Directed Negotiation

How much better could you be doing? Where are the biggest bangs for your buck? Who's got the leverage? Combining a comprehensive analysis of rates and an array of qualitative factors, the end result is an overall negotiation strategy outlining your organization's priorities and key points of leverage.

Directed Negotiation includes the following components:

• Qualitative Analysis
• Rapid generation of "what if?" scenarios
• Final strategy development

Quantitative and Qualitative Analysis

ProfitLine's advanced system organizes your data according to industry best practices and enables ProfitLine to automatically compare it, line item by line item, against our extensive database of current market rates. The result, within days, is a clear view of what you have to gain, including monthly, annual and multi-year potential savings.

Pricing comparisons are just the beginning of our analysis. A qualitative review of key contract elements by our sourcing experts also plays a critical role. Since price is not the only measure of value in a contract, having a deep understanding of non-price factors can be the difference between an average and a best-in-class contract. Factors we analyze include:

• Client Current State and Future Roadmap: current carrier issues, technology challenges, network roadmap, etc.
• Vendor Qualitative Analysis: current vendor strengths, weaknesses and partnering effectiveness.
• Best Practices Analysis: pricing structure & MARC, renegotiation/term, HR/account team terms, billing clause, technology re-evaluation and many more.
• Service Level Agreements: structure, consequence and provisioning & delivery problem resolution

Taking into account both quantitative & qualitative factors, ProfitLine is able to show what your priorities should be, how much leverage currently exists for each key service area, and what the key areas of focus should be for the negotiation.

Rapid generation of "what if?" scenarios

Imagine being able to see the short term and long term benefits of staying with your current vendor vs. switching to a new provider, or even factoring in a technology initiative such as implementation of Fixed Mobile Convergence. Our unique pricing analysis can easily demonstrate various scenarios - yet another fact based way of determining the most beneficial negotiating strategy.

Final strategy development

Your specific goals and priorities drive the development of a strategy which balances the elements of the deal most valuable to you with those most important to the carrier - revealing opportunities for give and take. Combining the pricing analysis, scorecards, new contract priorities and key points of leverage, you will have an overall negotiation strategy and be ready to negotiate a world class deal. But, a strategy is only meaningful if it is executed by skilled negotiators with access to web-based technology who can streamline the complex bidding process. ProfitLine's Directed Negotiations ensures you get the best possible deal by putting our unsurpassed negotiation expertise on your side of the negotiating table.

A Streamlined Process that gets you to Savings Sooner

ProfitLine generally completes sourcing engagements-from benchmarking to contract signature-in half the time it takes most companies to do their own deal. We handle all the preparation, while providing you with complete visibility into deal strategy and status. Speedy negotiations mean you start accruing savings months sooner, which can mean hundreds of thousands of dollars. A major factor contributing to our streamlined process includes:

ProfitLine's PowerSource RFP. PowerSource is our web based tool for organizing and gathering vendor responses to our client RFPs. On top of providing real time visibility throughout the entire process, it greatly reduces the time and complexity associated with gathering and analyzing vendor bids. Its extensive RFP process/workflow controls include line level tracking of all elements (developed, sent, received, reviewed), weighting of questions by importance and automatic scoring.

Unrivaled Expertise and Senior Level Relationships with Carriers

To get special pricing you must have the right relationships in the right places. Our deal-savvy experts have these relationships, along with a understanding of how each carrier, negotiates and operates. Because we are focused on the telecom industry and working deals every day, we are sensitive to and cognizant of even the smallest industry developments which may offer additional leverage or affect a negotiation.

In addition ProfitLine offers Professional Services, including consultative and customized projects, to complement and enhance TLM Sourcing. › top