Welcome To
The Bottom Line

A colleague of mine once said, “God was able to create Heaven and Earth in six days because He did not have an installed base of users.” Anyone who has spent any time in the software business understands this axiom all too well.

This is essentially the premise behind technical debt. As soon as your institution commits to a solution and begins adding customers or members to it, constraints emerge making it difficult to enhance or upgrade the technology.

Disruptive tech providers, new banking regulations, obscure deadlines and thresholds – these are challenges we face with clients every day. What many others still fail to see though, is that in an age of accelerating change, having a clear vendor negotiation strategy - and executing it well - is becoming more critical to bank and credit union executives than ever before.

To help spare others from costly lessons learned, here is a list of our best and most often given advice for preparing for a negotiation - or renegotiation. With our experts’ combined experience in the field, and $3.6 billion proof points behind us, these are SRM’s eight rules of engagement for effective vendor management.