February 6th, 2010 by Janus Boye
1 Comment| contract, legal, nda
It is common for vendors to ask prospects, customers, analysts and others to sign non-disclosure agreements (NDA). Without a signed NDA, vendors may be reluctant to share roadmap details, financial numbers and other sensitive information. Recently CMS Watch published a blog on why they have a policy of not signing NDAs with the vendors they …
November 11th, 2009 by Janus Boye
1 Comment| cms, cms selection, contract, rfp, selection, success, system integrator, vendors
Earlier this week I met the CMS selection team at home, a Danish chain of real estate agents. While I quickly reviewed their comparative vendor sheet, I found that in between the usual plus/minus grading, they had used the metaphor of fish to describe their size and relative importance to each vendor. For some vendors, …
September 15th, 2009 by Janus Boye
No Comments| budget, cms, contract, portal, software, support
I’ve previously recommended that you cancel your maintenance contracts. This is an effective way to save some money, but also quite risky if you don’t have the necessary support infrastructure in place. A safer alternative would be to not automatically renew the contracts, but instead insist on better terms and try to obtain multiple proposals …
July 7th, 2009 by Janus Boye
5 Comments| contract, success, system integrator
Being a customer, you are likely to be working with many different vendors, eg. several software vendors, system integrators and an agency. Let me guess: You are probably far from impressed with their deliverables all the time. The more experienced vendors are quite good at managing and sometimes even milking their customers, but what can …
May 20th, 2009 by Janus Boye
7 Comments| contract, episerver, maturity, sitecore, system integrator
This week I’ve talked to several members in our community of practice who were all of the impression that CMS licenses can only be bought from system integrators. This is undoubtedly in the interest of your system integrator, but for the vendors I cover, you can buy the software directly from the vendor as well. …
April 20th, 2009 by Janus Boye
4 Comments| contract, success, system integrator, trust
As a customer it can be complex and expensive to work with both a software vendor and a system integrator. While neither might be downright lying to you, you need to understand the motives behind their recommendations; in particular given the important conflict of interest between two parties who both want as big a share …
January 8th, 2009 by Janus Boye
2 Comments| cms, contract
After reading my advice yesterday on cancelling maintenance contracts and following the response from a vendor, one of our Community of Practice members asked if I could share some additional advice on what to look for in a typical CMS license contract.
Before you read the below and come to the conclusion that I am crazy, …
January 7th, 2009 by Janus Boye
14 Comments| budget, cms, contract, portal, software, support
Here’s a tip that can save you some money in 2009: Cancel your maintenance and support (M&S) contracts with your CMS and enterprise portal vendors.
Often exceeding €100,000 annually for the large, global and complex organisations this is is a recurring cost, that many practitioners have automatically paid without questioning year after year.
Most practitioners actually receive …