Contracting
Contracting is your last and most important step.
Negotiation is not done!
On sign up we provide contracting tips and tricks, so you understand how something as simple as CPI does not cost your organization hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Our team will coach on
CPI — why it matters
An uplift clause compounds on every year that follows it. “CPI or 3%, whichever is lower” is a cap; “in line with CPI” is not.
Locking in pricing
Holding your rate flat across the term, so the number you negotiated is still the number you pay in year five.
3 versus 5 year contracts
A longer term buys a lower rate and costs you flexibility. Which way that trade goes depends on how settled the requirement really is.
Terms and conditions
The clauses that decide what happens when something goes wrong — exit rights, liability, data ownership, notice periods.
Software performance agreements
Uptime and response commitments that carry a remedy you can actually claim, rather than an apology and a credit nobody chases.
Auto renewals
The notice window is the whole game. Miss it by a week and you have bought another full term at their price.
Reporting metrics
What the vendor owes you in writing each period, so performance is something you can measure rather than something they assert.
Locking in pricing today
Fixing today's rate for the seats and modules you expect to add later — before your own growth becomes leverage against you.
What a CPI clause actually costs
Take $200,000 of annual recurring cost on a five year agreement. The uplift clause is usually a single line nobody negotiates.
The gap between the first and the last is over $110,000 — more than most buyers win by negotiating the headline discount, and it is decided by one clause almost nobody reads carefully.
“CPI or 3%, whichever is lower” is a cap. “Approximately 3%” and “in line with CPI” are not.
What the guidance covers
Exit rights, SLA remedies, auto-renewal notice periods, unresolved custom work, and the terms that cost money quietly.
The contract terms that matter most
Ten clauses worth reading closely in a behavioral health software agreement, and what good looks like in each.
The short version: Exit terms are negotiated at signature or not at all. Establish now what you get back, in what format, how fast, and at what cost.
Running a process you can defend
If your organization is publicly funded, how you decide matters as much as what you decide.
The short version: Document the criteria before you see the responses. A rationale written after the fact reads like a justification, because it is one.