Savvy Telecom Contract Negotiations and RFP Technique #15 – Have An Exit Strategy
This post is primarily for leadership positions. So much focus goes into designing the current solution, that few think about what will happen at the end of the term. It is common that a “ramp up” provision is in place for bringing services in, but not so common that there is a “ramp down” provision for when services are being moved off. Obviously it is not in your provider’s best interest to make it easy for you to move away from their solutions. One of my clients recently commented on this regarding cloud based services – how easy it is to move services to the cloud but not so easy to move them back. I’ll have a separate post in the near future on pitfalls to avoid with cloud based services, but regardless of the type of services or solution you are buying, there is a possibility that in a few years there will be a better solution available.
This is one where your IT and Sourcing people need to work together. It will be important for your IT people to try to anticipate what it will take to “deconstruct” the solution and implement an alternative. Your sourcing people will need to make sure that this is factored in. The danger is that no one gets a pat on the back for avoiding a problem 3-5 years in the future. And 3-5 years in the future most of the people working on the current solution will be gone. Leadership can make sure that this has been factored in, and most importantly documented.
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