Licensing information involves highly complex terms with agreements that aren’t always easy to compare. Companies can fall into the trap of overpaying simply because of a lack of knowledge and limited transparency. This article examines how Couranto’s licensing expertise and insight intomarketplace pricing can help reduce wasted expenditure.
When you buy a simple commodity, it might be easy to get a sense of whether you’re getting a good deal. But for complex commodities the tasks of comparing pricing, evaluating the components, assessing internal demand and obtaining good value can be quite challenging.
Licensing information involves highly complex terms with agreements that aren’t always easy to compare. Companies can fall into the trap of overpaying simply because of a lack of knowledge and limited transparency. This article examines how Couranto’s licensing expertise and insight into marketplace pricing can help reduce wasted expenditure.
Insight into licensing and pricing
The complexity of managing licensed content contracts is complicated due in part to often idiosyncratic terms and prices from vendors. This creates a risk that organizations license in a suboptimal way, which means in part that teams may overpay for their information needs, and actually get less than they’ve bargained for.
Fighting through the fog is challenging. Couranto’s understanding of the mechanics of licensing and the contract fine print helps us assist our clients in navigating the many layers of licensing options available to them.
That includes applying best practice when negotiating a license so that the resulting agreement meets the needs of today, while remaining flexible enough to adjust to changing needs. For example, in some instances we may advise a client to negotiate an umbrella license that covers the parent organization and all its affiliates.
We do that because an umbrella agreement can simplify licensing, but also because an umbrella agreement often significantly reduces costs: majority-owned affiliates that need access to the same information are automatically covered by the licensing agreement and don’t need to negotiate an additional license.
Knowledge of marketplace pricing
While Couranto never discloses confidential contract information, we do maintain cross-industry pricing benchmarks and ongoing insights into vendor terms. That’s why, throughout publisher negotiations, we can contribute a view of what is a fair and sensible agreement for our clients to accept – based on our experience within the marketplace – enabling our clients to readily achieve optimal pricing and favorable contract terms.
Couranto also leverages our extensive relationships with publishers to help the negotiation process go more smoothly, so that companies can cut negotiations down from many months to just a month – or even less.
Long-standing clients benefit from our in-depth knowledge of their organizations and the verticals in which they operate – further guiding the vendor negotiation process. By understanding your requirements in depth, and with full knowledge of your licensing history, Couranto is in the position to keep an eye on ongoing transactions too, ensuring that your organization does not commit to unnecessary expenditure now, or in the future.
Greater transparency means better decisions
Couranto helps you avoid unnecessary spending by shedding light on the contracts in place, and on the publisher negotiation process. When you negotiate with Couranto’s experience and expertise on your side vendors are inclined to be more transparent during the negotiation process.
In practice, Couranto helps clients avoid expensive errors. For example, where an organization has a global umbrella agreement covering all its affiliates, we sometimes see cases where an affiliate nonetheless enters into a fresh agreement to license access to the information.
This duplicate and wholly unnecessary agreement with the vendor is entered into simply because the affiliate was not aware that they’re already covered by an umbrella agreement. If Couranto were involved in the organization’s publisher negotiations, we would have easily prevented the excess expense by pointing out that the affiliate did not need a separate agreement.
Similarly, by better managing the subscription process we can ensure that our clients don’t end up in a situation where they are in a rush to sign a contract and are under pressure to accept terms that are not ideal.
Getting the best possible value is tough – we’re here to help
The value of outsourcing often lies in involving a qualified partner with more subject matter experience and broad industry relations. A partner that can inject expertise and a greater measure of control over the process.
That’s exactly the results you get with Couranto’s publisher negotiation services as we help you navigate licensing schemes, communicate on your behalf with suppliers, and use our knowledge of your needs and industry realities to help negotiate the best deal.
Courano is a WBENC and Disability:iN certified diverse company with more than 30 years experience in corporate information contract management, Couranto serves clients globally with strategic programs that maximize the value of information portfolios by reducing costs while improving access to licensed content, data resources, intellectual property, corporate memberships and related contracts. Couranto’s Discovery and Clarity platforms provide custom-configured end-to-end information access, budget planning and license management tools. Built on deep expertise and a long history of client successes, Couranto solutions add value to your information and help drive innovation throughout your organization, creating enduring impact.
