The situation
The manufacturer was twelve weeks from the end of a three year ETLA. Adobe had opened the renewal conversation with a double digit uplift applied to the existing seat count, framed as a routine continuation. Procurement had no independent view of usage and no benchmark for whether the price was fair, so the default path was to accept and move on.
What Adobe wanted
Adobe wanted to roll the agreement forward at the inflated baseline, keep the seat count locked, and apply the uplift on top. The proposal leaned on the convenience of continuity and the short runway to renewal, with little detail on what was actually deployed or used across the estate.
What we did
We reconciled the full entitlement against active usage and found a large block of seats assigned to leavers, duplicate accounts, and all apps licences held by single app users. We benchmarked the unit pricing against comparable enterprise deals, reset the seat baseline to real demand, and rebuilt the renewal as a buyer side proposal rather than a response to Adobe's number.
With the renewal date now working as our leverage instead of Adobe's, we negotiated the seat count down, capped the future uplift, and won swap rights so the manufacturer could move entitlements as the business changed.
The verified outcome
The signed renewal came in 38 percent below Adobe's opening proposal, with a reset baseline, a capped uplift for the new term, and flexibility the previous agreement never had. The saving was verified against both the prior contract and the original quote.
