How to Negotiate with Microsoft: Proven Strategies to help you Maximise Value and Minimise Costs
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About this ebook
"How to Negotiate with Microsoft" unveils an arsenal of battle-tested strategies that equip you with the knowledge and skills necessary to navigate the complex world of Microsoft contracts, licensing, and pricing structures. Drawing from real-world experiences, this guide presents a step-by-step approach to help business
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How to Negotiate with Microsoft - Mark Bartrick
How to Negotiate with Microsoft
Proven Strategies to help you Maximise Value and Minimise Costs
Mark Bartrick
Copyright © 2023 Mark Bartrick
eBook Edition
ISBN: 978-1-916820-14-2
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof in any form. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored, in any form or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical without the express written permission of the author.
About the Author
Mark Bartrick is a negotiation coach and lives in Leicestershire in the UK.
He has been helping businesses negotiate contracts for over 30 years.
Mark has worked as a Negotiation Consultant for Gartner Inc, and was also a Sourcing and Vendor Management Analyst at Forrester Research Inc. As well as publishing research about negotiation and sourcing best practices, Mark also helped many Gartner and Forrester clients save money by teaching them how to negotiate better deals with their software and technology suppliers.
Mark now has his own negotiation consulting business which specialises in helping CIOs and IT Procurement leaders negotiate better deals with enterprise software vendors such as Microsoft, Oracle, SAP and Salesforce.
You can contact Mark via his business website www.scr21.co.uk or message him via his Profile page on LinkedIn.
Who is this Book for?
This book is aimed at every business or organisation that uses Microsoft software and associated services.
It will especially appeal to any CIOs, IT Directors or Heads of Procurement who are keen to optimise their budgets and drive maximum value from their spend with Microsoft.
There’s no doubt that Microsoft’s software and services are both popular and useful. Many businesses and organisations across the world use Microsoft products and services, and Microsoft is often deeply embedded in many daily work tasks.
That leaves many IT and Procurement leaders thinking they are powerless when it comes to negotiating a better deal with Microsoft.
But that’s not the case.
Even when Microsoft is the only game in town there are still many negotiation levers you can use to get them to move on contractual terms, pricing, discounts and concessions.
This book will help you prepare, plan and then optimise your next Microsoft negotiation.
Contents:
Chapter 1: Introduction to Microsoft
Company History
Financials
Sales Channels
Sales Culture
Chapter 2: Microsoft’s Products/Services
Product and Service Overview
Software
Microsoft Cloud
Services
Chapter 3: Microsoft’s Pricing
List Prices
Pricing Variances
Chapter 4: Microsoft’s Paperwork
Contracts & Agreements
Software Support Contracts
Software Assurance
Premier Support
Unified Support
Azure Cloud Contracts
Services Contracts
Chapter 5: Negotiation preparation
Do your Homework
Key Elements to Consider
Microsoft’s Sales Process
Managing your Microsoft Sales Rep
Chapter 6: Negotiating Paperwork
Always Take Legal Advice
Microsoft Software Contracts
Microsoft Cloud Contracts
Microsoft Services Contracts
Chapter 7: Negotiating Software Pricing
Discount Options
Negotiating Trade-in Credits
Negotiating True-ups/downs
Chapter 8: Negotiating Support Costs
Microsoft Support
Software Assurance
Support Costs for SaaS
Unified Support
Chapter 9: Negotiating Cloud Costs
Factors that Affect Azure Cloud Pricing
Azure Cloud Negotiation
Azure Discounting
Cloud Contract Nuances
Microsoft’s Cloud Competitors
Chapter 10: Negotiating Services Costs
Steps to Take
Services Discounts
Chapter 11: Bringing It All Together
Negotiate the Total Price
Negotiating Beyond Price
Chapter 12: Post Sale
Post-Negotiation Relationships are Important
Strategies for Maintaining Good Relationships with Microsoft
Dealing with Potential Conflicts
Chapter 13: Negotiating Audits
Audits are Inevitable
The Importance of SAM
Negotiating an Audit
Chapter 14: Conclusion
Chapter 1:
Introduction to Microsoft
Company History:
Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington. It is one of the largest software companies in the world, with over 200,000 employees.
Microsoft's best-known software products are the Windows line of operating systems, the Microsoft Office suite, and the Internet Explorer, Bing and Edge web browsers. Its flagship hardware products are the Xbox video game consoles and the Microsoft Surface lineup of touchscreen personal computers.
Microsoft was founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen on April 4, 1975. It then rose to dominate the personal computer operating system market with MS-DOS in the mid-1980s, followed by Windows. The company's 1986 initial public offering (IPO) and subsequent rise in its share price created three billionaires and an estimated 12,000 millionaires among Microsoft employees.
Since the 1990s, it has increasingly diversified from the operating system market and has made a number of corporate acquisitions, their largest being the acquisition of LinkedIn for $26.2 billion in December 2016.
In addition, Microsoft also offers a variety of cloud services marketed under the name Azure. These cloud services allow organizations to run their applications and store their data in a secure and scalable environment, while minimizing the need for expensive on-premises hardware and IT resources.
More recently, starting in 2019, Microsoft has been developing a long-term partnership with OpenAI to accelerate Artificial Intelligence (AI) breakthroughs. These will include new AI-powered experiences across Microsoft’s consumer and enterprise software products, and developments