Emily and Sarah have asked me to offer some pointers on what to watch our for when it comes to applying a pinch of SAM best practice to Software Contract / Vendor Management – so here goes!
By Rory Canavan, SAM Charter
Don’t sweat the small stuff
It may feel like you are doing a good thing by holding a vendor sales rep to task over the unit cost for licence pricing, but take the time to sit down with a SAM professional and learn what happens to licence calculation costs once software is deployed within your company. Many multiplication factors exist from the deployment of software that could obliterate your hard work in price negotiation.
Beware of smoke and mirrors
Some of the more extreme terms and conditions might attempt to prevent you from sharing pricing data with anyone “beyond the bounds of the procurement department”. This is complete nonsense – what software vendors are afraid of is other companies finding out the good deal you struck and so not having to grant such favourable terms across their customer base. This is a worst-case scenario; I would not advocate such an underground cabal/ WhatsApp Group spring up to compare and contrast pricing; however, your SAM/ ITAM function will need to report pricing data (as much to highlight potential compliance liabilities or TCO/ ROI reports) so grant someone senior within Procurement a functional ITAM title to bring the SAM/ ITAM team (technically) under the Procurement umbrella. That way
