NoSaveNoPay vs Big Four Consulting
The short version: Big Four bills you whether they save you anything. We don't.
Honest head-to-head: fees, incentives, vendor independence, outcome accountability. No marketing. The decision factors we'd want if we were choosing.
Deep bench, global travel, audit credentials for board-level reporting, staff-augmentation on multi-year transformations.
Their advisory practices are staffed by generalists billing against partner-level rate cards. A typical Big Four software-negotiation engagement costs $150,000–$500,000 in fees before a single dollar of savings is verified, and the engagement letter explicitly disclaims savings as a success criterion.
Head-to-Head: Every Criterion That Matters
Identical criteria across every comparison we publish. No cherry-picking.
| Criterion | NoSaveNoPay | Big Four consulting firms (Deloitte, KPMG, PwC, EY) |
|---|---|---|
| Fee structure | 25% of verified savings. Zero if savings are zero. | $500–$1,200/hour + expenses, flat-fee $150k–$500k scope. |
| At-risk capital for the buyer | None — we earn only on savings. | All of it — you pay whether savings materialise or not. |
| Time to first negotiation session | 7–14 days | 45–90 days (procurement, MSA, SOW, resourcing) |
| Team composition | Former Oracle, Microsoft, SAP, AWS, IBM vendor executives. | Mix of senior partners and first/second-year analysts doing the actual work. |
| Vendor relationships | Independent — zero reseller or partner agreements. | Deep alliance partnerships with the same vendors you're negotiating against — a structural conflict. |
| Outcome accountability | If we fail to save, you owe nothing. Contractual. | None — scope completion, not savings, is the deliverable. |
| Multi-vendor coverage | Oracle, Microsoft, SAP, Salesforce, AWS, GCP, IBM, ServiceNow, Broadcom/VMware, Workday + 40 more. | Strong in 1–2 vendor practices; patchy elsewhere. |
| Conflict of interest exposure | None — we have no vendor revenue streams. | Billions in vendor alliance revenue — reason to go easy at the table. |
When to choose what
Use Big Four when you need 200 consultants onsite for a five-year SAP transformation. Use NoSaveNoPay when you need to pay less for the software.
How our gainshare actually works
We sign a one-page engagement letter that says three things: (1) we negotiate your nominated contract on your behalf; (2) 25% of verified savings vs. your baseline contract is payable to us; (3) if verified savings are zero, so is our fee. No retainer. No time-and-materials. No hourly billing. Read the detail on our pricing page or see a live walk-through on how it works.
Next steps — two paths, both zero-risk:
- If you have a renewal in the next 120 days: Request a free estimate. 30-minute call, we tell you whether we think there's savings worth chasing, no commitment either way.
- If you're earlier in the cycle: read our vendor-specific playbooks — Oracle, Microsoft, SAP, AWS, Salesforce, ServiceNow, Workday — or browse the blog and case studies.