What Warfield Is About: The Reset, the Pilot, and Where AI Fits

Here's something nobody tells you when a company grows past the "the owner signs everything" stage.

Your vendor contracts keep renewing.

Insurance. Telecom. Software. Logistics. Facilities. Every year a new invoice shows up, a little higher than last year's, and somebody approves it because it's due Friday and nobody owns it.

That's not a people problem. It's a seat problem. Nobody is sitting in the procurement seat.

That empty seat is why Warfield Consulting Group exists.

What we're about

I'm Meredith Warfield. I spent 20+ years in procurement and contracts at Halliburton, WSP, Tailored Brands and CDW. For my last four years at CDW, I was the only person working software renewals. That was 250+ renewals a year, and $2M+ in validated savings in a single year.

Big companies have whole teams doing that work. Small and mid-size companies usually have nobody. That goes double in the first 18 months after a private equity deal, when the CFO or controller is already doing three jobs and vendor contracts land at the bottom of the pile.

So that's who we serve: small and mid-size companies with no procurement team. We step into that empty seat, find where you're overpaying, fix it, and set you up so it doesn't creep back.

No new hire. No new department. (And no 40-page binder nobody reads.)

The Warfield Vendor Reset: Find. Fix. Keep.

Every client gets the same process. On purpose. A process you can repeat is a process you can trust.

1. Find. We pull your spend, contracts and invoices into one view: every vendor, what you pay, what you signed, when it renews and when the notice deadline hits. This is where the surprises live. Auto-renewals nobody tracked. Licenses nobody uses. Price increases that slid in quietly. Terms that only protect the vendor.
2. Fix. Then we go to work. Renegotiate rates, right-size what you pay for, push back on the uplift and clean up the terms that put you at risk. You get new agreements, not a list of suggestions.
3. Keep. Savings that disappear at the next renewal aren't savings. You get a Vendor Playbook and renewal tracking that flags each contract well before its notice date, so you're never negotiating with a deadline breathing down your neck again. If you'd rather we keep holding the seat, that's what Warfield Vendor Office is for.

The pilot: three spots, and I'm putting skin in the game

I'll be honest with you. "You keep 100% of the savings" sounds great. It didn't get people talking. So I'm putting my money where my mouth is.

Why only three? Because I do this work myself, and I'd rather do three right than ten halfway.

Where AI fits (and where it doesn't)

Yes, we use AI. Building AI tools is honestly one of my favorite parts of this work. At CDW I turned my renewal budget spreadsheet into a Copilot agent that stakeholders could ask questions, and I built tools that caught purchase-to-pay problems like missing POs and invoices that showed up before the contract was even signed.

Here's how AI shows up for clients:

• Speed. AI helps sort hundreds of invoices and contracts fast, so Find takes weeks, not months.
• Catching what people miss. Renewal dates, notice windows, and price creep across years of invoices.
• Human judgment on every call. AI reads. I decide. Nothing goes to a vendor without my review, and AI only touches your data with your agreement.

Then there's the other side of AI: what your vendors are doing with it.

Vendors are adding AI features, AI usage pricing and AI terms to contracts you already have. Who owns your data? Who owns what the AI produces? What happens when it gets something wrong? Most of those terms are written by the vendor, for the vendor. You don't know what you don't know, and they count on that.

That's why AI governance is part of what we do. We review the AI terms in your vendor agreements and push for AI to get its own addendum, with clear definitions, data rights, IP ownership, performance metrics and risk allocation.

So, what now?

If you're a CFO, controller or owner at a small or mid-size company with no procurement team, and your renewals just... happen to you, let's talk.

Ask about the pilot while there are still seats.

Meredith