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Your leverage isn’t what your supplier saved. It’s what you could do instead.

AI is changing how suppliers deliver work, but that doesn’t automatically mean their productivity saving belongs to the buyer.

In Episode 4 of Procurement at AI Speed, I look at a more useful commercial question:

Is the price still right for the service we would buy today?

AT&T’s move to bring more routine legal work in-house with AI provides a useful example. Rather than simply negotiating a lower hourly rate, some of the work itself moved.

That changes the sourcing conversation.

In this episode, I explore three questions to bring into your next renewal:

1. Under the deal we signed, who keeps the efficiency gain?
2. Which parts of this service would we buy differently today?
3. When is our next real chance to reprice — and what needs to be ready by then?

The episode also looks at why longer-term contracts may need a price review when AI materially changes how the service is delivered — not as an automatic price cut, but as a reason to reopen the commercial discussion.

And there’s an important caution: a low price built on future AI productivity that hasn’t actually materialised may simply move the commercial problem into delivery.

The practical takeaway:

Don’t start by trying to prove how much AI saved the supplier.

Start with something you can actually test:

What would we buy differently today?

Procurement at AI Speed is a short-form series on what AI changes commercially for procurement — and where human judgement still matters.

Hosted by Zina. By KaiZina.

Explore KaiZina kaizina.com.au

Sources & further reading

Reuters — How AT&T is using AI to reduce its reliance on law firms, 8 October 2026.

Reuters — AI reshapes India’s IT services sector contracts as clients demand more for less, August 2026.