Enhance vendor negotiations with our customer service management system in Vendor negotiations

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there's my knot and although I'm Louisa pointed out that I work at Joliet Junior College most of my contract negotiation experience comes from the public library sector I began my career at Chicago Public Library Harold Washington library center and did not have a lot of experience negotiating contracts at that level because everything is done at a much higher level in terms of those kinds of vendor agreements but when I moved out to suburban libraries at New Lenox and Aurora and Plainfield I was deeply involved with contract negotiations for our individual library but also working with the system and some of the things that I would like to see or problems that I had and so I have over 15 years in public libraries in negotiating contracts and I realize that probably for some of you if you are new to this it's not the easiest or perhaps most natural of positions for many librarians to find themselves in much more business oriented and I think for that reason there's a little bit of fear and reticence and I just want to I just want everybody to think at this point that whether or not you realize it we're all negotiators throughout life throughout life you negotiate and you just need to look at those negotiations and modify them so that work in a library setting so we negotiate with our bosses we negotiate with our children we negotiate with our parents when we're teens at least I did a lot of negotiating with my parents with our subordinates people that we might manage with our peers if you're on a committee with our patrons if we're trying to help them and get more information out of them think of the reference interview as a series of negotiations but also maybe with a landlord or with a car dealer maybe those are a little bit more uncomfortable like vendor negotiations are but the goal is still the same the purpose is still the same and what we want to get out of this is a fair deal especially when we're dealing with car dealers we want to save money where we can and we want some sort of a win-win [Music] end result there's a bunch of different theories of negotiation and I prescribed - one that will talk about more when we get into the negotiations section but I am more of a I guess I would call it principles bargainer / a positional bargaining I'm not as concerned about winning positions as I am in the end goal and so I want to preserve relationships I want to take personality out of it and I want to focus on active and that could be difficult when you have them when you're dealing with an individual person or when your team is dealing with a team of people it's difficult to always separate the people from the process and that is really important it's important think about when you're hiring for a new position you don't want to hire for that person you want to hire for the position it's similar in that way you don't want to have the person be an interference to the process you don't want to become personal with this it's all about the end objectives and the end objectives is getting what you want for your users and your users are not just the public think about it your users are your staff do your reference staff in particular are you getting tools that they can use have you downsized your print collection your print reference collection if so are you getting the online tools that will help your team answer questions for end-users so it's not just the patrons that you're serving but it's also your your team talk a little bit about planning and information gathering we're kind of good to go through this process kind of as I see it a step by step so what is it that you want what information need are you trying to fulfill there's a lot of things that we want to do 24/7 in our libraries we want to offer people I'd give us an example language learning language learning is perfect for online delivery it allows you to purchase fewer print things and buy print I also mean the CDs that come with it because who's using CDs how many people are still using CDs do you still have cassettes on your shelves all of that can be delivered online now and at a relatively fine cost savings look at what your patrons are asking for are they asking for her language learning are they asking for ESL because many of the language learning packages have multiple sometimes 30 40 different types of ESL packages bought in that's another area where now you can shift the cost savings to that and there are more than just rosetta stone and mango there are many other resources out there in fact there are some free resources out there so again figure out what you want maybe you don't have the money to go into language learning or maybe there's still coffee things to be affected by using a free tool but when you do go into language learning look at the different kinds of packages that a vendor offers do you need a full-blown package is there a smaller package is there a package that comes with not only audio but video is there a package that allows you to have one-on-one assistance all of those kinds of things are what you're going to figure out in the very first planning and information gathering stages in addition talk to your colleagues at other institutions you'll not be afraid to talk about what you pay for a database do not be afraid of that talk to them it is unbelievable the disparity that is out there and it is due to what good negotiation the people that are good negotiators are getting better deals those that don't and if you talk to someone at another library and your library has 50,000 more people and you're paying $10,000 less that is due to good negotiation and nothing more you are negotiating them down so that you can get an affordable package so if you find out that somebody next door who has a larger population is paying ten fifteen thousand dollars less for a big package you need to speak with them about what they're doing who they're talking to what their strategies are and learn from them that's what we do is so many times we don't reinvent the wheel in the library world yet when it comes to negotiations we do it blindly on our own in a vacuum you need to speak with your colleagues and you need to speak with your system I have used rails and before that Heritage Trail and before that what was it Boaz pails I think in between there you need to speak with your system you need to let them know what group purchases are a value to you what you need and hmm there are some other organizations out there that have done group purchasing to other systems and then that's rolled off into other groups identify those resources if you're in academics you should be looking at Carly who is it that is putting together these packages that might benefit you and do they benefit you not all packages work for all libraries you might be a small library in a big package isn't for you even at a cost savings it's too expensive that's again in the planning and information gathering stage you need to be thinking about all this what do we want what else can we do is there another option let me give you an example there's a vendor and I'm not going to use vendor names out there you could guess there's a vendor out there that digitizes small newspapers across the country there is a large city in Illinois that cannot afford their local newspaper digitized because of the pricing structure of this vendor what have they done they've walked away and I'm going to talk about walking away a number of times because just because of digital sources out there and just because it's your paper for your library in your community doesn't mean that there aren't other options and this library in conjunction with a neighboring library have gone ahead and started to microfilm more regularly everything and get CD digital copies of that microfilming that they now own so there are other ways to get to information other than being raked over the coals if you cannot come to a equitable solution that's affordable and that will meet the needs of your patrons you have to consider what else you can do I talked a little bit about what others are getting what sort of packages are they getting talk to your neighbors talk to your colleagues find out what they're paying and look into ways that you can find savings and I talked a little bit about that checking out group purchases looking at smaller packages a big package is not always cost effective for everyone sounds like it is but might not be okay where do we go to next once we have made some decisions about what we're looking for we need to talk about doing trials and assessments and I break it down into some very necessary step that you're going to have to really focus on and then I have some recommendations based on issues that I've come across trial and error things that have worked for me they might not work for everyone but I think they're worth looking at so you must create a timeline get yourself organized this is that I would say that as soon as almost as soon as you finish negotiating your last contract you have to start thinking about what you're doing next now depending on the length of the contract that you negotiate you might have more wiggle room but you have to start thinking you have to assemble a testing group who are going to be your testers are you going to choose from across the board are you going to have youth services people work on the youth services modules or databases are you going to have adult reference people work on the adult related modules are you going to involve the public and get feedback from them so who are your testers and again you want to provide them with firm deadlines a firm deadline to get responses to you you also have to provide them with firm criteria don't expect people to know the kind of information that you want to be able to make a decision you have to put together some sort of set of criteria I would say it's one once you get these things in place you need to talk to the vendor and request a one-month trial they will fight you on one-month trial but you explain to them that you are short-handed because we all are if you're not short-handed you can tell me in one of your responses but every library I've ever worked at has been short-handed so you need at least one month to be able to get everybody in there off desk time focused etcetera and if they'll only give you two weeks tell them that you're going to need another two weeks after after that two weeks or we're not going to be able to assess your product and yes this is part of hard negotiations but it needs to be done they need to understand that if we're going to be spending thousands of dollars with them we need to be able to try out their product the end and if they're not willing to give you that time then maybe at this point it's even time to start reassessing and finally the last step of the trials and assessments is analysis you need to analyze your findings and if you're as busy as I was as a department head you are going to need time to do that and that might be another month so we are already looking at just getting people to trials and getting some analysis done on those trials that's already two months of your timeline if you are doing this in a real thoughtful way so you can see that this is a lengthy process but you know in in past libraries that I was that I've worked at we're talking about a budget that can be you know upwards of a hundred maybe two hundred thousand depending on how large a library I've worked at and this can it be done lightly there has to be fought involved an analysis is an important part of it hopefully you're getting enough feedback that you can do a useful analysis on the thought the thoughts of your team now some recommendations given the fact that what I've already outlined takes two months I'm suggesting that you need to start this probe process at least six months before your renewal or your purchase I would suggest also timing some of this if you can maybe even adding to the timeline by using the state of Illinois striate Illinois project that normally starts in October or November because array around there and because that goes for at least a month it might be six weeks or so you don't even have to talk to the vendors at this point if you want to start trials because you have access to all of this so this the Gwen Harrison from the state always gives you a heads up it's yet find it Illinois dot org and I think on my last screen I have or maybe even in your handouts I might have the URL okay and Louise is posting it in the chat box I think it's ww find it Illinois org slash try it when it's open it's not open right now but I think for like a new negotiator being able to start your trials about actually even talking with a vendor is a nice option and I hope that if you haven't used try it Illinois with your team that you do and it's also a good way to get public feedback because you can tell the public about these trials and you can create an online forum where they can give you feedback about it now you can't sneak these trials like opposed them and open and free as though they were your own databases but people can contact you and you can you can give them access so again a really great way there's another wid thing that you can do for your group if you have an intranet for your testing group you can create a webform if you've never seen a webform for feedback on databases there are hundreds of them online just type in library database feedback any of those kinds of words it academics I have to say tend to use them more than public's but anybody can create one create one for your team if you think like the option for you to get better feedback is to create a webform that's anonymous rather than having someone email you information hey that's perfect and it's not that difficult to put together someone on your staff or your your web team if it's internal or external can put together a simple form with some radio boxes and some some boxes for text feedback aside from the try it Illinois option if you are talking to vendors and scheduling trials because you could do try to illinois and then still schedule one on one trial I suggest having people focus on one trial at a time just so that they can and to do them in quick succession relatively quick succession it is so if you're let's say you're looking for a database that's a directory style database there are a number of big players out there there's demographics now from Gale there's a twosie databases and there's reference USA and there might be another that I'm not thinking of but let's say you're going to do a trial on all of those it's best if you do those databases in succession giving your staff one month at a time and then moving on to something else hopefully that's the way that you have your your database renewal set up you're not renewing everything every year and so you can focus on one or two things over the course of a few months finally another recommendation would be participation prizes or perks so that those people that are taking the time to analyze databases and get back to you with feedback are rewarded in some sort of fashion for participating and if your library does not have a lot of money or if you're like me and you don't like to buy like a lot of like plastic tchotchkes which ends up like destroying our environment it's just an aside you can do things like a preferred parking spot that is a good boon to people and if you don't have one talk to your director and find out if you can do something like that but there's a lot of different things you could do a work from home day that does not cost you anything and it seems the person traffic time gas time it ends up being an economic perk so think creatively if you don't have the money for a little prize or something a gift card or whatever there's lots of different ways that you can support your team and recognize their work without it having to cost a lot of money talk a little bit about the criteria that we are going to use for rating and this is what you're going to put together for your team so that they know what you're interested in when it comes to the value usefulness of the of this particular product so how is this relevant to your patrons is it relevant is it just something of interest or is it fulfilling an actual need what age groups are you looking at are you targeting with this are you targeting businesspeople are you targeting teenagers are you targeting school children seniors consumers you need to if you're in a public library you need a well-rounded assortment of databases that will meet all of the needs of your public make sure you're doing that this is a number of libraries where I stepped in have been a little bit wonky in terms of how they built their databases you know there is one instance where because II which Illinois which is another great tool let me just throw out four ear itch that is through the state of Illinois you have access to a suite of about twelve databases that are delivered through OCLC first search it is not the sexiest looking of databases let's let's be frank about it however it does provide you for free or your tax dollars at work shall we say databases that you would not have otherwise so make sure you are not duplicating those now setting to another scenario at one time ear itch offered abi/inform which is an excellent business database it's an expensive business database one that many public libraries can't afford and they dropped it they've dropped the number of things I rich was much more robust a number of years ago but we all know where we are financially in the state of Illinois and I think abi/inform has been gone at least a decade now it was one of the earliest ones to be dropped now when we all had that we didn't have to focus so closely on tools for our business community and so some of us once it left were left with nothing and we didn't fill that void in a timely fashion and that is one of the things that I saw at one of the libraries where I worked and so it took me probably five to seven years before I got a compliment of what I felt were useful business databases with a focus on small business making sure that we had things like sources for business plans those of you that buy print sources for business plans know this is a costly endeavor and if you can have a database that updates these in a timely fashion without you having to think about it although it's an outlay in your databases budget it's a cost savings around the board in terms of staff time processing time selecting time and print purchasing so look at your age groups look at your demographics and make sure that you are building a complement of sources for everyone that will be useful to everyone because when it comes time for voting when it comes time for referendums when it comes time for institution support let's say your municipal library what are you doing to support the business community the government community will use these resources to so think think about those terms curriculum are you tied into your schools are you working with the teachers are you promoting your databases to the students are you getting things that will support what or complement what they need if not why not maybe there's a reason why not maybe your school district is rich and they have all the resources they need and you aren't afterthought if that's the case then you're going to build differently but you need to look at that option those options and make sure that you're maintaining or relevance to that to that particular patron group and of course I mentioned this to your staff how will your staff be helpful if they don't have the tools that they need and so when you're asking them to look at these criteria and to review they mean to be looking at what will be useful for them also good example is Consumer Reports online this is an incredibly useful tool for the public they don't have to pay for it they don't also have to come in and check out one specific individual magazine because when when you start to look for consumer information as soon as you finish with the vacuum cleaner you realize like wow I'd really like to look at Bluetooth speakers too and that's going to be in another another issue it won't be if you use by our mind version but it's also incredibly useful for staff you can quickly look up almost anything while you're on the phone with a patron and point out where this is and how to get to it without the patron having to come in or without you having to flip through to the back of the index of the current issue and find out what vault what issue and or what volume that was last reviewed in and then go find that it might even allow you to go down to one print subscription lots of libraries have two print subscriptions one for the reference desk and one for patrons to check out and so you might even find out that there's the cost savings there if you have the online version so relevance all different kinds of things to look at just in terms of the relevance of a particular database quality how is this useful is it useful how is it designed is it unique does it duplicate something I look at database collections at other libraries frequently and because of group purchases because of the way things have gone over time there can be considerable duplication if you are buying big packages there is almost inevitably duplication do you have both the Gale and the ebsco package if you're an academic that's academic one file an academic search complete you might have them from two different vendor well they are two different vendors one gay all-in-ones EBSCO but it might be two different con social buys you need to look at those there is no reason to have duplication at that level if you even look at the examples they both index about let's say about six thousand journals and they have full-text for about four thousand it's almost virtually the same so you need to go and look at where am i duplicating in this and even some vendors within their own product packages duplicate because they're what they're selling you as a home improvement or a hobbies or something like that is just a subset of their main product and if that's the case that's duplication and if that's the case that might not be the best value for you how often is the content updated I'm thinking not so much in terms of journals here but in terms of reference books like Gale virtual reference center or credo how often are you offered new books how easy is it for you to do session old volumes because all of that's going to be important just like your reference tools on the shelf you do not want a health book from 2003 in your virtual collection and if it is really difficult for you to replace that in terms of cost or in terms of just Dia sessioning in an online environment those are things you have to take into consideration when you're looking at these packages and I would say look at the comprehensiveness of a specific package many of us can get away with less than what we purchase the as a vendor is pressuring us into a big package and you have I'm not saying that you have to completely resist this it might have value but I think you you have to know the individual databases and without doing this review you won't you won't know that you'll be in a position where you're dazzled by everything that they're offering you but not knowing wow this is truly just a subset of the first thing that I'm buying and is there a value of a thousand and two thousand in that having that subset or is there a better value in training people on how to find what they need in the big database think about it so search functionality yes important to the end user possibly more important to the staff member mediating because they understand truncation they understand boolean operators they understand wildcards they understand ways to refine a search by full text by date rage by language they understand how to sort and so getting good feedback on search functionality from your team is going to be more important than from the public because the public thinks of searching like they do using Google typing in a question why is the earth round why is the earth flat that seems to be popular these days they ask a question they don't use keywords they don't understand that subject language as a controlled vocabulary so the search functionality part has to be taught to them but your team should know enough about search functionality to be able to assess whether this is a decent product whether it offers a basic search for the end user and then advanced searching capabilities ways to broaden the search way is to refine the search and then ease-of-use um how how much online help is available directly for the patron from your vendor without you having to be a middle person and I'm not talking just about online help like creating a search or downloading a file I don't know what online help like I can't get in remotely kind of help because both are important and both both are cost savings because right someone else is doing this for you you are not involving your IT staff you're not having to then make a call to the vendor for the patron so ease abuse online help I would say that's like a huge huge thing for um cost savings and not not everything with the cost is going to show up at your balance sheet and so you as a negotiator also have to sell this to your director or whoever else might be making decisions on this he is they have to understand and this might come from statistics that you keep they understand how much time goes into helping with databases in technology because that's going to figure in to how your staff can be used more effectively at 'equal savings so other things is it easy for people to figure out how to print how to maybe mark up a document how to download what about citation tools does it provide different ways to cite a work does it allow you to download to some of the like tools like EasyBib or things that are out there that students are using even if you're not using it or paying for it your students and I don't just mean at college level I mean your students in high school and even junior high are using some of these tools do they provide permalinks so that you can get directly back into that particular document or at least do they allow you to email documents to yourself those are all part of ease-of-use thing criteria that you're going to want your team to be looking at proposals let's talk a little bit about and I pointed out UX a lot of what I'm talking about here is UX user experience that's kind of lingo but ease of use search functionality all of that feeds into the overall user experience of a database now I'm not going to spend a whole lot of time on proposals because these for the kinds of negotiations that you're going to be doing they tend to be internal documents that are going to guide you they're going to be based on everything all the research that you've done so far they're going to define the purpose of this particular project getting a business database or getting a consumer database you're going to like lay out the scope and identify just a few things your core objectives like so so take your analysis and say you know these are the most important things that we want out of this these are the functional requirements that we want out of this we want it to be able to do these things and these are who we want to reach with this you're going to outline a kind of a modest guesstimate at a budget based on what you have to with and then you're going to provide a little summarization of what you see as the contract terms it might be something as simple as the length of the contract and what sort of access people have the reason I say that this is a shorter shorter type of a document or step is because you're going to really mainly use this with your team and your director and if you're doing this with a group purchase let's say you have a small consortium or you're kind of reaching out to Rails this differs from a true RFP request for proposal which tends to be something that your director will be involved with perhaps a consortium will be involved with and it involves tens of thousands of dollars it is a cut it your your board in state I believe state law dictates at what level you need to go for RFP and it's probably not going to be for database purchasing it's going to be maybe for your integrated library system or something of that nature that is in very very a contract that's very expensive and so that that's really what we're focusing on here is kind of what you're doing for individual databases maybe a slightly bigger group but it's not writing an RFP and there are lots of tools for writing RFPs if you end up meaning to do that if you even just type in you know writing an RFP you could find a lot of things I would it's a little bit old but tech source from Ala they have library technical technology reports and they actually have a model RFP and I'm going to give Louise the URL for that if you are in a position where you're using in a model you need a model RFP a true request for Proposal where you're creating a legal document and putting it out there and asking people to basically respond to it with their best offers which is different than what we're doing here today you're going to want to look at something like that so unless these are an rfp its internal they're basically to help you focus your negotiations to use all the trial data that you've collected and to spell out your key demands that's what the kind of proposal that we're talking about today is focusing on now your next step is going to be meeting your vendors woohoo exciting you want to give your vendor a clear outline of what you expect in the presentation this is hugely important do not let the vendor waste your time that of your team or that of your consortia with some sort of sales pitch that you do not need you this is not the time for a sales pitch this is a time for the concert for the vendor to address the specific things in your proposal the specific things that you want answers to especially if this is a renewal you should have a relationship already there is no need for this person to be selling you on this yes update is there something new and fresh to the database you're going to want to hear about that and you're going to want to hear about any added value they can provide you as a renewing party this is not a given and they should not feel this is a given you need to tell them that you're talking to multiple vendors and that you're doing so in quick succession for the ease of comparison and if you've already seen something before you've seen them present those findings and tell them what somebody else can do for you and what's the timeline for them to implement this this is not the time for them to direct the content that you're going to hear this is the time for you to direct the content you're going to hear you need to hear what's going to help you make a decision and too often we let these vendors roll in with absolutely no consideration of what our needs our true needs are and so you need to do the piece before they come in and explain to them everything that I've just outlined if you don't have a good relationship with your vendor now's the time now is the time to start inviting them in and talking with them people not only that you're currently working with but people that you might be working with in the future you need to speak with them at least quarterly and you need or via email you don't have to answer every vendor email my god I don't know how you'd have time to they constantly are sending you emails I would set up your email so that it's sort and shifts the vendor stuff into a folder for each vendor and then I would go through it maybe weekly dump the stuff that's just sales pitches and then quarterly I would send them an email and say hey thanks for the updates on X Y & Z thanks for this this was helpful I'd like to talk to you about this don't feel that you have to be constantly tied to your vendor that is just a ridiculous thing remember they're salespeople mainly that are contacting you some of them also have excellent training skills but their main goal is sales I would also caution you that there is huge turnover huge turnover in the vendor Salesforce I could I mean there have been times where I've had a contract and in the course of the contract I've had three or four different salespeople it is not the easiest of positions I guess but I just want you to be aware that you have to keep on top of it and if you see like hi I'm so-and-so I'm your new vendor that's the time to get back and not wait for like a quarterly reviews to get back to them and schedule an interview have them come in have them talk to you and let them know a little bit about what you're about I would say to be honest as honest as you can be there are times where you have to keep things confidential but if your staff simply does not like a database and this has happened there's nothing happened I brought the vendor and I've talked to the vendor I've had the thing trialed and my team did not like that database and I had to go to the vendor and say you know what you're not in contention for this and this and this reason we did not like your database and I will be happy to continue to work with you we'll still be keeping X Y & Z databases but we are not going forward with this one we're not satisfied with an all of them why it could be that we've compared searches and it's a directory style database and your directory information is old in its obsolete and that's not sufficient for us and these are the tests that we did and when you have when you've done a good trial and you have answers then you can be honest with your vendor and say this is not working and this is why and then I would also make demands if you want us to consider this in the future these are the things that are going to have to change so speak to them quarterly respond at least monthly Oh visit visit visit visit your vendors visit your vendors every time you go to a conference and not just for the swag although the swag can be good I'll tell you because of the relationships that I would said there's even vendors that I have argued with even vendors who I have turned down I have excellent relations with them because I'm honest with them and they are always the first to invite me to you know will will pay for you to fly down to Charlotte and go to where merchants conference for three days or I mean I constantly get offers from and I don't even buy merchants because they respect the feedback that I give them they respect the honesty in the negotiations and the things that I tell them that need improvement because even if I'm not in a position to buy that next go-around I might be the one after that and even if I'm not they might be able to better sell it to someone else because now they have the more insider information so ask for what you want in your negotiations ask for what you want don't be given what they want to give you and not only guess where you want ask for more what else can they give you go back to them let's say you're doing a directory style database and the place that you want to maybe move away from you may be not as satisfied with them but maybe they have one or two things that you want this new database to give you oh this place only gives you 50 downloads or 100 downloads per search what about 200 downloads what about 500 downloads push push for what's best for you and your patrons look and see how often it's being used and tell them look we only have this being offered three or five times a day if that's the case I want those people those five people that are going in there to be able to have 200 downloads rather than 50 now if I was doing 20 patrons a day I could see you having a problem with that but do you understand where I'm coming from I only have five people using this on average daily they should be able to have access to more information you have to have that data you have to be collecting that data you are the one that is powerful and this always remember that you have the money they need your money you have to ask for what you want you have to be firm and I've mentioned this a number of times you've got to look at those packages that they offer you because they're getting more money but you might not be always getting the best value and if you have a really good offer use from someone else from a different database you need to use that you need to use that to get what you want if what you want is not that database that gave you a good offer but the one you're trying to negotiate with you need to use that and you have to say you got to come in at this this is the price point I need you to come in at all so I need you to come in and do X amount of sessions for my staff in person also I need you to come in and do X amount of sessions for my patrons in person I need you to come in and do one of our simply business Lunch and Learn sessions on your directory style database I need you to do an evening session later in the year so we can capture those who can't come to lunch and learn and I need you to be there in person to answer questions and then I also need online training webinars that we can do at our own leisure how many modules can you give me okay so you gave me the us white pages in yellow pages I also want all your directory modules for the same price I want you throw those in I want you to auto generate statistics and send them to me can you do this is this an option you know how much time that phase where ever than logging in and putting in all the criteria and then having it run if they can auto generate statistics for you you have to bargain for that is there anything about the license that needs amending generally that is only going to be looked at if you have a keen eye and are reading every detail make sure that there is information about copyright protection number you know don't find out that there are a number of seats and this is not unlimited when it's too late or that you're renewing for the same number of seeds and you haven't looked at your statistics and realized oh I could do fewer number of feet and of course things like um you know remote access versus number of seeds and on strict unrestricted use and simultaneous users those are all things that you should really be looking at there's value to be had you know like for some of our expensive databases that are not used as much I'll give you an example now some places might have huge use of value line online but a lot of places don't some of the people that use value line are very wedded to the print version which many of us have gotten rid of and they have not been willing to move to the online version and so usage is not as robust as it could be or Morningstar if those offer you a small number of seeds let's say you started with like five seats at Morningstar maybe you don't need five simultaneous seats maybe you could get by with three and an effective cost saving so you need to look at that when you're working on your renewal or your licensing and make sure that you're getting the best deal at the best cost savings what else can the vendor do for you PR and marketing will they write you a press release will they provide you with free Facebook cover images Instagram images posters posters they can be personalized for your library of course the user help and the statistics in what sort of swag like certain vendors give you like X amount of points that you can use for free swag from their website you know take advantage of that go to mango if you use mango and every year in the summer I use up a bunch of my mango points and I get little bags and t-shirts and the cups and mugs and then when it's Talk Like a Pirate Day I have a bunch of swag bags that I can promote for Mango and talking like a pirate which is always fun and it's all free free free free free free make sure to be talking about what you can get that will add value to these purchases so you have the power to also just simply walk away and this is not an easy choice to make but I have had to do it in the past I would say that my best success has been having one major vendor providing a bunch of stuff and this is normally done on a consortium Ben I have two of the other more major vendors that are out there where I buy three or four items from them because I want to keep them in the mix and I would tell you that keeping them in the mix is important it's important for the health of databases it's just like not putting all of your eggs in one print Thunderer yes you have a major job er but do you also use individual sales people that come in and see you if you don't you should you need to spread the wealth you need to support your local community you need to buy from your vendors to get discounts maybe even supplemented with Amazon but don't put all of your eggs in one basket because it will be bad for publishing there will be bad for libraries that will be bad for cause and you need to do the same thing with your database vendors so let's say you buy your biggest package from EBSCO you still need to spend some money with Gale and with ProQuest you need to keep them in the mix you need to keep them hungry you need to keep them listening and also they may be able to afford you value on other things you know certain certain database vendors have consumer reports others have ancestry you know you you're going to want to make sure that you're picking and choosing and finding the vendors that have something that specialized that you need that you and that you can afford from from them so that you can give a little bit of money and keep them interested in you know I told you I would say something about the different kinds of approaches to negotiation there's two main ones in the field positional bargaining and principals bargaining and when we think of negotiation as a negative and many of us do and I did too when I first was I hated it it was not my forte and I think we're often thinking of positional bargaining when we get into that negative headspace because it involves these two parties that are taking up and then giving up these positions a succession of positions and it's confrontational and personal and it because it can become ego driven and it could be damaging it could be really damaging to your relationship and I've already explained that I have good relationships with my vendors despite the fact that I tell them no that I walk away they come back to me that's because I use principled organy it focuses on issues rather than positions it's using objective data it's using objective criteria trials analysis and it's separating the issues from the people involved and I'm looking to create mutual gain they are going to get my contract they are going to get my money and I'm going to get everything and maybe more that I want for my end-users for my patrons that is the crux of manner that is the difference in those two styles of negotiations that you are bargaining for mutual gain rather than a lopsided short-lived victory you need to set people from the problems and positions from the interest and you know agree on objective criteria for you were evaluating outcomes that means they happen in order for the rest of this to to work smoothly now I got a few recommendations here what do I mean by harmonized harmonizing is getting your renewals all in the same basic date month kind of thing why do you want to do this for me you want to do this because what if you change packages what if you change them way your database mixture is comprised of if these aren't all in relative proximity to one another you're wasting money now in addition to harmonizing you need to look at when your renewals will happen when you want to get so it could be that harmonizing has to happen over a three-year period of time because you have long term contracts or because you can't afford to spend on an 18-month contract instead of a 12-month contract to get a particular database harmonized I would suggest that my best experiences have been to move my renewal off the end of the fiscal year this is not always possible especially if you have consortium agreement however think about what if you're a manager think about what the end of the fiscal year is like with your finance department it is a nightmare even with the best finance depart everyone is trying to encumber and spend all of their money and now the biggest chunk of your budget is waiting until that last month of the fiscal year move it move as much of it as you can to third quarter or to mid-year this will ease the burden on your finance department it will also allow your board to see that money is being encumbered and spent and not just at the end of the year as though we're in a rush even though you and I know it's not in a rush even though you and I know we've taken all this time to do these trials if if it's nerve-racking to a board and and and to your finance people to see a hundred thousand dollars in the last month of the year that has not been built so think about think about moving now multi-year deals please consider multi-year deal they don't have to be paid all at once they can be billed yearly however they affect savings if negotiated properly sometimes you will have no increase no increase over three years sometimes instead of a 5% increase you could get a 1% in the first year and a 2% in the second year why because they know you're they're going to be getting that money it's all about the money for them they are going to have to come to you every year hoping you're going to pay them they now know you're paying them for three years and for that they will hold down the cost simple as that if that's one of the easier things to negotiate is a long-term deal now how else does it value you free up staff time free up staff time I'll say it one more time for you up staff time that is money money in the bank nobody has to negotiate this on the other hand the users have something that's stable that they can use for a number of years that they don't have to relearn every year I would say that for like a big package a 3-year deal is probably maybe as long as you want to go things can change with vendors vendors can be sold vendors can go downhill they might not update things as much as you'd like but I think having that stability for staff and patrons is a nice thing and it's cost-effective please always be looking at what's happening with databases even if you're not prepping because you have a three year deal look at what's happening in the marketplace and I would say also have a lead negotiator whether you're a consortium of six libraries or ten libraries you need one person to take the lead everybody can be involved but you need someone that has the skill set that's able to use some of the tools that I've talked about effectively and can push this process forward and then as I said I put try it Illinois up there but you've already seen that so in conclusion I just want to say that you know you are all negotiators you just don't realize that you just haven't maybe practiced it in a library setting one of the best books I've ever read is an old old book it was first published in 1981 it's been rent in subsequent editions you will still see it if you go to like a business magazine like business weekly it's still selling 30 years after it was first published or whatever I think was first published in the early 80s it's called getting to yes by Fisher and ury it is still selling like 3000 some copies a week and it has helped me and many many people not just in the business world but in not-for-profits understand how to negotiate an agreement without giving in and I would suggest it's easy to read it is used as a text it is more of a business book but not-for-profits use it also I would suggest looking looking for it it's probably on your shelf maybe even in an old edition and you know I'm like son unlike some books that need to be weeded you might you might want to get a newer edition but really it's even in this older edition it has lots of practical advice so yeah if you just type in getting to yes it is like a classic in the field and I would recommend that also and now I think I will take I will conclude my portion of the speaking and Louise is going to feed me some of your questions yeah Rachel thank you for shel I really appreciate your presentation today lots of things to think about when you're negotiating a contract I do have one question for you I just want to refine the audience we've got plenty of time we've got almost 15 minutes before we wrap up so please if you have thought of any questions or comments go ahead and type those in now and we'll try to get to as many as possible I want to thank Michelle too for her presentation today and for allowing us to record the the presentation so I'll be processing that and getting it posted on the rayless website in a couple days so Michelle the first question we had was is about ancestry you know patrons want to use ancestry 4:7 but it's their policy to not allow libraries to have access do you have any recommendations oh yes I do ha ha I have been pushing with with ProQuest for many many many years and the problem with pushing with ProQuest who is the delivery agent for ancestry to the library market is that they they are not ancestry they are simply delivering ancestry ancestry really would prefer that everybody buy this individually and they have not been moved by any library arguments that by opening up the market they could increase their user base ultimately either through adding more value added stuff that maybe they didn't give the library market that would prompt people to buy or a there's a number of ways of doing it and I have spoken with ancestry and have told them about what happened to another database they've decided they only wanted to focus on end users and they pulled out of the library library market leaving us high and dry some of you that are old enough to remember will recall that this was rosetta stone and then what happened in 2008 the real estate bubble burst and nobody had four hundred five hundred dollars to pay individually as a consumer for rosetta stone and now the library's no longer had a product and so my suggestion to you is to talk to ProQuest express your interest in 24/7 remote access but also talk directly to ancestry talk to your genealogy groups and have them contact ancestry if you have a local one if you have a local society you we have to use all the pressure that we can in an instance like this because our vendor who distributes this has not had success with them and so we have to continue to talk to our vendor about what we want but know that we have to also go to ancestry directly and I wish I had better news for you but they have not they have not been interested but that does not stop me from constantly asking Thanks that was the only question we have so far I'm going to give people just a couple more okay oh here's one here's a long one all right that one some vendors have asked in license agreements not to share pricing information with other institutions as you mentioned it's helpful to know what similar size libraries pay for certain debate databases when negotiating is this reasonable to ask the vendor to remove that language from the contract before signing yes yes and yes and when you cross that off and send that back to them they are not going to debate it because look at what they're asking you I mean that sort of secrecy is not doing them any favors or us any favors they think it's doing them favors but it's not it's not going to make me feel that my deal with them is any better that I'm getting a better value because they're not allowing me to talk to others so I strike any kind of language like that and any kind of language about if I don't renew within like whatever they're like 30 days or whatever I just told them I need more time than this I have been bullied and I still have a good relation this person believe it's unbelievable but I got I went above him to his supervisor because he threatened me because I cancelled too late on a renewal and I was like I don't owe you anything I do not owe you a renewal and I'm not renewing and I don't care how many dates you wanted in advance it's not happening I need to speak with your supervisor and then I spoke with a supervisor and I said listen I have been buying from you for whatever was five years seven years whatever our situation here has changed we have had a reduction in budget I cannot pay this and I am not renewing it and if you ever want my business again you are going to respect the situation that we find ourselves in and then I will address this at a later time but I cannot pay this this year I will not pay this this year and my next step is going to my lawyer and of course I yeah they drew cease and desist you know I had another situation with a vendor he did not want to allow me to leave my individual contract for a group contract at the group price rails had offered a new group purchase I had to actually get rails involved not only his boss rails involved not only veranda here but be got involved I am not afraid to step this up if need be they want to provide a group purchase to rail and they want to ice me out because I had an individual contract no no I'm going to just step away if that's the case so you have to utilize every avenue of pressure that you have it's not always only on you and it's not always only on your sales person it's on that sales persons manager and it's on in this case I incorporated rail and thanks Michelle I I just posted in the chat of a link to Rails of page on the group purchases and other deals and discounts that we have available I just suggest that you log into the rails website with your l2 username and password in order to see all the content some of it is member only exclusive things and as Michelle said you know if there's anything that you know a lot of what's on that list come from suggestions from you and so if you do have things that you're looking for please please reach out to my colleagues here and you know we can investigate but with that I mean that was the last question we had so I think we'll go ahead and wrap up a few minutes early thank you again so much Michelle for being here today my pleasure and you know just get in touch with me although right now I'm a new faculty member I'm working on tenure I'm not involved really with contract negotiations I have a lot of experience in this area and I'm happy happy to help anyone who might have questions or need some assistance or just want to pass something by me please just get in touch great well thanks again Thanks thank you all for being here and I'm going to go ahead and end the webinar enjoy the rest of your day thanks bye