{"slug":"business/43-procurement-faq","title":"43 — Procurement FAQ","section":"business","sectionLabel":"Business","status":"unclassified","type":"document","path":"business/43-procurement-faq.mdx","bytes":5470,"description":null,"updated":null,"source":"integratewise/Integratewise-docs-wiki","content":"\nStatus: CANONICAL · Commercial OS\nOwner: Founder\nLast verified: 2026-07-21\n\n---\n\n## Purpose\n\nThe buyer's procurement, legal, and finance questions answered once, cleanly — the buyer-facing rendering of [32 Licensing](../05-value-pricing/32-licensing-strategy.md) and [30 Pricing](../05-value-pricing/30-pricing-strategy.md). Send proactively at Commit stage; it shortens the last mile more than any discount.\n\n**Target audience:** Procurement, finance, legal on the buyer side; our sales for reference.\n\n---\n\n## 1. Commercial Terms\n\n**\"How is it priced?\"** Per named-user seat, per month, billed annually (monthly available +20%). Tiers: Starter $19 · Growth $59 · Command $119 · Enterprise custom (15-seat minimum). A seat = one person + their AI Twin — the Twin is never a separate line item.\n\n**\"What's a named seat? Can we share logins?\"** One person's working identity. No shared/concurrent seats — approval attribution and personal Twin scope require identity (a governance feature, not a revenue rule). Reassignment when someone leaves: free, immediate.\n\n**\"Mid-term seat changes?\"** Add anytime at contract rate with quarterly true-up (no retroactive penalties). Reduce at renewal; Enterprise agreements can include a ±10% flex band.\n\n**\"Price protection?\"** Renewal increases capped at max(7%, CPI) with 60-day notice. Multi-year: year-2 price lock free; 2-year prepay −10%.\n\n**\"What discounts exist?\"** Volume (50+ seats −10%, 100+ −15%), design-partner terms (2026 cohort, −50% year 1 with case-study rights), nonprofit/edu −30%. We hold list otherwise — predictable pricing is part of the trust posture.\n\n**\"Payment terms?\"** Net-30, annual upfront. Card or invoice/ACH.\n\n## 2. Evaluation & Onboarding\n\n**\"Free trial?\"** Better: a 30-day **proof of value** — up to 10 seats, full capability, your real tools, three success criteria agreed in writing, decision date attached. No auto-conversion; it ends with a decision, not a surprise invoice.\n\n**\"Implementation costs? Services?\"** None. Connectors are OAuth self-serve (minutes each); first value same-day; onboarding is included ([45](../08-customer-success/45-onboarding-playbook.md)). No implementation partner required — total cost is the subscription ([29 §3 TCO box](../05-value-pricing/29-roi-framework.md)).\n\n**\"Training?\"** The user surface is four controls (Store in Spine, Ask/Assign/Approve Twin). One enablement session included; materials provided.\n\n## 3. Legal & Risk\n\n**\"Whose paper?\"** Ours by default (Order Form + MSA + DPA; Enterprise adds SLA + Security Addendum). Customer paper considered at 100+ seats with our non-negotiables preserved.\n\n**\"Who owns the data?\"** You do — including derived Spine content. Our processing license is service-provision only. **No training of foundation models on your data. No cross-tenant use.** On exit: export anytime (open formats), 60-day retrieval, certified deletion.\n\n**\"Liability?\"** Capped at 12 months of fees, with standard carve-outs (confidentiality, data-protection breach, IP indemnity). IP indemnification included.\n\n**\"SLA?\"** Enterprise: 99.9% with service credits. Other tiers: published status page, best-efforts. We do not contract SLAs we haven't measured — you'll find we under-promise deliberately.\n\n**\"Insurance?\"** Standard commercial stack appropriate to stage (details in security packet); certificates on request.\n\n**\"Vendor lock-in?\"** Structurally minimized: your tools of record keep operating (we assemble, not migrate); Spine exports open-format anytime; AI providers are swappable by configuration. Our retention strategy is compounding value, not exit friction — it's in the contract ([32 §2](../05-value-pricing/32-licensing-strategy.md)).\n\n## 4. Company Diligence (the startup questions, answered straight)\n\n**\"You're early — why should we depend on you?\"** Three structural mitigations before any promises: (1) your systems of record are untouched — worst case you lose a layer, not your operations; (2) your Spine exports — your assembled truth leaves with you; (3) design-partner terms compensate the risk with pricing and roadmap influence. And one promise: honest status, always — see our certification table with dates, not adjectives ([42 §3](42-security-faq.md)).\n\n**\"References?\"** Design-partner references as the cohort matures; until then we offer the deeper substitute: a POV on your own accounts. Evidence in your tenant beats testimony from someone else's.\n\n**\"Roadmap commitments?\"** Directional roadmap shared under NDA ([69](../12-corporate/69-product-roadmap-story.md)); contractual commitments only for scoped Enterprise items with dates we control.\n\n## 5. Procurement Checklist (what we send at Commit — one email)\n\n□ This FAQ · □ Security packet ([42](42-security-faq.md)) · □ Draft Order Form + MSA + DPA · □ W-9/vendor forms · □ Proposal with ROI (their numbers) · □ POV results summary · □ Single named contact (founder) with < 24h response commitment.\n\n**KPIs:** Commit → signature ≤ 3 weeks; procurement-question rounds ≤ 2 (proactive packet working); redline frequency tracked into [32 §3](../05-value-pricing/32-licensing-strategy.md) quarterly review.\n\n---\n\n**Related:** [32 Licensing](../05-value-pricing/32-licensing-strategy.md) · [30 Pricing](../05-value-pricing/30-pricing-strategy.md) · [42 Security FAQ](42-security-faq.md) · [37 Playbook — Play 5](37-sales-playbook.md)\n"}