Contract Negotiations: Easy Come, Easy Go

One key aspect of sales is making it easy for someone to do business with you. When negotiating contracts, the end of the contract should be considered as well - how easy is it to leave? While there is common guidance for topics such as autorenewal, breaches, and service level agreements, this article will cover three lesser known aspects:

• Repeated breach of contract

• Data portability

• Reasonable terms of transfer

Data Portability

This is especially applicable to cloud services, but may also be important for on-premise software or even IT providers. When moving to a new application or platform, how does your data get exported from the old platform? For example, if migrating accounting systems, is there a master database format, or is a series of Excel files required?

Repeated Breach of Contract

Many contracts have a provision for a breach of contract, such as poor uptime violating the service level agreements (SLAs). At that point, the customer is entitled to some kind of discount. What happens if a breach occurs multiple times in a row? A customer should be able to terminate a contract with no penalty when there is a recurring pattern of poor performance.

Reasonable Terms of Transfer

This is a frequent pain point for companies migrating IT service providers. A contract should require reasonable cooperation and an explicit timeframe for the outgoing provider. Additionally, a clear list of expectations such as transferring logins and licenses will predefine any costs and how quickly it should be delivered to the customer or new provider.

Did you know? Clear Guidance offers IT and Law Firm Management packages that include negotiation and management of vendors. And our contracts are client friendly - anytime, 60 days termination at no cost to you, and a guaranteed smooth transition.

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