is a different conversation.
Who runs it
Alex Lio.
10+ years in procurement. 6 years at Amazon EMEA: EMEA telecom MSA with Vodafone (25k+ lines, 27 countries, 30%+ savings), EU energy across 800+ buildings (€150M per year), first catalogue strategy for Amazon Logistics. Direct hands-on negotiation history sits on telecom and energy. On SaaS, OEM, cloud and AI tooling the value is the negotiation discipline carried over, plus a daily practice on the stack itself: LLM as a working tool, Claude in build, monthly published writing on AI in procurement. French and English, including legal English on commercial contracts. Not a consultancy. Not a deck factory. One operator, on your renewal calendar, for the duration.
- EMEA telecom MSA signed
- €25M+
- EMEA countries, one contract
- 27
- Managed spend
- €600M+
- In procurement
- 10+ yrs
FAQ
Common questions.
Do you work directly with the software vendors?
Yes. I run the negotiation directly with vendor commercial teams when you want me to (most common for telecom, SaaS, OEM). I can also work in the background, prepping your CIO and procurement lead with a session-by-session script, BATNA, and walkaways. Either model, the work is the same; the public-facing handle is different.
How do you handle conflicts of interest?
I am vendor-agnostic and I do not take referral fees or rebates from any IT vendor, ever. The list of vendors I have negotiated against is public on request. If I have a recent engagement that creates a conflict on a specific RFP, I disclose it before the scoping call and recuse.
Do you use TBM, FinOps, or any specific tooling?
I use whatever your stack already has. If you have Apptio, ServiceNow, FinOps Foundation toolkits, or any TBM platform, I work in them. If you do not, I start in Excel with auditable formulas; a tool gets added when the volume justifies it, not before. I do not sell or resell tooling.
Can you co-pilot with my CISO and legal team?
Yes. On any IT engagement, security and legal review are part of the work, not an afterthought. I bring contract templates that have already passed enterprise legal review, and I work session-by-session with your CISO and legal lead. No contract is signed without their explicit sign-off.
Do you work in English?
Yes. Native French, fluent in English, including legal English on commercial contracts. Most EMEA engagements run in English by default; FR-only perimeters in French. Bilingual artefacts are a standard option.
Can you take over a renewal that is already mid-cycle?
Yes, and it happens often. The earliest I can join is helpful, but I have come into negotiations as late as 14 days before contract end and still moved the commercial outcome materially. Earlier is always cheaper.
Do you negotiate AI vendor contracts (OpenAI, Anthropic, etc.)?
Yes. AI vendor negotiation is a 2026 category in its own right, and I have written about it publicly. The same negotiation discipline applies: contract baseline, commitment shape, exit clauses, data residency, DPA. Cross-link to /services/ia for the strategic frame.
15 minutes on your IT renewal
Bring the contract. Leave with a written next move.
15 minutes. No deck, no pitch. You bring the contract that is up for renewal, I read it on screen, you leave with a written one-line next move and a numbered priority order on the rest of the portfolio.
Book the 15-min renewal call →