Contract Construction

Libby Weber: The Importance of Framing Your Contracts

Posted: 03/23/2020 - 01:48
Preventive Contract Framing

Libby Weber - Associate Professor of Strategy at The Paul Merage School of Business, University of California, Irvine - promotes a way of thinking about contracts beyond their traditional “preventive” role of avoiding risk, preventing breaches or opportunistic behavior.

Her premise? Why not use contracts to promote cooperation, flexibility, and creativity?

What IT Procurement Professionals Must Know about Data Center Hardware Maintenance RFPs

Posted: 07/16/2019 - 03:59
“We all want this to be a success,” is a pretty common sentiment at the outset of a major RFP. When considering hardware for data center maintenance services, in many cases, the outcome can mean significant cost containment for the IT group and accolades all around for a job very well done. And let’s face it, it is not only a fiduciary duty to avoid over-paying a vendor (even the original equipment manufacturer) it can be flat-out galling to think that your company has been over-paying for YEARS. So, damn straight, you want this to be a success!

Why Standard Contract Terms Can be Bad for You

Posted: 04/18/2019 - 01:58

If your company is like most, it promotes “boilerplate” contracts or at a minimum, pushes for standardized terms, such as the contract length, warranties, a 30-day termination of convenience clause or 90-day payment terms. While this may make your lawyer and CFO happy, Russell Korobkin suggests that using standard contract clauses is a bad idea. 

Sourcing a New Contract-Centric Approach

Posted: 03/09/2019 - 04:16
In today’s fast-paced business environment, sourcing and procurement departments are often left in a difficult position; they are required to become quicker and more proficient when it comes to sourcing the essential direct and indirect materials their companies need to do business, but saddled with a source-to-settle process filled with risks and inefficiencies.   
 

Re-engineering a Corporate Real Estate Service Organization: Strategic Sourcing

Posted: 10/06/2018 - 00:38
In Part I: Operational Review, the team identified what needed to be done and determined the optimal delivery model. In Part II: Strategic Sourcing, we will examine the strategic sourcing process, including: 
 
  1. Supplier Pre-Qualification
  2. Bid Strategy
  3. Request for Proposal/Solution/Partner Development

Your Telecom Contracts Are Ending – Now What?

Posted: 07/06/2018 - 09:12

Since the breakup of AT&T in 1982, the U.S. telecom carrier landscape has evolved rapidly, sometimes in dramatic fashion. Familiar names have come and gone – MCI, WorldCom, Qwest, Cingular and Nextel, to name a few. Today, with CenturyLink acquiring Level 3, AT&T completing its acquisition of Time Warner and Sprint looking to combine with T-Mobile, we see no signs of these changes slowing down.

Delivering contracts with teeth

Posted: 04/01/2016 - 19:52

All too often, businesses are faced with bold promises about the services they will receive from their outsource providers; they are drawn in by the “ideals” pitched to them and ultimately, find themselves disappointed with the outcome as those services fail to live up to expectations.

Beyond the traditional ZOPA: how to create value in complex deals

Posted: 02/26/2016 - 06:37

You’ve all been told that to create value in your negotiations and get the “best” deal for your organization you need to expand the pie, not just haggle over the limited and fixed number of pie pieces. But no one has really demonstrated pie expansion – value – for commercial contracts – until now.

AI 101: an introduction to automation and artificial intelligence in outsourcing

Posted: 01/27/2016 - 21:22

The traditional view of outsourcing has tended to see cost reduction as one of the primary drivers for any customer. The idea that the ‘total cost of ownership’ of a particular business function over the term of the outsourcing contract should be lower is very often part of the business case. Similarly, seeing outsourcing as a means of transforming a collection of assets on the balance sheet into a recurring service charge, and reducing (or at least apparently reducing) capital costs is another common refrain at the outset of deals.

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