Tropic

Join us IRL at a happy hour we're calling Procurement Uncorked...to kick off DPW in New York 🥂 For those attending DPW next week: Justin Etkin, Michael Shields, Jordana Holand, and Ryan Rickenbach are hosting a fun happy hour ahead of the DPW Opening Party. 📅 Tuesday, June 2nd at 5-7pm 🥂 Black Mountain Wine House in Brooklyn RSVP here -- https://lnkd.in/g7hkZsrJ 500+ reviews and 4.7 stars on Google? Black Mountain has got a GREAT curated selection of beer and wine + it's less than a 10 min walk to the Opening Party. 😏

Let's keep saving businesses time and money...with AI, supplier intelligence, and outstanding human expertise and support 😁 Truly grateful to the finance and procurement teams that trust us to make procurement 10X more impactful to their business. 💜

Stripe bundles existing products into an "Authorization Boost." 1Password increases list price for their business tier. Hightouch shifts from MQR to sync-based pricing model. The latest Expert Insights feature pricing model changes, price increases, fee migrations, contract term changes, acquisition impacts, and more across 20+ suppliers in the market. As our team learns, you learn too. Swipe below and dig through more on the Intelligence Hub 👉 https://lnkd.in/gYp6Crh4

My leadership team told me not to do this. We spent months debating whether to make Tropic's Expert Insights public. Real-time alerts when suppliers raise prices, restructure plans, or bury traps in contract terms. Things like - new Stripe product bundles, Alteryx forcing migrations, 1Password hiking prices. This is a big part of our proprietary edge, and the argument against giving them away was obvious. I said screw it. Today we launch the Tropic Intelligence Hub - free, public, no gate. Powered by $21B in spend across thousands of suppliers. Check it out here: https://lnkd.in/eiBJQ6sT What's happening in the technology market is crazy: - AI-Native spend grew 127% YoY in the enterprise - Legacy SaaS NDR slipped below 100% - Supplier are pushing 20-37% renewal uplifts with "AI features" Changes are happening faster than finance and procurement teams can track. This hub exists so you stay ahead. This will update continuously - as we learn, you learn.

The Tropic Intelligence Hub is live, free, and open to every buyer! 👀 Justin Etkin said screw it and let the Expert Insights out. $21B+ worth of real-time price data, trends, and supplier insights from real contracts and negotiations led by real humans with specialized expertise in different software categories. Stay on top of what’s shifting in the market + what’s working to save money in real-time: ✅ The pricing changes ✅ The windows already closing ✅ The negotiation levers that still get you better pricing and terms These are the types of insights that actually move deals because it’s been tested at the table. Check it out as we continue to update it 👉 https://lnkd.in/gh-EDans

Have you ever noticed that companies focus much more on outputs than inputs? Why do you think that is? It makes sense as the outputs are the goals they aspire towards. But the outputs are a result of inputs. And it’s in the inputs that we can drive transformation. And I believe it’s the inputs we need to better harness for true performance management. The partnership between Tropic and Adyen is a good example of strong procurement inputs leading to strong financial outputs. Adyen was able to generate these outputs and outcomes: - Save 18% on a $1.2M contract - Realize 30% of their proposals had room to negotiate further - Benchmark $7M of their spend in just 6 months …By investing into these inputs: - Benchmarking every proposal - Using supplier intelligence - Guidance from human procurement experts What a fun case study into confidently answering their CFO’s question, “How do we know we got a good deal?” More here: https://lnkd.in/eAURqTmz

Businesses need to be MORE deliberate in how they measure AI ROI. 2 CFOs (from Zapier and Nium) are doing it right. Steal 5 ways they’re doing it: 1. Plug AI into your existing OKR map: If you're spending $1M on AI tools, those investments should compress the timelines on goals you're already tracking. 2. Segment AI spend by team, by user, by problem being solved, by activity type: That granularity creates the before-state you need to measure anything meaningful. Visibility comes first, ROI second. 3. “Time saved” is the most misleading AI metric out there - keep asking beyond that: Every time someone says AI saved them time, ask "so what?" Keep asking until you hit a real business outcome. Example: time saved that accelerates an upsell is real ROI. 4. Compare team output against team size over time: If output is rising and headcount isn't, AI is working even if you can't pinpoint every specific efficiency. 5. Stop treating AI tools and people as separate line items - give leaders one bucket and let them decide the mix: The question stops being “how much should we spend on AI?” and becomes “what's the most efficient path to the outcome?” These are all great methods to measure the ROI of your AI investments. AI costs are very tricky to manage right now. Experiment with these for your business and let me know what sticks! P.S. This is all from a convo between my colleague Justin Etkin, Ryan Roccon, and Andre Mancl few months ago - I thought it would be great to bubble this back up given how important the topic is right now.

How to control OpenAI and Anthropic costs 👉 2 buckets and 6 levers First things first, segment that spend into either bucket: 1. LLM Licenses 2. LLM APIs Costs balloon FAST both ways. Once you bucket your OpenAI and Anthropic spend into the right category, you can better understand (and implement) the levers it takes to control these costs under the right bucket. Levers like: ✅ Audit your license tiers (don't overpay for usage that never happens) ✅ Set hard spending limits at the org and user level (fastest win) ✅ Commit to one-year API deals at 60-70% of forecast (not 100%) ✅ Don't consolidate into one provider (optionality is leverage) ✅ And more Full breakdown below - use it as your starting point.