Most of the value in a deal is decided before anyone negotiates.

A global manufacturer had a fixed requirement of five days door to door on one of its key supply flows. Five days meant air freight, and the cost had been accepted for years as part of doing business.

Nobody had asked where the five days came from. When the chain was walked step by step with the people who ran it, every step turned out to have added its own buffer, each reasonable on its own. The real need was 25 days. The flow moved from air to ocean freight, cost fell by five to six times, and emissions per kilo fell with it. Nobody negotiated harder.

Gnomon helps companies find the value hidden in their own requirements. Before anyone negotiates a price, we work with the people who set and use each requirement to separate what is truly needed from what has built up over time.

The largest gains are rarely won at the table. They sit in what is being bought, and in the questions nobody has asked about it.

A small manufacturer built its products around one control unit from a single supplier. The frame agreement looked solid, with a short lead time, guarantees and liquidated damages for late delivery.

Then a component shortage hit the market. The real lead time stretched from weeks to many months, production stopped and customer deliveries slipped. There was no other approved unit to switch to, and the compensation in the contract was small next to the lost sales. The contract was strong. The dependence behind it was the problem.

Gnomon helps companies build supply that holds when the market turns. We bring procurement and the technical team together to define what a component has to do rather than which part number it is, and to approve alternatives before they are needed.

Where dependence cannot be avoided, we test stated lead times against the supplier’s real capacity and secure stock or reserved capacity. The best protection against a supplier that cannot deliver is a requirement more than one supplier can meet.

A mid-sized company’s procurement team spent most of its week on purchase orders, chasing quotes and keeping spreadsheets up to date. Management had heard that AI tools could automate much of that work, and two vendors had already offered pilots.

The risk ran both ways. Tools bought without a plan automate a process nobody has questioned, or sit unused. Waiting keeps the team too busy with transactions to work on the suppliers, risks and requirements that decide what the company pays and how exposed it is.

Gnomon helps procurement teams prepare for the way the work is changing. We look at where the team’s time actually goes, decide which work technology should take over, and redesign roles around supplier strategy, risk and working with the business.

The aim is not a smaller team or a new tool for its own sake. It is a team that spends its time where it adds most value, with technology that fits how the company actually works. We have done this at scale, setting up a 400-person sourcing organisation managing €6B of spend.

An international drilling contractor was preparing to mobilise a rig for an offshore drilling contract in Africa. The client’s draft contract put customs clearance on the contractor, with liquidated damages for late arrival.

The clause protected no one. A late rig would cost the client drilling time and the contractor day rate, and only the client had real access to the authorities. Asked how long clearance would take, the client had no answer, so the contractor priced it on experience at 30 days, which made the offer expensive for both sides. The client then went to the authorities and came back with two days. The contract was agreed on that basis, and the 30-day buffer came out of the price.

The same happens in tenders. When a tender leaves risks unclear, one bidder adds a buffer and looks expensive, while another prices at today’s level, wins, and claims the difference later.

Gnomon helps companies place each risk with the party able to control it. We ask suppliers which risks and cost drivers they see, and give each one to the party able to manage it, so offers can be compared like for like and fewer claims arrive after signing. A risk carried by the wrong party is paid for twice: once in the price, and again when it happens.

A manufacturer had a strong agreement with its supplier of control units: a performance guarantee, liquidated damages and an obligation to replace faulty units within set times.

When units began failing in customers’ machines, the supplier could not replace them in time. Replacements came off the same constrained production line as new units, and the wait was months. The customers’ machines stood still, the manufacturer owed them for it, and the supplier’s capped compensation covered only a fraction. The remedy existed on paper. It did not get anyone back to work.

Gnomon helps companies make sure their protections can actually be delivered. We test every remedy against what it has to restore and whether the supplier can realistically perform it, and align it with what the company owes its own customers.

Repair and reuse are often the fastest route back: approved refurbished units, an exchange pool for failed parts and the right to fix simple faults in-house, backed by a reserve of critical units and a second source.

A growing company was building a new production facility, financed by a bank loan and a new equity investor. Late in the process, their advisers reviewed the key contracts.

The gaps appeared one by one. The largest customer could terminate on a change of ownership, which the investment itself would trigger. The main supply contract had low liability caps and no performance guarantee, and the lenders wanted to approve every future change of supplier. With the closing date fixed, the company reopened signed contracts and accepted conditions it would never have agreed to with more time.

Gnomon helps companies find the gaps before the investor’s advisers do. We review key customer and supplier contracts and governance the way an investor or lender would, and fix what we find on the company’s own timetable.

We also help lenders understand the real risks, so their demands fit the business. Where they want control, we agree clear conditions in advance instead of open approval rights.

A mid-sized company renewed its agreement with its most important supplier. Each part of the business came with its own priorities: the proven solution, the lowest price, secure delivery, a signature before year end. The negotiator received a narrow mandate and a set of pre-approved terms.

The discount the company tracked was achieved. In exchange, it accepted a longer term, a price index that only adjusted upwards and a higher minimum volume, which together cost more over the life of the agreement than the discount saved. Every part of the company met its own target, and the company as a whole lost.

Gnomon helps companies negotiate as one. Before the negotiation, we bring everyone involved together on what the deal has to achieve for the company as a whole, what each part really needs, and which trade-offs it accepts.

The negotiator gets room to solve problems within clear boundaries, the key people stay involved throughout, and the outcome is judged on total value, so individual targets don’t undermine the overall deal.

The sales team had won over the people who would use the solution. The sponsor wanted to proceed, and the deal was in the forecast. Then it moved into the buyer’s wider process: supplier approval, budget, commercial terms and sign-off.

Each step asked different questions, about competition, pricing, contractual risk and the business case. The team kept presenting the solution’s benefits and relying on its sponsor, but it wasn’t answering the questions now deciding whether the purchase could go ahead. The deal stalled for weeks, then fell through.

Gnomon helps sales teams understand how their customers actually buy. We bring experience from both sides of the table to map the buyer’s process, from budget and supplier approval to commercial terms and sign-off, and what each step needs to see.

Through live-deal preparation and negotiation training, we help sellers bring a commercial case that goes beyond the sponsor’s support, defend value under pressure and avoid unnecessary concessions. The aim is not to get around anyone in the buyer’s organisation, but to stop losing strong deals late in the process.

The supplier’s main input was steel. The contract fixed the date when it would buy, and in the months before that date, steel prices climbed steeply. The supplier bought on the agreed date, close to the peak, and sent the client the difference.

It had done what the contract said and nothing more. It had not watched the market, warned the client or proposed buying earlier or later. The client was left with two poor choices: pay a cost nobody had tried to avoid, or refuse and risk a supplier that slows down or stops.

Gnomon helps buyers and suppliers manage price risk before the purchase, not after it. We build purchasing plans for key materials into the contract, with a duty to watch the market, warn in time and recommend when to buy, and we agree in advance how the cost of buying early or late is shared.

When a request for more money arrives anyway, we help test it: what the supplier did to avoid the cost, what share of the price is really affected, and what is fair to pay. A price increase is not a blank cheque.

A company had grown by acquiring three smaller businesses. On paper it was one group. In practice, each business still bought the same components from different suppliers on different terms, key contracts carried change-of-control clauses nobody had tested, and when a major supplier agreement came up for renewal, each business negotiated its own part.

The supplier saw one large customer. The group negotiated as three small ones. The value the acquisitions were meant to create stayed on paper, and the exposure in contracts written for the old companies stayed where it was.

Gnomon helps groups become the company they paid for. In procurement, we bring requirements together and decide which suppliers the group wants to depend on. In deal strategy, we make sure key contracts hold under the new ownership, with each risk placed where it can be controlled. In negotiation, we give the group one mandate and one voice.

Value rarely disappears in one decision. It leaks between the parts: between the requirement and the contract, between one part of the business and another, and between what was signed and what the company has become. That is where we work.