One solution to addressing changes in business has taken the market by storm: Software Defined Wide Area Networking, or SDWAN. Lots of “providers” are offering SDWAN, and lots of organizations are claiming success with SDWAN, but when you start to dig into the individual accounts, you quickly realize that businesses measure success in different ways. The truth is SDWAN is not “one” solution. It turns out that SDWAN behaviors and capabilities vary between manufacturers. It then gets geometrically complex, as some SDWAN solutions are repackaged by carriers, MSPs, and other service providers, who might support features differently between them, and/or bundle in other products. When you see the full scope of SDWAN technologies on the market, you realize that SDWAN is so successful precisely because there are so many ways to do it – there is probably a model of SDWAN for every business out there. The downside to this is that the wide variety of choices makes it difficult to compare and find the one SDWAN provider, solution, and configuration that is perfect for your organization.

To clear some of the air around this subject, let’s first discuss what SDWAN really is and what that means. Then we’ll talk about what we can get out of it, how to shop for it, configure it, install it, and support it, and the choices you’ll have to consider along the way. When we’re done, among other accomplishments, you will be able to build a clear argument for whether SDWAN could be a fit for your organization, and how, exactly it would help you achieve your KPIs.

SDWAN is a subset of the larger category of Software Defined Networking. SDWAN is built on the core principle of offloading the CPU-intensive processes to one or a few external process servers, either on-prem or in the cloud, allowing the routing hardware to maximize onboard resources for greater throughput and related functionality. At the most fundamental level, SDWAN is just the virtualization of routers, as it applies to Wide Area Networking.

Let’s take a moment and talk about what it means to us to have virtualized routers. Many of us are already familiar with virtualized desktops and servers, and the benefits they provide. Virtualized routers provide similar benefits. The most quickly recognized being: gone are the days of having to connect directly to the Command Line Interface (CLI) of each and every router on your network to make any table or policy changes. Now, with central orchestration capabilities, you can define your policies in one portal and know that all your branch routers are performing exactly as they should. Because of central orchestration, maintenance of virtual routers is lighter as updates can be executed in controlled batches via templates. Templates also make it easy to rapidly deploy new devices, but being able to flash any saved config onto your hardware is a tremendous boon when deploying, maintaining, or even troubleshooting.

Beyond the obvious and immediate benefits, there are a couple of other benefits that are worthy of consideration. The ease of deploying and maintaining virtualized routers allows you to now decide for yourself whether or not you standardize the underlying hardware. In fact, you can even choose to standardize along whatever tiers you want to define. Because the software can now be decided on independently from the hardware, you could choose to deploy low-cost smaller boxes at branch locations, higher-capacity boxes at regional offices, and an even more powerful device at HQ and any data center locations, all while having the same software loaded onto each and every one.

For more information, look for our next article and to talk with a Solution Architect contact us below.

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With over 30 years of experience spanning thousands of customers, from the local Mom ‘n Pop Shop that needs reliable internet that won’t break the bank, to the tri-state non-profit that needs to add bandwidth to support video conferencing, all the way up to multi-national corporations forklifting their MPLS networks to SD-WAN, The Comtel Group has helped all types of customers.  And from straightening out the spaghetti wiring in the IT closet all the way to trouble-shooting nation-to-nation voice peering routes, Comtel has helped resolve more problems than any single-business IT professional could ever possibly have to worry about.  With such a broad perspective, it should be meaningful, then, when we say that the # 1 most common problem we encounter across businesses of all sizes, industries, and locations, is a decentralized purchasing process.

The most harmful aspect of decentralized purchasing to an organization is “organic growth.” If you’ve ever come across a patch of untamed land, you’ll already be familiar with the impact that organic growth can have on a space. Not only is it a mess that requires extreme effort to maneuver through, but as soon as you look beyond the surface you’ll see that new growth has covered the older, causing them to wither but not quite die completely, forgotten and no longer serving a purpose, but still consuming resources.  Having multiple people purchase technologies leads to the same sort of organic growth within a business.  Different people reference different documents to determine what resources are available; different documents provide different answers, inevitably leading to ordering unnecessary and often duplicate resources. As employees come and go, new documents replace old ones, and those unnecessary resources become unknown resources, which eventually become resources that are forgotten by the IT department, but still paid for every month. No one wants to disconnect it without knowing its purpose, but no one has the time to find out what it’s connected to. Decentralized buying also encourages bureaucracy, with more decision makers resulting in committees to review, which not only slows the decision-to-fulfillment time frame, but also allows for resource-eating inter-factional bickering to sprout up.

The solution is relatively simple: allow only one person to be the central authorization for all technology purchasing decisions. Of course this person can seek input from peers and be held accountable by supervisors, but there must be only one voice that approves the decision to purchase any specific technology for an organization. Whoever you assigned must also take ownership of inventorying all resources and consulting that inventory when new resources are requested.  Some organizations attempt to have different people take responsibilities for different types of technologies.  While this does limit duplication and waste within any single technology, this completely misses the opportunity to consolidate and bundle different technologies.  Not only does bundling allow a greater overall discount, but it allows an opportunity to see the forest from the trees, and ensure that we aren’t buying two technologies when we could be buying just one.

The biggest catch to this whole principle is that the expertise necessary to coordinate the evaluation and purchasing of all different types of technologies is often times more than a single person can handle, especially when competing with day-to-day activities. In these situations, you can gain significant breathing room by offloading the resource-allocation and service-procurement responsibilities to a managed service provider.  As you may or may not know, every service provider is already allocating up to 15% of your invoice to a sales representative. At the very least, make sure you don’t let those monies go to waste, and pick a person or entity that you can help you reclaim what would typically be lost commission dollars, and leverage them for tangible business outcomes.

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Many aspects of business technology can be boiled down to a matter of science. However, most would agree procuring and negotiating contracts does not fall under the term “scientific”. It is often at this phase of the technology lifecycle, they feel they’re at the mercy of salespeople or a process that hinders optimal outcomes. We believe there is, in fact, a way to standardize your evaluation and contract procurement giving you control of your technology purchases. The following segments cover the 5 steps you need to know to negotiate the lowest possible price for the services you need.

Part 5 – Negotiating Contracts

As a result of following the first 4 steps of this process, you’ll have achieved the following outcomes:
A. Clearly tied your technology purchase to the KPIs you are trying to drive, and achieved stakeholder buy-in.
B. Gathered all of the technical data you need, both internally and externally, and defined the technology you want to shop for.
C. Created a clearly defined specification, pricing response format, and vendor evaluation scorecard.
D. Delivered your specification to a limited number of providers and received their responses in your defined format.
E. Graded each of the responses and determined 1-3 providers that have made it to your “finalists” list.

The next and final step is to negotiate with the provider. To be clear, while price may be a topic of negotiations, we are not talking just about haggling the price. We’ll get into specifics on what this means in a moment, but first let’s cover two key principles to remember when it comes to service provider contract negotiations. First: get everything in writing. Lots of salespeople promise lots of things. Sometimes those salespeople aren’t being honest with what they can actually do; sometimes those salespeople move on to another position or company, no longer able to actually fulfill their promise. Having a commitment in writing, especially if it’s an addendum to your actual contract, makes it an enforceable expectation. Second: As you develop your list of negotiation points, make sure you are clear on which points are essential and which are simply preferential. Don’t tell the bidding providers which points are not essential (that’s basically highlighting for them that they can ignore those points), but make sure that you know. At certain points in the negotiations, you are likely to find it advantageous to “give up” some of your preferences to help leverage the provider to commit to delivering on your essentials. After those key principles, there are five areas of the contract you should be paying particular attention to.

1. Licensing rights. As more technologies move to Cloud and “As A Service” models, licensing rights will continue to grow in importance. Make sure your contract clearly spells out what you can and cannot do with your licensing. Most providers have a Fair Use doctrine or End User Licensing Agreement that you can reference, but more than just understanding what you can do on a daily basis, make sure that you have clarity on your flexibility to change licensing between users, add or remove licensing throughout the life of the contract, and, most importantly, what your rights and responsibilities are for any licensing once your contract completes. Many providers retract licensing rights once you end your service, but the expiration of your contract and the conclusion of your service are not always going to be the same thing.

2. Speaking of adding or removing throughout the life of your contract, make sure your contract includes language that gives you room to change. For starters, always contract for only the absolute essential quantities of products. If you have a variable requirement throughout the year, or if you expect to be streamlining any workflows, then take that into account now, and make sure you’re only on the hook for what you absolutely require. Also make sure you have a technology refresh clause, which allows you to restructure and modernize the products you are consuming, typically halfway through your contract. Consider whether a Business Downturn clause would be beneficial to you, and, of course, we always recommend ensuring that you have a statement of Non-Automatic Renewal. If you know that one or more of your branches will be relocating within the timeframe of the contract, then negotiate in free relocation services to be used when the time is right.

3. The third area of the contract you’ll want to pay special attention to is the Service Level Guarantee or Agreement. In most cases, a provider’s SLA response will seem impressive, but the consequence of failing turns out to be a pittance compared to what might have been lost as a result of a failure. For example, many ISPs have contract language that reimburses you 1/30th of what you pay for your internet each month. Clearly nothing like what would be lost if you didn’t have internet for an entire day. While it’s not realistic to expect a provider to change their SLA commitments, it is worth asking them to change their responses to incidents and especially SLA failures. For example, you should ask for the contract to reflect a compensation amount more commensurate with your expectation of lost monies due to that service’s failure. Ask to have your trouble tickets automatically escalate to Tier 2 support. Ask to be automatically released from contract under repeated carrier failure, such as downtime in excess of 24hrs (perhaps all at once, perhaps over a 30 day period, as is appropriate for your needs).

4. The fourth area of focus is about resource commitment. As mentioned before, salespeople promise a lot of things. Regardless of their intentions, you want to get it all in writing. This includes discussions about what resources will be committed to your transition project and account management. This also includes discussions about how the commission payment from your account will be allocated to your benefit.

5. Lastly, you’ll want to make sure that you have language that protects your price. Many providers have default language that allows them to increase your price over time under a handful of claims. Make sure you have language that requires the provider to confirm all price changes with you in writing, either e-mail or certified postage, but NOT as a one-page blurb inside your monthly bill. You might also attempt to negotiate language that dissolves your contract if you do not agree to the price change. Make sure you ask to have the provider remove any of the “bloated” fees, such as administrative fees, late fees, or any other number of surcharges.

It’s up to you to decide what points you want to ask for, and which items you’re willing to give up and which are absolutely necessary. Whatever you decide to ask for, you should make sure you ask for something in exchange for your commitment to sign. Provider contracts are designed to protect the provider, so you shouldn’t accept their terms at face value.

You will not always get a favorable outcome when negotiating with a provider. Remember that your most powerful negotiating tool is your ability to walk away and go talk to another provider. If you aren’t finding the provider is willing to work with you to craft the terms you need, don’t be afraid to pick the next best option on your list and discuss with them. You may find that your second choice gives you a first-rate contract.

When you have squared away all the terms and conditions, and you believe you are ready to select a vendor, it is time to make one last play for your price. Thanks to our scorecards, we already know we’re dealing with the provider who has the best cost-benefit, but that doesn’t mean we can’t get an even better price. Here, you’ll tell the provider something to the effect of “everything is lining up real well, there’s just one detail left to work out: the price. In order to be able to sign off on this, I need this package to be priced at $XXXX. If you can do that, I can commit to signing.”

This statement is a commitment that you will sign their contract if they meet your specific price point. There are a few considerations to the delivery of this message. First, you MUST stipulate a specific dollar amount. Asking how far they can come down all but guarantees you’re leaving points on the table, and asking for a percentage will convey that you’re just fishing for a discount. By expressing the specific dollar amount you want to see, you convey a matter of operational burden, not a question of “how much can we get off the list price?” Second, you should only make this play when you’re otherwise ready to sign with a provider. This is because it isn’t a bluff. If the provider delivers the contract with the stated pricing, you must follow through and sign. If you break your commitment (such as asking for “one more thing” after this), that will immediately and dramatically reduce your chances of concluding your negotiation successfully.

If the provider can’t meet your requirement, then you thank them for their time and move to the next name on the list. If they can, then you submit your order, conclude the evaluation process and begin preparations for the implementation of whatever new services you have chosen.

Mini-Series Epilogue:
Understanding that the description of all of 5 steps of “Controlling Technology Procurement Outcomes” is a bit of a long read, it is worth noting that many organizations walk through the actual process in many ways. Some do not require formal pricing comparisons, while others do not care about contract terms and conditions, and others still will not want to take the time to run both an RFI and an RFP. No matter which steps you add to your current process, you will see an improvement in the way you consume technology services.

If you’d like to add all of these steps, but you lack the time or resources, then it’s even more important that you make sure the providers you are talking with are able to apply the commission dollars from your order to the resources that you will need to properly consume their services. With commissions for some technologies as high as 15% of your monthly invoice, there is a lot of potential funding for the expertise you might need. And if you don’t need that level of support, then you should be recapturing those commission dollars so you can put them back into your IT budget. Good Luck!

Keep Your Team – Reduce Waste – Get Smarter Solutions

Many aspects of business technology can be boiled down to a matter of science. However, most would agree procuring and negotiating contracts does not fall under the term “scientific”. It is often at this phase of the technology lifecycle, they feel they’re at the mercy of salespeople or a process that hinders optimal outcomes. We believe there is, in fact, a way to standardize your evaluation and contract procurement giving you control of your technology purchases. The following segments cover the 5 steps you need to know to negotiate the lowest possible price for the services you need.

Part 4 – Evaluating and Selecting Vendors

With a clearly defined specification, a pricing response format, and your vendor scorecard, you’re ready to begin the actual evaluation process, which means you can now open your RFP for responses. For some organizations, this is an extremely formal event, with legally mandated periods for accepting and developing responses, question and answer periods, and billing structures. For other organizations, this could be as simple as calling a number of carriers yourself, or hiring a professional service to help you evaluate. However you execute the mechanics of the evaluation, the most important part of this process is the scorekeeping. In many situations, different providers will recommend different technologies to solve the same problem. In such cases, it’s unproductive to try to compare the pricing against the technology being provided. The key here will be standardizing your scoring on what you will be experiencing as a customer of this provider.

In terms of how to describe the experience you are seeking, this would be where we list out the KPI results we ratified earlier. You may have noticed throughout this entire article there has been a heavy emphasis on being able to clearly define the outcomes you need to achieve. The reason for that is because measuring outcomes-achieved to dollars-spent is consistently the easiest and most meaningful way of turning two different technologies into an apples-to-apples comparison. By defining your requirements in terms of outcomes, and requiring the providers to answer in a format that directly speaks to those outcomes, we can create a filter by which we can standardize all provider responses, regardless of the underlying technology.

What we haven’t put a strong enough emphasis on yet is the structure of a vendor scorecard. Since this is the recording of your grading of each solution and provider, the scorecard will be the largest influence on your decision throughout this entire process. Therefore, it needs to be something you stand fully behind. As previously mentioned, the scorecard helps you identify the “Ys” so you can answer the “Whys.” To be more specific, what that means is the scorecard is a mechanism to quantify what are usually intangible qualities. Transparency, Flexibility or Scalability, Reliability, etc. You should be building a grading rubric that takes these into account, alongside the standard terms and conditions and pricing components that everyone already grades on.

Typically, to build a scorecard, you’ll select 3-5 traits for each intangible quality that you’re looking for. For example, if Transparency is a quality you want to grade on, then you might choose traits such as “clarity of pricing structure,” “frankness of salesperson,” “all fees revealed on contract,” or you’ll want to see evidence of the TCO, including renewal costs and discount potential. If your focus is Flexibility/Scalability, you’ll want to grade on pricing commitments, deployment commitments, and ability to integrate into both current and future expected network conditions. Reliability focuses on the SLAs (and ensuring they aren’t toothless), repair & replace commitments, security achievements, and the competency of their various SME’s. All scorecards should have a section just for the Terms & Conditions, wherein you’d grade the usage/audit rights, control and licensing rights, renewal rates, and maintenance fees. Lastly, there should be a section comparing the proposed pricing.

To fill out a scorecard, you’ll weigh the traits of each quality amongst each other to define priority, and then you’ll give each provider a score of 1-5. As an example, if the most important quality to you is Transparency, and you break that down to mean “all fees revealed on contract,” but also “frankness of salesperson,” and “clarity of pricing structure,” then you might weight “all fees revealed on contract” as 2x the score value, while the other two traits remain at 1x the score value. This would mean any individual provider has the potential to earn up to 20 points in the Transparency category ( 5x2 for revealing all fees, 5 for frankness, and 5 for clarity of pricing).

Now that you’ve got your scorecard, you’re ready to review the proposals and interview any providers you are interested in. As you’re beginning to review the proposals and interview providers, there is one last point to address. Many people pursuing any sort of pricing exercise often make the mistake of asking everyone and their brother to submit a quote. It is far better to limit the number of suppliers you accept bids from. It might seem like the more pricing options you get, the stronger your position is, but there are two reasons this doesn’t work. First, the more bids you accept, the more time you have to spend interviewing and grading. Second, when a provider sees you shopping every option, they’ll consider you less serious, and not reach as far to win your business. You’ll be in a far better position to use the information we gathered from the RFI segment (see Part 3) to narrow down the providers you want to take into the pricing round. When you advance a provider to the semi-finals, and they see that they only have a couple of competitors to beat, rather than the entire market, they will be more incentivized to make a deal to help them win.

When you’ve completed the interviews of the shortlist of providers you accepted bids from, you’ll have the completed scorecards, which should make it extremely easy for you to determine who you should proceed to contract negotiations with. Simply multiply each score by it’s associated weight, and tally up the total points. The provider with the highest score is the one most capable of providing you the experience that best serves your needs.

If you found this helpful let us know, for more thought leadership look for our next article, or contact us.

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AITP is pleased to have Aaron Brown, President of The ComtelGroup, join at the May Chapter meeting on May 12th at 11 am EST for a virtual conversation on “Optimizing Technology and Influence in Your Organization post-COVID19“. 

Over the last 20 years, including ten with The Comtel Group, Aaron’s led transformation in dozens of multimillion-dollar companies serving thousands of organizations nationwide. He has led in the evaluation and implementation of mission-critical technology like Cloud Computing, SD-WAN, Network Security, and more. Aaron and The Comtel Group are biannual participants at the Midsize Enterprise Summit (MES). MES is the largest gathering of midmarket CIO’s in the U.S., where The Comtel Group has won the most coveted award, “Best Solution Provider”, as voted by the attendees, for multiple years in a row. 

Join us as we discuss ways that we can all learn to optimize technology and our influence in a world that has changed in the midst of COVID-19. 

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER

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Though the procurement and negotiation of contracts is not as “scientific” as other phases of the lifecycle of business technology, it is no less important. Many technology leaders feel like they don’t have control over the outcomes or experience they need. This series is dedicated to covering the 5 steps you need to know to negotiate the lowest possible price for the technology services and contracts you require.

Part 3 – Gathering Data

As one is defining their actual specifications, there will undoubtedly come a point where information needs to be gathered. Most buyers consider the gathering of organizational data (use cases, quantities, integration requirements etc.) to be an entirely separate process from the gathering of information from providers (product functionality, service levels, pricing, etc.). It seems quite natural to divide internal from external. There is, however, a more nuanced way to segment data gathering that reduces confusion, time, and migration risk. Simply put, we must also dissect the information across a different axis: technical data vs pricing data. This is because we are extremely likely to need to get information from the providers while we are defining our spec. After all, if we don’t know what our solution is, attempting to specify it is a paradoxical problem. Now, we still need the Internal/External axis, but by adding this further distinction, we can provide more structure to the discovery and eventual negotiation process. First, we will address gathering technical information, and then we will move into requesting pricing.

Certainly, there is a good amount of understanding that comes from within one’s own organization. We must be certain to gather all that information first. We must ensure we’ve followed the previous steps so far, and that we can clearly quantify the desired outcomes. Ultimately, the art of defining a specification is answering the formula of “(what we are doing today) + (the changes we need to make) = (where we want to be).” In many cases, identifying the results the necessary changes need to produce is extremely easy, while defining how they will achieve the results seems like a Gordian knot. This is a direct result of the aforementioned paradox. So, to solve this, we will identify what we can internally, and gather input from various providers and manufacturers about the capabilities of their solutions (completely independent of pricing). By merging these two data sets, we’ll be able to directly tie a technological component with a change in results, allowing us to have all the information we need to complete our formula of specification.

It is beyond the scope of this article to provide an exhaustive list of all the information you might be able to gather from your own organization for any number of technologies. However, as we proceed to discuss how we gather information from technology service providers, we must remain ready to gather new info when we determine it is necessary. If we don’t know how to define our specification, then we certainly can’t know that we have all of the factors properly considered. As we mingle in the data gathered from providers, we must be open to reevaluating our own data, particularly when we receive information that changes the very way we evaluate.

When turning to a provider for information, the first request should be a Request for Information (RFI). This is the best starting place when your requirements are either not well defined or not well understood. This is typically an informal and non-standard process that leaves much in the hands of the responder to determine the level of response given. However, if properly leveraged, it can open a meaningful dialog with a provider. At the very least, the provider’s response to your RFI will tell you a lot about their culture as a technology service provider. There are two approaches to crafting an RFI. One is to focus on asking about specific product benefits and seeing what naturally fits your needs, while the other is to state your problem and desired outcome, and encourage the provider to recommend a solution that gets you there. The first method allows you to play your cards close to the vest, but puts you at risk for missing an option you didn’t know to ask about. The second method keeps the conversation focused on what you really care about (the results), but also leaves you at the mercy of the awareness and understanding of the provider(s) you request information from. However, you go about structuring your RFI, the key takeaway is that you have to take the information you receive and merge it with your internal data set, and assess the merged results. If you do not have all of the information that you need to clarify the remainder of your specification, then identify whether that data comes from your own organization or from follow-up questions to the providers. Continue merging in all the data you gather until you have what you need to define your specification.

Once your specification is defined, it is time to move from the technical realm to the pricing realm. As with the technical data, pricing data must be gathered from both internal and external sources. Internally, this will always be a matter of budget and your organization’s spending policies. From the service provider perspective, this is where most shopping experiences go off the rails. Some organizations will try to tell the story over and over again to each prospective bidder, allowing inconsistencies in the way things are repeated to drive differences in interpretations that grow wider apart over time. Some organizations will attempt to build a highly structured format for comparing options, failing to achieve a great objective for lack of clarity on how to hold providers to that format. In fact, when shopping on your own, an official Request For Pricing (RFP) process will be your most effective path to getting the next stage of information you need to evaluate, but it will require an investment of time upfront. A lot of time and effort can be saved here when you work with a resource that can represent you through an RFP process.

The success of an RFP depends largely upon how clearly you write out what you want to achieve. It’s easy enough for a provider to fill out a pricing table that tells us how much a group of particular products cost, but that doesn’t allow significant opportunity for the provider to understand how you will measure success, and ensure that their proposal is fine-tuned to drive the KPIs you’re focused on. Therefore, the most important aspect of an RFP is that it is written clearly and completely. This often results in lengthy documents, as many feel compelled to include endless details, but really what is needed is thoroughness in defining the business needs and objectives that are being dealt with by this RFP. Defining the implementation and lifecycle milestones, along with measurable production results will allow engineers to recommend alternative configurations where they see significant value.

The second most important factor to an RFP is ensuring that you define the format by which all respondents must submit their answers. Being lax here only leads to confusion later when you don’t have comparable responses. Consider providing a table of expected bodies of work, and require the respondents to identify which party will be responsible for each body. On this point, in particular, ensure that no provider assigned “joint” responsibility or ownership of any part of their proposal. Only one side can be truly responsible. The definition of roles must be clear and accurate, as well, so that all of the necessary responsibilities are adequately assigned. This includes identifying when the vendor will pay for components and when you will. On the topic of cost, declare your pricing structure, and require all respondents to adhere to it. Ensure you’ve provided breakouts for all of the components of your cost- not just rates, but fees, discounts, procurement costs, implementation costs, and support costs. Since we’re talking about what your costs will be, it’s also important to ensure you define how the commission dollars from your purchase will be spent, should you sign with a given provider. An important part of your clearly defined RFP will be the Year One commitment position we developed earlier. This will be key to establishing limits in proposals, and allowing the provider to have a realistic view of what you are actually bringing to the table. Make sure your Year One commitment position includes your requirements for and risks associated with quantities and deployment schedules, system integration, and training and adoption.

The third most important factor to a successful RFP is to build your vendor scoring matrix prior to distributing your RFP and accepting any responses. This means identifying the metrics by which you will judge not only each bid, but the vendors themselves. This includes marking down your assessment of their “Y factors”: capability, transparency, accessibility, flexibility, creativity, reliability, and so on. Being able to record and compare the “Y”s will help you answer the “Why”s.

If you are attentive to these three aspects, you will be able to develop an RFP that results in consistent and normalized responses from vendors that are easy for you to digest and compare. If you’ve made it this far, then you’ve accomplished the hardest part of this whole process. From here, we are in a position of extreme clarity and visibility, having studied and documented our objectives and requirements, and now having gathered the necessary technical and pricing information to solidify our path. The next step will be reviewing the responses to determine who we will begin negotiations with.

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