You can play hard ball with your CMS vendor

Times are tough, and as I pointed out in my Editor's Corner this week, vendors are looking for an edge to sell you their CMS products. If you have an existing agreement with your CMS vendor, Janus Boye suggests you take a long look at it and figure out what areas you can leverage for better service or to renegotiate more favorably for you. When times get tough, it really does put the customer in the driver's seat.

For instance, Boye says you can get something in return like free consulting for agreeing to become a reference customer. These are customers that other potential customers can call or ones that get used in marketing case studies and talk to the press about their experience with the vendor. It only makes sense to use this to your advantage when negotiating with the vendor.

Boye advises looking at all aspects of your agreement, getting rid of functionality you don't need or want and taking a long look at your maintenance agreement if you have one. He even goes so far as to suggest you cancel your maintenance contract. He says most companies get very little bang for the money they spend on it.

It could be a bit like those maintenance contracts they try to sell you when you buy an appliance. In some cases, they are worth it, but in most they aren't. They cost too much money and the chances of using them are slim because not that much generally goes wrong in the first couple of years of using an appliance. If it does, you are covered by your warranty for at least a year.

There are exceptions of course and you have to look carefully at your needs, but at the very least take Boye's advice and renegotiate the cost of the agreement. When the economy's going badly, you might as well take advantage.

For more information, see:
- Janus Boye's blog post [1]