Negotiate SaaS Agreements That Are Built to Last

Leverage your unique position and find substantial cost savings.

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Your Challenge

  • Internal stakeholders usually have different – and often conflicting – needs and expectations that require careful facilitation and management.
  • SaaS solutions bring forth a unique form of “switching costs” that can make a decision to migrate solutions financially, technically, and politically painful.

Our Advice

Critical Insight

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

Impact and Result

  • Take control of your SaaS contract negotiations from the beginning.
  • 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 SaaS 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, author of The Tech Contracts Handbook, Attorney & Founder at Sycamore Legal, P.C.

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See how all the steps you need to take come together, with tools and advice to help with each task on your list.

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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 a SaaS agreement, review Info-Tech’s methodology, and understand the different ways we can support you in completing this project.

  1. Gather requirements

    Build and manage the stakeholder team, and then document the business use case.

  2. Redline contract

    Redline the proposed SaaS contract.

  3. Negotiate contract

    Create a thorough negotiation plan.

Guided Implementation icon Guided Implementation

This guided implementation is a six call advisory process.

    Guided Implementation #1 - Gather requirements

  • Call #1: Create negotiation team

  • Call #2: Write communication plan

  • Call #3: Document use case

    • Guided Implementation #2 - Redline contract

  • Call #1: Review and redline general terms and conditions

  • Call #2: Review and redline SaaS-specific terms and conditions

    • Guided Implementation #3 - Negotiate contract

  • Call #1: Negotiate contract

Schedule Your First Call

Onsite Workshop

Module 1: Collect and Review Data

The Purpose

  • Assemble documentation.

Key Benefits Achieved

  • Understand current position before going forward.

Activities: Outputs:
1.1 Assemble existing contracts.
  • Business Use Case.
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.

Module 2: Define the Business Use Case and Build a Stakeholder Team

The Purpose

  • Define the business use case and build a stakeholder team.

Key Benefits Achieved

  • Create a business use case to document functional and non-functional requirements.
  • Build an internal cross-functional stakeholder team to negotiate the contract.

Activities: Outputs:
2.1 Establish a negotiation team and define roles.
  • RASCI Matrix
2.2 Write a communication plan.
  • Communications Plan
2.3 Complete a business use case.
  • SaaS TCO Calculator
  • Business Use Case

Module 3: Redline the Contract

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.
  • SaaS Terms and Conditions Evaluation Tool
3.3 Match to business and technical requirements.
  • SaaS Contract Negotiation Terms Prioritization Checklist
3.4 Redline the agreement.

Module 4: Build a Negotiation Strategy

The Purpose

  • Create a negotiation strategy.

Key Benefits Achieved

  • Controlled communication established.
  • Negotiation tactics chosen.
  • Negotiation timeline plotted.

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

Workshop Icon Book Your Workshop

Onsite Workshops offer an easy way to accelerate your project. If you are unable to do the project yourself, and a Guided Implementation isn’t enough, we offer low-cost onsite delivery of our Project Workshops. We take you through every phase of your project and ensure that you have a road map in place to complete your project successfully.

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