Negotiate Value-Added Contracts
RAS helps a client identify the best contract for its organizational requirements to create more productive, cost-effective, and sustainable partnerships with its suppliers. Working together, RAS and its client consider factors that determine the optimal contracting arrangement for each supplier relationship: dependency on the supplier, strategic value of the product or service, cost, and impact on the client due to supplier nonperformance.
RAS’ regularly updated national proprietary database on pricing and contract provisions for numerous industry categories provides hard data we use to negotiate the best contract for our clients. Typically, we can renegotiate an existing contract with your vendor. If they are unwilling to improve your contract to meet best industry practices and pricing, we can provide options for suppliers that will meet those requirements.
We can also help you develop a Request for Proposal (RFP) that specifies technical requirements, timely service, and industry best practices so that you can easily compare proposals “apples to apples”.
Sometimes the relationship is simple, but sometimes it’s complex and demands collaboration and flexibility. Understanding the process for developing the best contracts for your needs and the steps for designing that contract will enable you to decide whether to stay with, amend, or move away from the status quo contract. And as RAS’ clients have discovered, that decision may be critical to achieving competitive advantage.
Suppliers can help your organization lower costs, increase quality of products and services, and be more innovative. Or they can just “deliver the goods”. Your suppliers can be critical partners who help you achieve organizational objectives through a strategic long-term relationship where both sides benefit. It all depends on your view of and approach to contracts and their design. And on your understanding of your real requirements, risk tolerance, inside industry knowledge, and comparative pricing of those goods or services.
RAS can negotiate a contract that not only defines requirements and deliverables but also establishes a framework under which you and your supplier operate collaboratively, not as adversaries, with a recognized vested interest in each other’s success.