New Year’s Housekeeping – The Enterprise Playbook for Renewals, Rights, and Cost Control

Tony:
Hello, I’m Tony Mangino from TC2, and this is Staying Connected—where we talk about what really matters to enterprise buyers navigating today’s technology and sourcing decisions.

The start of the year is when enterprise leaders try to accelerate everything at once—modernization, migrations, security initiatives, AI enablement, the list goes on. And that’s exactly why the basics matter. If your contract record is incomplete, your inventory is stale, or your renewal dates aren’t controlled, you don’t just move slower – you lose leverage, you miss value you’ve already earned, and you create avoidable risk.

Today’s episode is about New Year’s housekeeping, that is: the legal, contract, and operational work that gives you a clean fact base—what you have, what you’re obligated to do, what you’re entitled to receive, and what needs to happen early to avoid making last-minute decisions later.

To walk through a practical checklist, I’m joined today by Laura McDonald, a partner at LB3. Laura, welcome.

Laura:
Thanks, Tony, it’s great to be back on Staying Connected. The “housekeeping” you refer to is the work that prevents surprises—especially around notice windows, disputes, and credits that expire if nobody manages them, and gives the enterprise the control.

Tony:
Exactly. It’s not busywork, it’s building blocks for strategic decision making and ultimately leverage.

Why This Matters Now

Tony:
Laura, why should enterprise customers focus on housekeeping right now?

Laura:
Because the year will force decisions whether you’re ready or not. If you wait until renewal season, you’ll be working with incomplete documents and incomplete data. That’s when organizations drift into auto-renewals, accept invoice errors they could have challenged, or discover too late that a transition plan doesn’t fit the contract.

Tony:
And from the buyer side, the pattern is simple: when you’re late, suppliers drive the timeline and narrative. When you’re early, you have flexibility and options.

Laura: You are spot on.

Contracts That Are Complete and Usable

Tony:
Let’s start with contracts. When you work with large enterprises, what’s the first gap you see?

Laura:
Most organizations think they have the contract, but often times what they really have is a folder (hopefully digital) with hopefully a signed master agreement, but they may find they have several master agreements with the same vendor – which can happen through acquisition, rogue business units, or simply changes at the company,  Then they may have some, but not all of the amendments, exhibits, SLAs, pricing and the amendments, which may have seemed clear at the time, but may have lost clarity since.  The value, and the risk, often lurks in the attachments: amendments, order forms, exhibits, rate cards, etc. If those are missing, you can’t reliably enforce pricing, credits, or rights.  If you don’t have all the pieces, reach out to the vendor, and be persistent in getting their list and the MIA documents.

Tony:
So the first task is basic but essential: assemble the full contract set for each strategic supplier. And once you have it, you need to make it actionable—not a legal archive.

Laura:
Right. Actionable means extracting the items that drive decision-making: term, renewal mechanics, notice requirements, and any rights you might use—like audit, rate review, benchmarking, billing validation, and in this day and age, staffing and support rights.

Tony:
This is where I see enterprises quietly lose value. A contract might allow a rate review, or a billing validation process, or a credit mechanism. But if no one knows it exists, or no one calendars it, then nothing happens.

Laura:
And credits are a big one. These may be one time or recurring credits baked into the overall commercial deal or those that are “earned” through SLAs. If there isn’t a tracked credit ledger with ownership, those credits are often never requested, never applied, or are applied incorrectly.  Or they were earned and forgotten about so when a price evaluation is done, it fails to take into account the impact of those credits.

Tony:
So here’s the practical approach I recommend: for each key supplier, create a one-page operating view. Not legal prose—just the essentials: contract components like dates and notice windows, financial commitments you need to track, rights you can execute, and credits owed. Then assign ownership. If no one owns it, it won’t be done consistently.

Laura:
One more point that matters legally: notice provisions. Many agreements require notices to be sent to a specific address or role, sometimes by a specific method. If that’s not followed, you can lose rights even when the supplier understood your intent.

Tony:
That’s the enterprise reality: process protects outcomes.

Disputes and the Timelines That Can Kill Them

Tony:
Let’s move to disputes. What’s the right posture for enterprises at the start of the year?

Laura:
Inventory the issues and put timeframes next to them. Enterprises often have “open items” that have been discussed for months—overbilling, SLA misses, delayed installs, chronic service problems. Some are formal, many are informal. The risk is that contracts frequently require billing disputes or credit claims within a finite timeframe.

Tony:
So even if the team is working the issue in good faith, the clock might already be running—or might have run out.

Laura:
Correct. The objective isn’t to escalate everything. It’s to preserve rights while you resolve.

Tony:
That’s an important distinction. You’re not turning every supplier problem into litigation. You’re refusing to lose options by default.

Inventory That Matches What You’re Paying For

Tony:
Now the one everyone avoids: inventory. Why is this part of New Year’s housekeeping instead of “when we get to it”?

Laura:
Because inventory is the foundation for renewals, RFPs, migrations, and cost control. If you can’t reconcile what you’re paying for with what you’re using, you can’t manage it. And in large environments, site, service and circuit churn is normal.

Tony:
And “inventory” isn’t just a circuit list. It’s a reconciled view across contracts, invoices, portals, and internal records. This is where enterprises find duplicates, orphaned billing accounts, disconnected sites that are still billing, and services that were never aligned to the right legal entity or cost center. 

Laura:
The practical goal for Q1 is not perfection. It’s a reliable baseline: what services exist, where they are, what they cost, what contract and rate elements apply, and who internally owns the relationship and the billing. Once that baseline exists, everything else becomes easier.

A Decision Calendar That Prevents Late-Stage Scrambles

Tony:
Once you’ve cleaned up contracts and improved inventory, what’s next?

Laura:
Build a decision calendar. Enterprises typically know they have initiatives coming—WAN transformation, cloud connectivity changes, managed services restructuring, vendor changes, major site moves, etc. The question is whether the timing is mapped against renewal dates, notice windows, procurement lead times, and transition obligations.

Tony:
This is where organizations get trapped: the initiative is real, but the contract timing isn’t aligned, so the enterprise ends up renewing “for now” and losing leverage.  We’ve actually talked a lot about this recently in the context of technology debt.  A decision calendar forces the early conversations—what must be decided in Q1 or Q2 to avoid a forced path later.

Laura:
And, just like the summary you mentioned, it should be owned. If an initiative matters, it needs an accountable person and a milestone date—not just a slide in a roadmap deck.  Clarity plus ownership is what turns plans into outcomes.

Internal Alignment on Vendor Performance

Tony:
One more item that’s easy to overlook: internal alignment. Why does this belong in housekeeping?

Laura:
Because enterprises often have fragmented experiences with the same supplier. Procurement may see “good enough.” Operations may be frustrated. Security may have concerns.  Business units may be testing alternatives outside governance. Legal may want new security or AI provisions.  If you don’t surface that early, vendor strategy becomes inconsistent and your leverage will inevitably be impacted.

Tony:
So a simple move is a structured temperature reading early in the year: what’s working, what’s consistently broken, and where are teams already shifting behavior.  That gives leadership a single view of reality before renewal or expansion discussions start.

Tony:
Laura, if listeners do nothing else after this episode, what should they do this month?

Laura:
Assemble the complete contract set for major suppliers, extract and calendar the key dates and rights, and assign ownership for commitments and credits. In parallel, identify open disputes and confirm you’re inside dispute windows. Then set a baseline inventory you can trust and map a decision calendar for the year.

Tony:
That’s the theme: create a clean fact base early, so decisions later in the year are strategic instead of tactical or reactive.

Tony:
Thanks for your time today, Laura!  To our listeners, if you would like to discuss how to get your house in order at the start of 2026, or if you’d like to discuss other technology strategy, sourcing and cost reduction needs with Laura, me, or any of our TC2 and LB3 colleagues, please give us a call or shoot us an email.

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