CFOs Unable to Forecast SaaS Spend for First Time in a Decade as Outcome-Based Billing Replaces Seat Invoices

PYMNTS·high signal

Across enterprises, finance teams report that the shift from per-seat to consumption- and outcome-based SaaS pricing — led by Salesforce's $0.10/action Agentforce Flex Credits and Adobe's Firefly agent billing — has broken traditional software budget modeling. CFOs cannot reliably project SaaS costs in annual planning cycles, triggering procurement freezes and contract renegotiations across the stack. The irony: the pricing model shift that SaaS vendors hoped would increase land-and-expand revenue is creating the friction needed for enterprises to evaluate wholesale platform replacement.