Most procurement professionals are aware of their vendor’s reporting cycles which regularly provides new opportunities for negotiating good software license agreements. But end of a calendar year is always an interesting situation as everyone has particular targets for this period, even if it is not the fiscal year end of the own company.
Oracle has its half-year end in end November, Microsoft in end December. Both IBM and SAP have their fiscal year end on Dec 31st. And user organizations often close their year end of the calendar year. Calls will increase and that’s what you should be prepared for:
- Collect all points of complaints, even if you do not intend to buy new. It’s a good time to resonate performance or service issues
- If you have budget left, ask your most promising vendor what special deal they can offer for forward buying
- Review critical contract clauses that have given you trouble during the year, to change them as a pre-conditio for additional procurement
- Get a fresh compliancy statement internally and check when you have been audited last. Year end is a favorite period where dissatisfied vendors might start such discussion
- Review the recurring cost because the next maitnenance bills will hit you in the early days of January. If you need to fix that, do it now.