When the licensing model doesn't match the workforce
The challenge
A high-turnover public-sector organisation was procuring a new payroll and workforce system. The vendor's standard fee model priced on total active employees on the payroll record. For this workforce, that figure was wildly misleading: 2,719 unique people were paid across the year, but only around 1,094 payslips were issued in an average period. As drafted, the contract would have licensed — and charged — against the inflated 2,700+ number, locked for a three-year term.
What I did
I reviewed the commercial model against how the organisation actually pays people, and rewrote the licensing definition to price on average employees paid per period: verified annually from a processed-payslips report, zero-value cessation runs excluded, divided by the standard periods per frequency, rounded up, and locked for the term.
The outcome
Licensing settled at roughly 1,100 rather than 2,700+ — tens of thousands of euro saved every year, across the full three-year term. The vendor had priced per employee for any part of the year; I pointed out how much of this workforce was short-term, and that the model should reflect the people actually being paid in each period. They had room to move to win the business, and did. In the same negotiation I brought the contracted day rate from €965 to €895 — simply by knowing it was negotiable and asking.
- ~1,100 vs 2,700+
- Licensed on the employees actually paid each period — not the 2,700+ the vendor's original per-employee model would have charged on.
- Tens of thousands of euro
- Saved every year, across the full three-year term.
Why it mattered
The evaluation had taken months; the contract was days from signing, and the commercial detail still hadn't been read line by line. Closing that gap before signature is the work.