The Value Standard
Most Firms Claim an AI Return Without Knowing the Cost
Ninety-eight percent of executives report a return on their AI. Twenty-six percent can see what it costs. A return without a denominator is an impression, not a ratio.
Read More‘Unit Economics’ Means Something Different to Buyers and Sellers
Boards, finance teams and vendors all say unit economics. Each one means a different cost basis, and the buyer that waits for the vendor’s definition has already conceded the measure.
Read MoreHow One Gartner Figure Changed Meaning in Business Cases
A number restated three times is not three sources. One Gartner figure inverted its meaning in two public steps, and the buyer’s own evidence file is where the standard applies first.
Read MoreVendor Total Cost of Ownership Models Miss Your Biggest Costs
A TCO model prices what its author can see. The costs that decide the outcome live on your side of the table, and they do not behave like line items.
Read MoreWhy Buyers Go Quiet With Vendors, and What Gets Through
Sellers treat buyer silence as a wall the right technique will breach. It is a line item. Disclosure costs capacity no buyer has, and only one kind of channel scales.
Read MoreUK Government Contracts Will Weigh Social Value and Report on It
On 5 August the UK published its value model: terms in advance, minimum weights of 10 and 20 percent, KPIs on a public record, and consequences at the next award. The mechanism transfers.
Read MoreHow a Purchase Stops Paying Off Without Anything Breaking
Organizations are built to detect failure. Value rarely fails. It drifts, through three forces that each look reasonable at the moment they operate and leave the record looking clean.
Read MoreThe Numbers Behind Big Purchases Are the Only Ones Nobody Audits
Revenue has recognition criteria. Earnings carry personal certification. Cash flow forces a reconciliation. The numbers that justify enterprise purchases carry none of it, and no standard requires them to.
Read MoreWhen Vendors Call Your Terms ‘Uncustomary,’ Keep Them
When a buyer writes its own standard, sellers seldom call it wrong; they call it uncustomary. GSA’s AI clause drew exactly that objection, and its final text kept the precedence rule industry had asked it to revisit.
Read MoreThe US Government’s AI Contract Clause Tests Everything but Value
The largest buyer on earth claimed the right to test its AI vendors on terms it alone controls, and attached consequences to everything except whether the value arrived.
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