Contract Negotiation
IT Contracts
Our experience and expertise in IT business negotiations include all types of deals —Sales, Procurement, Licenses, Access, Marketing, whatever the clients needs:
- Master Ordering Agreements
- Software Licenses
- Software as a Service (SaaS) Agreements
- System Integration Agreements
- Outsourcing Agreements
- Standard Sales Agreements
- Strategic Alliances Between Providers
- Web Hosting Agreements
- Collocation, Managed Services and ASP Agreements
- Network Services Agreements
- Service Level Agreements (SLAs)
- Maintenance Agreements
James River's Negotiated Contract Methodology
Non-IT Services Contracts
James River's methodologies are powerful tools for finalizing successful deals for services in a wide range of professions, practice areas and industries – Accounting, Legal, Human Resources, Security, Channel Sales, Business Process Outsourcing, and all other operations areas:
- Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) Agreements
- Professional Employer Organization (PEO) Agreements
- Reseller Agreements
- Governance, Regulation and Compliance (GRC) Agreements
- Marketing Agreements
- Analyst Research Agreements
- Strategic Vendor Management Agreements
More Dealing with Less Negotiation
James River's negotiation method follows a couple simple principles.
Negotiation Principle #1: Most business people on the other side of the table have attended negotiation seminars or read books on negotiation, so the "parlor tricks" like anchor prices don't work anymore. We think negotiation is a process of understanding what companies' business needs really are and what risks companies really face, and how this information becomes part of an agreement.
Negotiation Principle #2: Most business people would rather avoid negotiation all together. Great business opportunities for both buyer and seller are sometimes lost because the negotiations come to a stand still and the people involved are too angry to continue, or they are afraid of being perceived as weak or of taking the blame.
Negotiation Principle #3: Negotiation success is more effectively determined before the bargaining begins and not through any kind of cleverness or theatrics. By strategically creating the right contracting frameworks, buyers and sellers can move discussions out of the old negotiation paradigm and into a collaborative process that produces value-based agreements.
James River's 5 Contract Risk Spectrums
Capture the Real Deal
Contracts are not page after page of stock legal provisions. They are the embodiment of a risk/reward business proposition between companies. Everything that goes into a contract should clearly and efficiently achieve a desirable risk profile and optimize business value. Our Five Contracting Risk Analysis Spectrums (5CRAS) methodology cuts through conventional transaction models and boilerplate terms to reveal how contracts can be structured to effectively manage risk, achieve value, and lead to success.