Understand Common IT Contract Provisions to Negotiate More Effectively
- Contract reviews are tedious, and reviewers may lack the skills and experience to effectively complete the process.
- Vendors have a repository of contract terms and conditions that are road-tested and often biased in their favor.
- Vendors change their contracts frequently through hyperlinked documents without notifying customers, and the onus is on you to stay compliant.
Our Advice
Critical Insight
- Focus on the terms and conditions, not just the price. Too often, organizations focus on the price contained within their contracts, neglecting to address core terms and conditions that can end up costing multiples of the initial price.
- Lawyers can’t ensure you get the best business deal. Lawyers tend to look at general terms and conditions for legal risk and may not understand IT-specific components and business needs.
Impact and Result
- Align contract language to meet IT and business needs.
- Communicate more effectively with Legal and the vendors.
- Identify and reduce contractual and performance risk.
- Understand the relationship between contract provisions.
- Negotiate more effectively.
Understand Common IT Contract Provisions to Negotiate More Effectively Research & Tools
Start here – read the Executive Brief
Read our concise Executive Brief to find out why you should employ a systematic process for reviewing contracts, review Info-Tech’s methodology, and understand the four ways we can support you in completing this project.Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:
- Understand Common IT Contract Provisions to Negotiate More Effectively Storyboard
1. Assess contract terms and conditions
Review and assess your IT contracts for vendor-biased terms and conditions, and gain tips for getting vendors to take on their fair share of risk and become more accountable.
- Contract Review Tool
- Contract Playbook
Workshop: Understand Common IT Contract Provisions to Negotiate More Effectively
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 delivery of our project workshops. We take you through every phase of your project and ensure that you have a roadmap in place to complete your project successfully.
1 Assess Contract Terms and Conditions
The Purpose
Understand IT contract clauses, improve risk identification, and be more effective at negotiating contract terms.
Key Benefits Achieved
Increased awareness of how contract provisions relate to each other.
Demystification of legalese and legal concepts.
Increased ability to seek assistance from internal parties (e.g. Legal, Risk, and Procurement).
Activities
1.1 Review the Contract Review Tool.
1.2 Review the Contract Playbook template.
1.3 Review 35 contract provisions and reinforce key learnings with exercises (spread across three days)
Outputs
Partial completion of the template
Exercise results and debrief