Insights for IT Negotiations

As you approach your negotiation with ServiceNow, whether you are a net-new customer or coming up to your renewal, it is important to understand the things that matter most to them. Knowing this and how to most effectively use it, will help increase your leverage and ensure you not only pay the right price but have the proper level of flexibility and downstream price protections in place.

Microsoft continues to aggressively push customers into the cloud. Microsoft is approaching their base of customers that have already adopted Office 365 with renewal proposals that include enticing offers to get them to jump into their cloud bundle Microsoft 365, which includes Office 365, Windows 10 and Enterprise Mobility + Security . They do this even when a business case for Enterprise Mobility + Security (1/3 of the bundle) has yet to be made. Don’t let the offered “special” upfront discount alone get you or your organization to jump, too often there are serious consequences in doing so.

SAP recently announced completion of “an over year-long journey of collaboration with user groups, customers, industry analysts and other stakeholders, to develop a first of its kind outcome-based pricing model for Indirect Access. Len Riley breaks down what this means for SAP customers.

Microsoft’s impressive revenue growth has been fueled by increased cloud adoption. Microsoft understands that future revenue growth will continue to be driven by their ability to convince their customers to migrate to the cloud while adding more cloud solutions to their portfolio. Microsoft will continue to push their cloud solutions as necessities for organizations hoping to achieve their digital transformation objectives.

ServiceNow’s Q1 subscription revenue grew and impressive 40% year-over-year reaching $543M. ServiceNow is focused on becoming a trusted strategic technology partner for their customers. They are no longer interested in selling just their core product, IT Service Management (ITSM) to get in the door. ServiceNow wants multiple product adoption including other IT products like ITOM and perhaps more importantly emerging products like Customer Service Management (CSM).

This webinar will explore: • Fundamental differences in contracting agile vs more traditional waterfall programs • 18 structural risks of agile at scale projects • How to use the contract to transfer and mitigate Agile at scale risks • Useful measures of vendor performance and accountability for Agile at scale programs • Basics of incentive structures of Agile at scale contracts • Useful measures of vendor performance and accountability for Agile at scale programs • Basics of incentive structures of Agile at scale contracts

Other revenues for Google, which includes Google Cloud, were $4.4B -- up 36% year-over year. Impressive revenue growth was driven by Google's ability to sign significantly larger and more strategic deals for Cloud within the quarter. G-Suite revenue growth acceleration is attributed to Google's perceived ability to now serve all the needs of a large enterprise. Expect Google to aggressively attempt to displace Microsoft customers, especially those that are just now considering adopting Office 365.

Has your organization accepted the standard uptime SLA and SLA credit structure found within your cloud vendor's master subscription agreement? An uptime SLA is of little value if it does not come with a meaningful credit or penalty structure. Most cloud vendor's standard penalty structures are not sufficient, let alone meaningful.

Too many enterprises are making the decision to adopt a particular software because they got a “special” discounted price from the software vendor. Not only is the discounted price typically not the best the software vendor could do, often the final deal is missing many other critical terms and protections.

Salesforce can be tough as nails when it comes to their contract negotiations. As part of their goal to reach $20 billion in revenue by 2022, Salesforce is unrelenting and tends to dictate terms rather than concede to their customer’s needs. If this sounds bleak, one thing to remember is that Salesforce makes the rules, and thus has the ability to bend them. Knowing what they are willing to bend, and by how much, is critical to your negotiation.