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About: Elgin Ward

Recent Posts by Elgin Ward

SOWs must mind their parents!

SOWs must mind their parents!
Vendors often make significant concessions in the Master Agreement. A SOW is supposed to be subject to and consistent with its Master Agreement. Those drafting an SOW must be aware of the key concessions made by the Vendor in the Master Agreement, and insist that each concession be preserved in the SOW. The SOW must...
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Use VRM to get more from Vendors!

Use VRM to get more from Vendors!
A Customer may want or need help from a Vendor that is bigger than just the terms of one contract. By understanding what a Vendor wants from the Relationship with the Customer, the Customer can fashion incentives to encourage a Vendor to continuously improve its Relationship with the Customer. For every key Vendor, the Customer...
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You can’t give what you don’t have!

You can’t give what you don’t have!
Service Levels are not just for Vendors. SLs can be a key for internal alignment.  SLs can be a key for Customers to keep their business commitments. A Business Unit in your Company creates and maintains databases for certain Clients. Availability and response time are absolutely critical for one of the Clients. Hence, the Client was...
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Protect What You Have: License It!

Protect What You Have: License It!
Before a Vendor engagement, a wise Customer carefully inventories what Customer Intellectual Property assets will be exposed. IT procurement should ensure that the Customer IP or Intellectual Property assets likely to be exposed MUST be listed in the contract with the Vendor. Finally, the contract must confirm Customer ownership of its Intellectual Property assets, and...
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A Key to SW Audit Defense

A Key to SW Audit Defense
Vendor auditing teams have and follow scripted Auditing processes with intensity, and often without review of or reference to the Customer software License documents. Customer software license agreements may prohibit Audits, or greatly limit how the Vendor audit teams can conduct them. The Customer audit defense team must read and MASTER the Software License documents...
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RFP warning: Beware Sneaky REVERSES!

RFP warning: Beware Sneaky REVERSES!
Sometimes RFP Bidders try to gain negotiation leverage by delaying their response to the Contract portion of the RFP. It is not possible to effectively evaluate a Bid without first having received a response to the Contract portion. RFP best practice requires that IT procurement insist that a Bidder submit a full response to the...
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Competition After SIGNING

Competition After SIGNING
Competition is a powerful ally for IT procurement in negotiating with Vendors. Contracts can be structured so that competitive negotiations can continue AFTER the initial contract signing. Wise IT procurement professionals seek to find ways to enable competitive negotiations to continue AFTER the initial contract signing in order to mitigate supply risks, and to get...
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Powerful EXIT strategies

Powerful EXIT strategies
  A Vendor can be highly motivated to prevent or discourage a Customer from exiting a contract relationship. Obstacles built into a contract to prevent or discourage a Customer from EXITING can act as unreasonable barriers to Customer flexibility to improve its contact landscape. By developing a contract with a powerful EXIT strategy, Customers can maximize flexibility...
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The Emperor’s New Clothes

The Emperor’s New Clothes
  IT procurement is MOST successful when there is FULL participation by all members of the Customer’s cross-functional team. Frequent use of undefined or unclear jargon and acronyms can significantly impair meaningful participation by necessary members of the Customer’s cross-functional teams. IT procurement professionals should invest the necessary courage, time and effort upfront to define and...
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Winning the Influence Game

Winning the Influence Game
  Sales Reps are often masters at exercising influence over the Customer’s Internal Stakeholders. Our success as IT procurement professionals is absolutely dependent on our ability to influence the minds, hearts, and emotions of our Internal Stakeholders. One very powerful tool for procurement to earn Stakeholder trust is to UNDER PROMISE and OVER DELIVER. Sometime ago my...
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Manage or be managed – your choice!

Manage or be managed – your choice!
Sales Reps are taught “PRICE to WIN but MANAGE to PROFIT.” Customers must MANAGE vendors or be managed by the vendors. Customers can use Payable Milestones to effectively manage vendors. Among the key concepts Account Executives or Sales Reps are taught is this: Price to Win BUT Manage to Profit! If the Sale Rep does not WIN...
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Winners keep score!

Winners keep score!
Whether you are a salesperson or a procurement professional, “keeping score” and documenting your successes are keys to measuring progress and continuous improvement. It increases self-satisfaction, and justifies an employer’s actions in upping your salary and in promoting you. It will have a very positive impact on your career as a procurement professional. To begin with,...
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Use “Thanks” to Educate!

Use “Thanks” to Educate!
Internal alignment is key for Procurement to negotiate better deals. How to get it? Using “Thanks” properly can be a powerful tool to educate customer Stakeholders. “Thank you” is one of MOST powerful tools Procurement has. Procurement is a team sport – it can’t be done successfully alone. If Procurement succeeds in negotiating great T&Cs and amazing pricing,...
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Are you giving away Customer Data?

Are you giving away Customer Data?


In seminars on Maintenance, Software, and Cloud Services, the following questions are asked of attendees. The answers the attendees give often surprise even themselves. Question 1. When you purchase a license to Software or Cloud Services, do you also buy Maintenance Services? Customer Answer 1. Yes. Question 2. As part...
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Is IT Sourcing Really Strategic?

Is IT Sourcing Really Strategic?
Vendors and their sales reps are extremely strategic in the use of their time, their expense accounts and other resources, demos, loss leaders, and RFP responses, often gaining the vendors negotiation advantages. By creating or seizing opportunities to be strategic, IT sourcing, too, can increase its negotiation leverage to get better deals for the Customer. Sometime...
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Don’t be a Ploy Pushover!

Don’t be a Ploy Pushover!
Salespeople are taught, practice and become expert at using Ploys to manipulate the Customer. It seems these Ploys are endless in types and amounts. Is there one, simple, best way to address these Vendor Ploys? Yes! Use this simple approach to quickly and painlessly resolve almost every Ploy. Salespeople are taught, practice and are often quite...
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Procurement’s Forgotten R

Procurement’s Forgotten R
The Forgotten R of Procurement is Restraint, meaning ongoing control. While important, it is not enough to address Requirements, Rewards, Risks, and Remedies alone. The Customer will ultimately succeed only if it RESTRAINS the Vendor’s performance to strictly comply with the detailed specifics of the contract. What is the Forgotten R of Procurement? A good procurement...
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4 R’s of Strategic Sourcing

4 R’s of Strategic Sourcing
In every IT deal, the Vendor will attempt to control the 4 R’s if it can. Unless IT procurement intervenes and prevails, it is likely that Requirements will be defined narrowly, Reward (price) will be maximized at the Customer’s expense, Risks will be shifted to the Customer, and the Remedies for Vendor failures will be...
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Learning from vendors – Strategy 8: Review and Recommend

Learning from vendors – Strategy 8: Review and Recommend
Once a contract is signed and implementation is complete, a Vendor will, at the earliest opportunity, review its positive performance and recommend the Customer purchase more of the same products or services for other departments of the Customer AND recommend the Customer buy other products and services from the Vendor. This dangerous phase requires special...
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Learning from Vendors – Strategy 7: Implementation

Learning from Vendors – Strategy 7: Implementation
Of the 8 steps used by vendors for Account Control of the Customer, Step 7: Implementation is the Sales Rep’s best possible situation. Now that a contract is signed and IT procurement has voluntarily turned the project over to others, the Sales Rep, free from the meddling interference of IT procurement, can focus on expanding...
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