By the time you read this, MCI could be part of Qwest. Or was that Verizon? And SBC and AT&T might merge (ditto Sprint and Nextel) – unless they don’t. We pundits can opine, but the only thing network managers can be sure of for the next several months is uncertainty.
Unfortunately, telecommunications doesn’t stop while carriers sort themselves out. End users have an annoying habit of wanting their services to run smoothly despite external events. That means managers need to negotiate contracts that can withstand market turmoil. Key tactics:
• Don’t forget the “MAD clause.” Regular readers of this column know to include a “mergers-acquisitions-divestitures” clause that entitles them to review their contracts – and importantly, exit without penalty – in the event that the company is acquired or divests itself of a significant fraction of its holdings. The same rules should apply to your service providers. If your carrier is acquired, you should have the right to renegotiate.
• Include well-defined SLAs. Service-level agreements should cover the time required to provision circuits and services; performance, including end-to-end latency, uptime and availability; response times for problems and outages, which might be tiered according to the criticality of affected sites; and escalation policies and procedures that describe how complaints will be handled. Performance and provisioning parameters should be defined as averages for all circuits in the network as well as the maximum for any one circuit – with penalties for failing to meet each.
• Maintain control over the support staff. One consequence of looming mergers is an upswing in “churn” among telco employees. A sales rep you know and love today might be out on the street next week – leaving your account in the hands of someone who’s more interested in polishing his résumé than taking care of you. A good way to protect yourself is to mandate that you have “approval rights” to key individuals assigned to your account. You can’t force a carrier to assign a specific person to you (particularly if that person is no longer working for the carrier). But you can and should require the right to approve any proposed support staff and request replacement of folks who aren’t up to snuff after an appropriate trial period.
• Minimize minimum annual revenue commitment (MARC) constraints. A carrier’s endgame is to get you to commit to a fixed dollar amount each year. The higher the MARC, the lower your rates – and that’s fine, within limits. But don’t let carriers force you to commit to “mini-MARCs”: spending X on voice, Y on data and Z on local access. If you commit to a MARC to obtain lower rates, you should be free to change and modify services across those “buckets” as you see fit.
Adhering to these and other tried-and-true negotiation tactics should help you navigate the turbulent waters ahead.
