The Buyers and Sellers Perspectives in Negotiating
“Tools and techniques (including key negotiating techniques) will be used in an interactive environment to see issues from both the buyer and seller perspective.”
Developing a Contract Strategy (Agreement and Contract Types, Pricing)
Knowing Your Audience
Keeping the End in Mind
Planning the Negotiations
Understanding Corporate Policy or Legal Constraints
Determining Thresholds for Cost, Time, Scope and Quality
Defining Contract Administration Pro-Actively
Uncovering Hidden Assumptions and the Emotional Influence
The Politics
Communication Techniques to Uncover Assumptions
Addressing the Language and the International Influence
Cross-Cultural Impacts
Getting to Common Terminology
Negotiating to a Win/Win and Balancing Buyer/Seller Needs
Contract Types and Influence in Negotiations
Win-win Negotiating
Using a Six Step Model
Critical Skills That Lead to Success
Understanding Interests and Positions
Mitigating Risks Through Agreements
“Risks will always be identified, but is the agreement the right place to mitigate them?”
Use of Incentives and Penalties
Pros and Cons
Cost of Monitoring
Performance and Quality of Product or Service
Identifying the Metrics
The Tradeoffs
Cost of Monitoring
Determining Liability, Considering Confidentiality, Non-disclosure and Copyright
Ensuring Corporate Standards Are Enforced
Use of Templates
Using Your Legal Department
The Proposal: Getting to an Agreement
Managing Expectations from Proposal to Contract
Ensuring Proposal “Speak” is Committed to in Writing
Hints and Tips to Writing a Statement of Work (SOW)
“The SOW is the tool for managing expectations of what work or product will be delivered (scope), when, and who's resources will be used.”
Why a SOW and the SOW Structure
Relationship to a Master Agreement
Hints and Tips to Decomposition
The Software Development SOW
Roles and Responsibilities
Who are the Resources
What are Their Skills
What is Their Availability
How is Knowledge Transfer Addressed
Level of Detail
Tradeoffs
Risk vs. Control
Revisiting the SOW
When and How Often
Responsibility
When Commitments Are Not Met
The Service Agreement: Using a Scorecard
“The Service [Level] Agreement: a great agreement on performance measures and ensuring the appropriate level of quality is addressed.”
Setting and Agreeing to Balanced Measures
Ensuring Measures are Realistic and can be Monitored
Defining a Change Process
Ensuring Escalation Procedures are in Place
Managing Changes to Agreements
“It is inevitable, be ready for change!”
Formalizing the Change Process
Developing a Business Process
Communicating Responsibilities
Monitoring Responsibility Changes
When People Change
Impact to the Relationship and Trust
Assessing the Impact to the SOW and Scorecard
Managing Master Agreement Changes
Keeping the Volatile Elements in the SOW
Getting Legal Support for Master Agreement Changes
Types of Changes
Managing SOW and Service Agreement Changes
Tracking and Assessing Impacts of Change
Changes During the Project Lifecycle
Escalation
Vendor Management
“How do you build trust, gain commitment, monitor, escalate when things go wrong? How do you know when to terminate? Determining the kind of relationship you, your organization and/or your company may want.”
Building Trust and a Professional Partnership
Vendor Due Diligence
References
Core Skills
Intellectual Property Protection
Quality Processes
Organizational Structure
Availability of Resources
Vendor Capability
Common Goal and Commitment
Client Side – How Good Are You at Helping Both of You Succeed?
Client Side – Are You Following Through on Your Commitments?
Pro-Active Communications and Expectation Management
Developing a Communication Plan
Leveraging an Expectation Management Strategy to Bridge Gaps
Using a RACI Chart
Sharing Best Practices
Leveraging the Vendor’s Network
Finding the Moments to Share From Vendor’s Experiences
Phases of the Vendor Relationship
Procurement Planning
Project
Organizational
Following Through on Commitments and Evaluating Performance
Pro-Actively Planned Checkpoints
The Metric Tradeoff – Costs of Monitoring
Dispute Resolution, Escalation and Reporting Processes
Developing a Business Process
Cultural Impacts to Dispute Resolution, Escalation and Reporting
Continuing or Ceasing the Relationship
Knowing When The Relationship is Over
Defining the Alternatives
Assessing the Impacts
Communicating the Decision
Working with Multiple Vendors
Impacts When Using Different Processes and Standards
When Contracts Impact Each Other
When Vendors are also Competitors
Leveraging a Vendor Management Office (VMO)
Why a VMO?
Benefits of a VMO
VMO Typical Structure and Responsibilities