Enterprise Software Users: Fight for Your Licensee Rights!

Now that the economy has tipped the scales in favor of software buyers rather than the ERP, CRM, BI and supply chain vendors, now is the time to assert your software-purchasing rights and determine the most beneficial contract-negotiation strategies for today’s enterprises.

So how can you do that? One way is to check out Ray Wang’s always-informative and most helpful blog—A Software Insider’s Point of View. Wang, a star enterprise software analyst at Forrester Research, is all about helping today’s customers better manage their vendor relationships.

Way back in December 2006, he and Forrester published a groundbreaking report: “Enterprise Software Licensee’s Bill of Rights.” The intent of the report was to create and improve a “reusable contract negotiation model that cuts across the five key phases of the software ownership life cycle,” Wang notes. These include: selection, implementation, utilization, maintenance and retirement.

Now, it’s time for a refresh. Wang wants to update the Bill of Rights to include such topics as virtualization, SaaS and subscription pricing, newer usage-based pricing models, open source, and vendor lock-in avoidance. The next version will be published in the second quarter of 2009.

So go to the Software Insider site, read Wang’s pitch and take the survey to voice your opinion on what new rights should be added, what should be updated and what should be retired.

“For every good idea or comment, whether or not we use your idea,” Wang adds, “we’ll send you a copy of the final report.” You can also send a private e-mail to him.

As Wang says: “Let’s put the collective wisdom of the Web to work and help our end-user clients create a fair win-win playing field with the vendors.”