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Technology Procurement
As a buyer of commercial information technology products and services, your objective is to conserve, extend and protect your IT dollars and budget, and a modern approach to IT procurement will help you achieve your objective. Information technology procurement services include:
- Vendor and consultant Request for Information (RFI) campaigns
- Vendor and consultant Request for Proposal (RFP) campaigns
- Vendor and consultant scoring and selection assistance
- Vendor and consultant negotiations
- Vendor and consultant contracting
- Vendor and consultant management and mid-project stewardship
Make your IT dollars go further, and reduce your risk of dollars spent for no gain, with the firm's process-driven approach to technology procurement. Fadvocat’s RFP Lab is where we help you develop an effective Request for Proposal (Request for Quote) document to submit to candidate providers who remain on your short-list after a winnowing process. Negotiation leverage begins with a good RFP process.
Getting competent (busy) technology vendors and consultants to respond to RFPs has become somewhat of a challenge in recent years. However, a carefully prepared RFP document, together with a modern approach to the technology RFP process itself, will interest most vendors and consultants and facilitate their convenient preparation of maximally relevant responses.
Remember, even if you are fairly certain you want to use a particular vendor or consultant for your project, it is still wise to use a competitive bidding process to select a (that) vendor. Experience has shown that the best way to obtain favorable pricing and terms and conditions from a technology provider is through competitive bidding.
In many cases, we'll want to attach appropriate standard forms of agreement (e.g., a Software License Agreement and a CSA) to your RFP and ask providers to accept their terms as part of your RFP process. You can then base your technology provider selection on a vendor's willingness or unwillingness to accept your balanced terms and conditions. You'll also save time and money by reducing your negotiations burden.
IT Outsourcing
When you are outsourcing an information technology project, the firm can help you:
- Develop your long-list of qualified providers
- Establish an optimal short-list of qualified providers
- Negotiate with all short-list providers simultaneously
- Obtain favorable pricing and other buyer-favorable terms and conditions
- Minimize risk
With over $100,000,000 worth of technology transactions to date, you can count on the firm to help you maximize the value of your next technology project and minimize risk.
Vendor Negotiations
“You Get What You Negotiate”
Better IT vendor negotiations produce better contracts for your IT project. And better contracts produce better project outcomes with reduced risk. Having negotiated hundreds of deals with IT vendors and consultants, the firm is uniquely equipped to assist with the negotiation process for your particular IT project. Let us put our process-driven approach to technology vendor negotiations to work for your next project:
- Software developer and vendor negotiations
- Buyer-favorable software license terms and conditions
- Hardware vendor negotiations
- Managed hosting negotiations
- Technology consulting services negotiations
- ASP and SaaS negotiations
Save time, money and reduce your risk. Let us handle the negotiations for your next technology project
Vendor Contracting
“Developing Meaningful IT Vendor Contracts”
Want to take control of your IT vendor negotiations and contracting? Put a seasoned technology attorney on your side. Better contracts with your software and other IT vendors and consultants lead to better project outcomes and reduced project risk. If your IT project should run into trouble, you'll be glad you created appropriate vendor accountabilities and remedies.
Start negotiating better contracts for your software and other IT projects that include:
- Buyer-favorable terms and conditions
- Buyer protections, including buy-back and reimbursement provisions
- Effective product, services and system warranties
- Vendor and consultant management tools
- Risk mitigation mechanisms
- Performance incentives and nonperformance penalties
Break with the past and start using a modern approach to IT procurement, vendor negotiations and IT vendor contracting.
IT Project Stewardship
“Managing Change within Your IT Project”
Managing change within your information technology project--what we call "project stewardship"--is an important aspect of sound project management. Within any complex or extended technology project, change is inevitable. For instance, changes to project scope, personnel, roles and responsibilities, and other changes. Don't rely on brief change orders alone to document changes within your ongoing project. All project changes need to be harmonized with key provisions of the base contracts for your project, including cost estimates, milestone incentives and penalties, system warranties, and more. A sound project stewardship element as part of your overall project management effort is a strong driver of project success and risk mitigation.
After your outsourced information technology project has begun, we can help you take full advantage of the buyer-favorable terms and conditions we negotiated with your IT vendor or consultant:
- Assistance with project change negotiations
- Detailed documentation of all project changes
- Assuring consistency across all project contracts, schedules and addenda
- Reconfirmation of roles and responsibilities
- Adjustments to subsequent deliverables, timeframes and cost estimates
- Harmonizing changes with existing warranties and vendor or consultant performance criteria
- Documenting new warranties associated with new project elements
IT Vendor Dispute Resolution
- With a Legal Advantage
The firm can help you resolve conflicts and disputes that occur within your ongoing IT project, or those that result or remain after the working phase of your project has concluded.
Don't attempt to resolve IT vendor or consultant disputes in a vacuum. It's best to evaluate a conflict or dispute vis-a-vis the contracts and all other documentation supporting your project. Together we can develop and prosecute an informed position.
If you have a dispute with an IT vendor or consultant, you can bet that your IT vendor or consultant will be supported by a technology attorney, and so should you. Save time, money and frustration, and benefit from better resolution outcomes, by resolving conflicts and disputes with an informed legal advisor working on your behalf.
IT Project Rescue or Recovery
- Troubled or Failing IT Projects
Troubled or outright failed IT projects are commonplace, but your approach to a troubled or failed project doesn't have to be commonplace. The firm offers a unique approach to the rescue and recovery of troubled IT projects that relies upon information technology subject matter expertise and legal expertise, with an emphasis on incumbent vendor accountabilities. If you think your project might benefit from outside intervention, your hunch is probably correct. And usually, the sooner the intervention, the better.
- IT Project Remediation
In the event we determine together that your IT project is not recoverable, we offer project remediation services aimed at reducing the financial burden of your failed project through prosecution of appropriate vendor concessions.
Whether we're operating in rescue mode or remediation mode, you can be assured of the following:
- 100% confidentiality
- Emphasis on incumbent vendor accountability
- You will control reduction of intervention findings to written form
- You will control release of information within your organization
- Advocacy for your best interests but with credible objectivity
