"Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth." - Mike Tyson Many of us also know this quote from Mike Tyson, which turned into one of his most famous quotes because of the applicability far beyond boxing..especially in the sport of Supplier Negotiations. It really has meaning in any area of life, whether the blow comes from the death of a loved one, a health issue, losing your job, making a bad investment, a traffic jam, whatever. It's how you react to that adversity that defines you, not the adversity itself. Similar to Sun Tsu's claims, success in a supplier negotiation is often achieved BEFORE the negotiation ever starts. ...
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“Every battle is won before it’s ever fought.” ― Sun Tzu Most of us know this quote from Sun Tzu's seminal work, "The Art of War", but is it true that EVERY battle is won or lost before it's ever fought? Well, in context, Sun Tzu was speaking of the great set-piece battles fought at the time, where huge armies would line up and then be sent into the fray to fight. The battle would go to whoever had prepared best, who brought the best supplies, who had the best planning, who garnered the best intelligence, who held the best control of the ground, whose warriors had the best training, and so on.... But in modern conflicts, this view is ...
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As the Founder of NET(net), I’ve had the privilege of working with world class clients all over the world, in virtually all industries and geographies. I’ve also had the honor of knowing many "rock star" client executives, including management scholars from ivy-league schools, engineers from MIT, and their staff that’s as sharp as any well trained Special Forces unit. Over the years, I’ve learned many things from working with these exceptional organizations and I hope the feeling is mutual. But as a wise person once said, ‘the biggest room in the house, is the room for improvement’. There is one compelling issue that all these talented ...
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Oracle’s history with the cloud has been somewhat (shall we say) evolving. As recently as 2008, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison has called the cloud “complete gibberish”, “insane”, and likened its “idiocy” to that of “women’s fashion”. Later he said that cloud was his idea. Still later, Larry Ellison said he liked the brand of “cloud computing”, calling it “charismatic”. Then, at OpenWorld 2014, Oracle declared itself “King of the Cloud”. We found this suspicious at the time, given Oracle’s true standing in the cloud was diametrically opposed to its public statements at that time. The legions of techie’s at Oracle were hard at work to have ...
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Microsoft has recently announced upcoming changes to several key licensing rules and offerings for a variety of desktop, server, and virtualization products that, taken together, may significantly alter many of NET(net)'s past recommendations regarding the cost optimization as it relates to the usage of these products and features. These changes will be formally rolled out during the remainder of 2016 and unless these areas are assessed, the vast majority of Microsoft Customers (including the clients who have previously engaged us for optimization services) will be significantly over-paying based on the former methods and the prior Microsoft ...
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There is a beautiful highway in Hawaii affectionately known (at least to honeymoon tourists) as ‘The Road to Hana’ on the island of Maui. I remember the road well as it was pretty exciting with all its switchbacks, cliff views, hills and waterfalls. But I also remember the journey taking several hours longer than we thought it would – and really started to question the journey to begin with (the road trip – not the marriage). Ironic then that SAP chose a similar name for its product of the future – S4 Hana. As we are finding out with clients and associates, you should question when you are going to take this ‘Road to Hana’ – or whether ...
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Many clients are either buying more Oracle licenses, or renewing their Oracle maintenance service and support agreements this month (May - Oracle’s Fiscal Year-end), and continue to be dismayed at how difficult it is to cost optimize their Oracle estate. Because it is such a dark science that contains highly confidential information, the secrets of cost optimization are highly protected. Most clients either believe they are getting a pretty good deal or they’re not, but they have no real way to benchmark their agreement to the market. For most Oracle customers, the best options are to evaluate general market averages which doesn’t really ...
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Information technology has always been in one state of disruption or another almost by definition as the science of technology evolves and market forces change, and IT Infrastructure is no exception -- particularly in the manner in which we host and manage our data center centric resources. There is dynamic change all around us as the cloud transforms the ideas of traditional ‘on premise’ big iron investments. Whether on premise or in the cloud, our clients are experiencing a tectonic shift to faster, lighter and easier to manage platforms that deliver a higher level of performance, a simplified operational interface, a much less costly ...
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Timing as they say, is everything. Nowhere is this more evident than in the strategic technology supplier arena. When most of your budget is consumed by less than 10 suppliers, knowing everything there is to know about them is critical. Most of our client’s don’t have time to be experts on every one of them, but that’s ok…that’s why we’re here and it’s what we do. We’ve outlined in a short summary below, what your organization needs to be looking out for right now. With many of these strategic suppliers, the window of time is small but the opportunities are great, to drive value and cost savings for 2016 and beyond. Oracle May is the Fiscal ...
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Salesforce.com recently announced a major change in its Sales Cloud subscription programs that requires customers to act before Salesforce Q2 starts (which was May 1st) to lock in with old pricing model or automatically move to their new plan, and there are some potentially major implications for our clients. It’s imperative that you know how these changes impact your budget in the near future, and more importantly – what you can do about it. The most interesting part of this announcement and change seems to be the creative use of the word ‘Lightening’, which appears to be not much more than a significant increase in price, coupled with some ...
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