Full narration of the briefing. Click a section heading to jump the player to that moment.
This session is about the exit, and I want to start by being honest about the asymmetry, because pretending otherwise wastes your time. Leaving RISE is a re-implementation. Your perpetual entitlement is gone, your platform is inside someone else's tenant, and your operations capability has been stood down. Both sides of the table know that, which means an exit threat in year four is not credible and everybody in the room understands it is not.
So the exit is not a lever you use later. It is a set of prices you fix now, while you still have something they want. Claire is going to take you through what to fix.
The first item is the plainest. Exit assistance is a fee unless the contract prices data export and transition help in advance. Left unaddressed, the terms on which you get your own data out, in a usable form, on a workable timetable, are negotiated at the moment you have the least leverage in the entire relationship. So price it at signature: a defined data export format, a defined transition period, a stated cost or a stated inclusion, and a service level attached to it.
This is one of the least contested asks in the whole negotiation, because at signature nobody on either side expects to use it. That is exactly why now is when to get it.
The second item is more interesting, because SAP has told us what it is worth. In explaining a fourth quarter backlog miss, SAP stated that large transformational deals with high revenue ramps in outer years, and termination for convenience clauses required by law, negatively affected constant currency current cloud backlog growth by about one percentage point. Sit with that. The vendor has publicly confirmed which buyer side clauses are expensive to them.
That makes those clauses currency. If you want a lower rate, one of the fastest routes is to hand back a piece of the thing that hurts their metric, in exchange for something that helps your budget.
Which changes how you should use them. Do not ask for a back loaded ramp and a broad termination right simply because the procurement template says to. Ask for them deliberately, then trade them deliberately. Flatten the ramp, and charge them for it in rate.
Shorten or narrow the termination right, and charge them for it in rate. Both of those improve the number their field organisation is measured on, and both are things you may not need as much as you think. What you must not do is give either away for free in a redline round, because a concession made silently earns nothing at all.
So here is the clause set for a RISE conversion, in the order we fight for it. The year four renewal cap, from last session, as a not to exceed number on the whole order form rather than on a unit rate. A written FUE definition, so the classification rules cannot drift underneath you. Swap rights, to move committed value between components as the estate changes.
True down at renewal with a stated band, because without it every user you add is permanent. The four line breakdown written into the paper rather than supplied as a slide. And the exit terms we just described.
And the sequence again, because it decides whether you get any of them. Send the clause set before the first proposal, framed as the shape of an agreement you could sign quickly. Terms introduced early are drafting instructions. The identical terms introduced after a quote are objections, and they get traded away against the discount you have already banked.
That is the single most common way a well prepared buyer still ends up with a weak contract: they win the price conversation in November and lose the paper in December, because by then every clause is a reason to reopen a number both sides thought was settled.
Here is the move. Write the exit terms into your first term sheet: the export format, the transition window, the cost, and the service level. Then decide which of the ramp shape and the termination right you genuinely need, and sell the rest at a price rather than surrendering it in a redline. You are negotiating the door at the only moment you will ever have leverage over it, which is while they still want your signature.
Next time, Daniel and I take their calendar, their backlog metric, and what your account team is actually paid to produce.
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