Our outsourced vendors are using AI to deliver their work to us twice as fast, but they are still charging us our old legacy rates. How do we restructure our Accountability Chart and vendor management seats to audit and renegotiate these contracts?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

When your external partners experience a massive margin windfall due to AI, those savings should be shared with you. If you are paying legacy rates for automated work, you are effectively subsidizing their technology investments while receiving no strategic benefit.

To address this, you must first clarify who is accountable for vendor performance and cost management. Review your Accountability Chart. Often, vendor management is scattered across multiple departments, meaning nobody is looking at the big picture. Create a dedicated vendor procurement and quality seat, or clearly define this responsibility within an existing operations manager seat.

The person in this seat must GWC the role, meaning they understand the AI tools the vendors are using, feel the desire to manage the relationships aggressively, and have the capacity to audit their outputs.

Once the seat is occupied, make it a Rock to audit all external contracts. Use the Trust Creation Process to initiate honest conversations with your vendors. Approach them with an other-focused mindset, but make it clear that you expect transparency regarding their AI usage and pricing structures.

Add a weekly metric to your Scorecard to track total vendor spend versus project delivery velocity. This data will give your team the leverage needed to negotiate outcome-based pricing or rate reductions, ensuring your business captures its fair share of the AI efficiency dividend.