Pilot contracts pay by man-days and meeting milestones; go-live day and metrics haven't moved. Man-days buy busyness—not outcomes. Tie payment milestones to pre-agreed acceptance metrics: 90-day bypass rate, lead time, inventory turns, or first-pass yield. Miss—hold final payment; hit—enter rollout. Contracts constrain results; weekly reports constrain process.
Man-days are easy to count. Metrics are hard to negotiate. What's hard belongs in payment.
Metrics Before Kickoff
Pilot scope, baseline, targets, and data definitions go in contract annex. Payments split: baseline confirmed, go-live, metrics met. Man-days cap cost—not acceptance. Scope changes update metrics—don't just add people.
- Ban "start first, define metrics later."
- Data from production systems—not vendor slides.
- Miss gets remediation window; after window, reduce per terms.
Outcomes Are Payable Deliverables
The XYN digital intelligence system makes pilot metrics a queryable acceptance page. Contracts aligned to that page align partners to the floor. Aligned to man-days, the floor becomes an hour container.
Open the active pilot contract—what metric unlocks the next payment? If it's man-days, amend annex before paying next.
