Master Contract Review and Negotiation for Software Agreements

Optimize spend with significant cost savings and negotiate from a position of strength.

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Your Challenge

Internal stakeholders usually have different – and often conflicting – needs and expectations that require careful facilitation and management.
Vendors have well-honed negotiating strategies. Without understanding your own position and leverage points, it’s difficult to withstand their persuasive – and sometimes pushy – tactics.
Software – and software licensing – is constantly changing, making it difficult to acquire and retain subject matter expertise.

Our Advice

Critical Insight

Conservatively, it’s possible to save 5% of the overall IT budget through comprehensive software contract review.
Focus on the terms and conditions, not just the price.
Learning to negotiate is crucial.

Impact and Result

Look at your contract holistically to find cost savings.
Guide communication between vendors and your organization for the duration of contract negotiations.
Redline the terms and conditions of your software contract.
Prioritize crucial terms and conditions to negotiate.

Contributors

Christiaan Murphy, Global Software Category Manager at CGI
Jeffery I. Gordon, SVP, author of Software Licensing Handbook & Mortgage Lending Vendor Operations Manager at BT&T
David W. Tollen, Attorney at Law & Founder at Sycamore Legal, P.C.

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Get to Action

Start here – read the Executive Brief

Read our concise Executive Brief to find out how to redline and negotiate your software agreement, review Info-Tech’s methodology, and understand the four ways we can support you in completing this project.

Gather requirements

Build and manage your stakeholder team, then document your business use case.
Redline contract

Redline your proposed software contract.
Negotiate contract

Create a thorough negotiation plan.

Guided Implementation

This guided implementation is a six call advisory process.

Guided Implementation #1 - Gather requirements

Call #1: Define business use case and build stakeholder team
Call #2: Evaluate initial proposal

Guided Implementation #2 - Redline contract

Call #1: Review terms and conditions
Call #2: Validate requirements and incorporate into redlined contract

Guided Implementation #3 - Negotiate contract

Call #1: Develop a negotiation strategy
Call #2: Review final proposal

Schedule Your First Call

Onsite Workshop

The Purpose

Assemble documentation.

Key Benefits Achieved

Understand current position before going forward.

Activities:		Outputs:
1.1	Assemble existing contracts.
1.2	Document their strategic and tactical objectives.
1.3	Identify current status of the vendor relationship and any historical context.
1.4	Clarify goals for ideal future state.	Business Use Case

The Purpose

Define business use case and build stakeholder team.

Key Benefits Achieved

Create business use case to document functional and nonfunctional requirements.
Build internal cross-functional stakeholder team to negotiate contract.

Activities:		Outputs:
2.1	Establish negotiation team and define roles.	RASCI Chart
2.2	Write communication plan.	Vendor Communication Management Plan
2.3	Complete business use case.	SaaS TCO Calculator Software Business Use Case

The Purpose

Examine terms and conditions and prioritize for negotiation.

Key Benefits Achieved

Discover cost savings.
Improve agreement terms.
Prioritize terms for negotiation.

Activities:		Outputs:
3.1	Review general terms and conditions.
3.2	Review license- and application-specific terms and conditions.	Software Terms & Conditions Evaluation Tool
3.3	Match to business and technical requirements.	Software Buyer’s Checklist
3.4	Redline agreement.

The Purpose

Create a negotiation strategy.

Key Benefits Achieved

Establish controlled communication.
Choose negotiation tactics.
Plot negotiation timeline.

Activities:		Outputs:
4.1	Review vendor- and application-specific negotiation tactics.	Contract Negotiation Tactics Playbook
4.2	Build negotiation strategy.	Controlled Vendor Communications Letter Key Vendor Fiscal Year End Calendar