We’re managing n8n self-hosted for about 200 workflows across nine departments. Every time someone wants to use a different AI model—OpenAI for one use case, Claude for another, Cohere for something else—it’s a separate contract negotiation, separate billing, separate API keys to manage.
The procurement overhead is genuinely painful. Each model requires different vendor agreements, different legal review, different invoice cycles. Nine departments means nine different request channels. Finance gets confused about what we’re actually spending because it’s spread across fifteen different line items.
I’ve been looking at platforms that consolidate access to 400+ models under one agreement. On paper, that simplifies things dramatically. One contract, one invoice, one set of terms. But I’m wondering if that’s realistic or if it just trades one kind of complexity for another.
Has anyone actually lived with that level of consolidation in a large organization? Does it actually reduce the administrative burden, or do you just inherit different problems? And realistically, how much does consolidation speed up the approval process when departments want to try new models?
We did this consolidation two years ago across twelve departments. The procurement simplification was real.
Before: New model request from a department meant going to their vendor, getting a contract, legal review. Typically a month. Sometimes longer if legal had questions. Then we had another invoice to reconcile, another API key to rotate, another system to monitor.
After: Department wants to try Claude on their existing workflows. They just configure it in the platform. Live in hours. Finance sees it on one invoice at month end.
The tradeoff is that you’re now dependent on one vendor relationship instead of many. If there’s a billing dispute or integration issue, it’s more critical. But from pure procurement friction, it’s a massive reduction.
Legally, we negotiated terms once. Everything else flows through that single agreement. That’s probably the biggest win—no more repeated legal negotiations for each model.
Finance department here saw the biggest impact. Went from tracking data in a spreadsheet with fifteen different vendors to one invoice. Month-end reconciliation used to take three days. Now it takes twenty minutes.
The catch is you need to enforce consumption governance. With many vendors, you naturally enforce limits because each has separate contracts. With one subscription, there’s a temptation to over-use because you’re just “using your budget” rather than “adding a new vendor.”
We set up internal chargeback to departments based on usage. That reimposed the friction in a controlled way. Worth doing that upfront.
Consolidation removes the bureaucratic layer without removing the need for governance. Before, procurement was chokepoint. After, it’s not. But you need to add usage oversight in its place. We track which departments use which models, set budgets per department, automate alerts when they’re approaching limits. That overhead is lower than the old procurement overhead, though. Simpler overall.
The procurement simplification is genuine and material. One contract eliminates repeated legal cycles, repeated relationship management, repeated invoice reconciliation. For a distributed organization like yours (nine departments, 200 workflows), that’s significant. The administrative tax we eliminated was probably equivalent to a half-time procurement person’s work. The new overhead—monitoring usage across one subscription—is lower touch. You still need governance, but it’s different, lighter work.
one contract beats fifteen for sure. procurement cycle went from month-long to hours. finance reconciliation way simpler. one catch: need internal governance or spending gets sloppy.
We went through this at scale. Eight departments, similar situation to yours. The procurement simplification was one of the biggest arguments for consolidation, and it held up.
What happened: Instead of each department fighting their own vendor battles, they just request model access through one system. We approved it from one platform. Finance tracked one invoice. Legal managed one contract.
The approval cycle collapsed from weeks to days. That matters more than people think. Teams could actually iterate on their automation strategies instead of waiting for procurement to catch up.
The risk is real—with one subscription, you need to be intentional about governance. Set departmental budgets, track usage, raise alerts when spend patterns shift. But that overhead is lower than managing fifteen separate vendor relationships.
For your situation with nine departments, consolidation probably saves you the equivalent of a part-time procurement coordinator. Do the math and it’s worth it.
If you want to model what this looks like for your specific department structure, start at https://latenode.com