Hardware and Software Vendor Negotiations & Resale

TC2 supports its clients in negotiating best-in-class pricing and terms with a range of hardware and software vendors.

Enterprises spend vast sums every year on IT hardware, software and service subscriptions, and associated maintenance and product support. 

TC2 supports its clients to secure optimal pricing and discounts for such products and services, underpinned with robust commercial terms, service levels and support arrangements.

We do this by developing detailed sourcing and negotiation strategies founded upon a holistic view of your total spend and relationship with the applicable OEM, a comprehensive understanding of the hardware, software, and services under negotiation and a clear assessment of opportunities (or not) to introduce competitive threats into the discussions.

We then execute the sourcing and negotiation strategy using formal and rigorous techniques that maximize your competitive leverage and deliver best-in-class results.  Finally, we ensure that the agreed pricing, discounts, service levels, and associated commercial terms are accurately documented in your contract with the OEM and/or reseller as applicable.

Our experience spans all major networking OEMs (e.g., Cisco, HPE, Juniper, Fortinet, Arista, and SD-WAN vendors), UC and contact center OEMs (e.g., Avaya, Cisco, Genesys, Five9), PC and printer manufacturers, Microsoft and other software and SaaS vendors.  We support the negotiation of one-off purchases of software, subscription services and SaaS arrangements as well as enterprise licensing agreements.  We’ve worked with our clients to put in place Master Purchasing Agreements and Master Services Agreements directly with OEMs, and we are experts in working with our clients to secure robust software and hardware support agreements, maintenance agreements and warranty services.

 

Cisco Negotiations

As Cisco has grown from a network device OEM to a multifaceted software supplier across networking, UC, contact center, security services, observability tools and a plethora of other products, enterprises’ relationships with Cisco have become correspondingly complex.  Add to this, a deep-rooted pattern at Cisco of targeting price increases, and any negotiation with Cisco quickly becomes very challenging.

TC2 has extensive experience negotiating with Cisco and delivering optimal discounts, pricing, service levels and terms for our clients across Cisco’s wide product portfolio.  Our expertise in dealing with Cisco’s sophisticated career negotiators and the tactics they deploy to undermine your negotiation position, puts you (not Cisco) in the driving position to ensure that you achieve a market leading deal.

We are intimately familiar with Cisco’s approach to the market, pricing strategies and constructs, and the different software and product support purchasing models that Cisco offers.  We help you navigate complicated Cisco enterprise agreements, whole portfolio agreements (WPAs), strategic relationship agreements (SRAs), nebulous Cisco reseller relationships and associated financing arrangements.

TC2 offers support and solutions no matter where you are in your Cisco relationship and contract/ renewal cycles.  More information is available here.

 

Effective Technology Procurements

TC2’s experience includes supporting our clients in selecting the optimal technology provider for their requirements, whether to serve a new requirement, or to replace existing legacy technologies.  When investigating technology products, it can be very easy to fall into largely informal and unstructured discussions with vendors who present their products and feature sets in sales materials that do not lend themselves to precise comparisons across multiple technology vendors.  This leads to selecting products that present feature gaps once deployed, and sub-optimal pricing and support arrangements.

Instead, TC2 helps our clients to instigate a rigorous technology procurement process:

• Document the specific objectives, detailed technical and feature requirements, and support expectations in a formal RFx document to be issued to multiple suppliers.
• Solicit detailed pricing proposals.
• Evaluate the technology proposals on an apples-for-apples basis against the detailed requirements.
• Hold multiple rounds of negotiations (technical, service and commercial) with multiple vendors.
• Understand requirements to purchase via resellers and negotiate any problematic consequences.
• Negotiate contract documents with the technology vendor that memorialize the agreed product capabilities, support services, commercial terms and pricing.

TC2 is also experienced at negotiating Pilot and Proof of Concept arrangements with technology providers.

 

Value Added Resale Services and Negotiations

The vast majority of large enterprises’ spend on IT hardware, software and service subscriptions, and associated maintenance and product support, the transactions and contractual relationships are commonly indirect, as the OEMs push customers to purchase through value added resellers (VARs).  That two-step relationship introduces a layer of complexity that regularly results in non-optimal pricing and commercial arrangements. 

TC2 understands how to navigate this complexity and to ensure that it does not disadvantage our clients.  We are experts in sourcing VAR services and extracting true value from such services for an optimal price.  Importantly, we understand the intricacies of international VAR services and how to carefully scrutinize global VARs abilities to operate effectively and cost efficiently in different parts of the world (such as being able to transact locally, deal with all local importation and customs responsibilities, and being licensed to sell the required OEMs products in the required countries).

We also support our clients in negotiating robust VAR contracts that capture the ‘value-add’ services that the VAR will provide, the agreed pricing and mark-up agreed with the VAR and comprehensive documentation of the OEM products and services (and the corresponding pricing, discounts and geographical coverage) that can be provided under the contract.