Most enterprise software renewals are passive. The contract comes up, procurement processes it, maybe there is a negotiation on price, and the subscription continues. The product gets evaluated once at purchase and then assumed to be delivering value until someone complains loudly enough.
AI contracts deserve a different process before renewal, not because vendors are more dishonest than others, but because the conditions that justified the initial purchase change significantly over time and the renewal represents a decision with much higher switching costs than the original purchase.
Here is the specific review I run before any AI contract renewal.
Pull the actual usage data for the most recent six months, not from memory and not from the vendor's dashboard if you can avoid it. You want raw numbers: who used it, how often, for what types of tasks. In most deployments I have reviewed, the active user count at month eighteen is 40 to 60% of the active user count at month three. The enthusiasm of initial adoption rarely sustains. Understanding specifically who stopped using it and what they have said about why is more informative than the aggregate number.
Talk to the people who use it most and the people who stopped using it. Ask them the same question: if this tool went away tomorrow, what would change about your work? The people who use it most will tell you where the real value is concentrated. The people who stopped will tell you where the product failed to meet their needs. Both answers matter for the renewal decision and for the negotiation.
