Marketing Procurement

A new guide for buyers tackles the question procurement keeps being asked: how do you buy AI?

The GTM Operating System: A Buyer’s Guide to AI-Enabled GTM Solutions is authored by Jason Ryan, Head of AI Strategy at Magnus, with a foreword by Mike Lander, it is free to download now.

Marketing procurement teams in FTSE 350 companies, financial services, pharma and professional services are fielding the same request, several times a month: for example “We need an AI-enabled GTM platform.” or “The board wants AI adoption on the roadmap.” and “Can procurement move quickly on this one?”

The pressure is real and the urgency legitimate, but the market hasn’t properly defined what’s being sold. The new guide from Magnus Consulting argues that this is a governance problem, not just a commercial opportunity.

“The brochure language has converged completely, while the products underneath remain categorically different,” says author Jason Ryan, Head of AI Strategy at Magnus Consulting. “Some of these are software licences your team operates. Some are human-delivered services wrapped in a technology interface.

Some are fully managed commercial functions sitting across your CRM, data stack and campaign infrastructure simultaneously. The supplier market has no incentive to make that distinction clear so we built the framework for the buy-side.”

The classification problem

The paper identifies four distinct commercial models now sold under the same AI-enabled GTM branding: software tools the buyer licenses and operates; human-delivered services wrapped in a technology interface; managed services, where the supplier runs a domain of the commercial function; and hybrid blends – often without the blend being made explicit.

These are categorically different commercial commitments, and most procurement frameworks weren’t built to tell them apart. Get the category wrong, the guide argues, and everything downstream inherits the error: wrong contract, wrong expectations, and the wrong dispute eighteen months in, when nobody can agree what “delivery” means.

At the heart of the guide sit three tests that classify almost any supplier in twenty minutes – an operating model test (what does the supplier’s team actually do each week?), an output ownership test (if the relationship ended tomorrow, what do you take with you?) and a governance test (how is delivery measured, week by week and month by month?).

“Marketing procurement has spent two decades professionalising how agencies and martech are bought,” says Teresa Allan, Founder & Managing Partner of Magnus Consulting. “GTM as an Operating System is the next category wave, and it arrives with none of the buying frameworks the last two had. This guide is our contribution to closing that gap before the expensive mistakes get made.”

What the guide covers

• A full classification taxonomy for AI-enabled GTM suppliers – including PEMS, the Platform-Enabled Managed Service category most frequently misclassified by buyers.
• How to test whether a supplier’s AI story is genuine or cosmetic, with an eight-dimension supplier scoring template.
• The five commercial structures – from time and materials to full outcome-based pricing and a matching matrix for which fits what.
• Contract architecture: IP ownership, portability and the exit provisions most AI buyers forget to ask for.
• A benefits realisation framework – baselines, lead and lag indicators, and a governance cadence that holds up to board scrutiny.

In his foreword, Mike Lander, one of the UK’s most respected voices on procurement, commercial models and agency transformation writes: [the guide] gives procurement leaders a way to slow the buying conversation down just enough to test the AI story before it becomes the buying logic.

If a supplier wants the treatment of a strategic partner, they need to be willing to engage in a clear conversation about value creation, governance, ownership, measurement and a credible exit route.”

The guide is free to download, along with a five-minute readiness diagnostic for marketing procurement teams about to take an AI-enabled GTM investment through internal governance.

About the Magnus Consulting

The GTM Operating System: A Buyer’s Guide to AI-Enabled GTM Solutions is authored by Jason Ryan, Head of AI Strategy at Magnus Consulting, with a foreword by Mike Lander. Magnus Consulting is an AI-embedded B2B growth consultancy named in the Financial Times UK Leading Management Consultants list in 2025 and 2026. The guide and diagnostic are free to download at magnusconsulting.co.uk.