Buying Services-as-Software™: A new playbook for enterprise buyers

Enterprises are moving into an era of services-as-software. Yet contracts are still structured as if it’s 1995 outsourcing. BPO and ITO contracts were built for labor arbitrage. Services-as-Software runs on a different logic entirely: outcomes, autonomy, and AI-native delivery.

Join HFS Research’s Senior Advisors for a live session inside the AI-First Deal Labs. We’ll break down exactly how SaS contracts diverge from traditional outsourcing agreements, and what buyers need to renegotiate now.

What we’ll cover:

• Pricing structures. From FTE-based billing to outcome- and consumption-based models.
• Tokenomics. How compute and token consumption reshape cost baselines, and what enterprises need to track that they never had to before.
• Performance metrics. Why SLAs built for humans don’t work for agents, and what replaces them.
• Contractual T&Cs. New clauses enterprises must add, and old ones they must retire.
• Governance. Who owns decisions when AI agents run the process.
• AI sovereignty. Data residency, model ownership, and control rights in an agentic world.

If your team is still buying services the old way, this session will show you what you’re missing and what to renegotiate before your next contract cycle.