Leveraging software offerings means looking beyond price
Your company’s software license renewal is right around the corner, and you are anticipating a tough contract re-negotiation. The business wants to add more licenses and new products, however, you’re also expecting a potential price increase. You have not budgeted for a larger deal, but you want to enable your team and ensure you’re getting the most out of your software investment.
So, before you sign another multi-figure deal, stop and ask yourself these key questions:
1. Are we proactively preparing? Strive to get ahead and control the dialogue from the driver’s seat rather than waiting for the vendor to come to you with a proposal to continue with terms that require a price increase. Position your organization to proactively define what you want from your renewal. It is also critical to align with your marketing, sales, procurement and IT leaders to establish a solid communications strategy to control messaging during negotiations.
2. What are we truly using? Maybe there are glaring opportunities due to a roadmap change, or your last renewal included the purchase of a new product that has not led to full user adoption. Often, the opportunities are more subtle with new users consistently needing to be added to core products, creating a perception of growth, but really there is a swath of licenses that are not being used frequently that was previously provisioned. Work with the vendor to understand login metrics such as frequency and time in the tool.
