I am a Sr. Pricing and Contract Management Consultant at Verizon Business close to being a Manager. In brief, let me state that it is not always the carrier’s fault when one experiences a protracted mind-numbing delay. Many times, when dealing with global accounts it is the customer’s tendency (and those of L3 and other lawyers) to make a ‘land grab’ and demand outrageous things. Here are some of the things I have experienced in my several years of negotiating contracts on behalf of Verizon Business.

18 mos — negotiating Amendment 4 to the contract. The holdup involved our beloved customer wanting to change product descriptions for things like Managed PKI Services. e.g, one site license should support 500 users instead of the 100 supplied by our provider RSA or VeriSign. Other notable setbacks included 6 months bickering on Indemnification on use of Data Center Services and exciting academic arguments concerning an imaginary contractor to the customer who goes roque in our data center. Another few months were spent defining “material harm” or “material intent” with numerous examples thrown out by each side as to what these terms should mean and what the associated penalties should be.

24 months — Negotiating a contract renewal for one of those consulting firms with no physical headquarters (but tentacles everywheres). These types of firms require you (the helpless carrier) to sign an agreement with XYZ Procurement Inc to which ABC Consulting of USA signs an addendum. This particular country-specific addendum (of course) is utterly toothless and without responsibility for ABC Consulting of USA since they are using XYZ Procurement as a Cut-Out between them and Verizon Business. Multiply this approach by about a dozen countries, thrown in the laws of Swiss Vereins, laws of Bermuda and you can imagine our heartache in trying to assign fiduciary and contractual responsibilities to an amorphous blob-like organization that is fundamentally opposed to these concepts.

24 months — contract renegotiation of a system integrator based in Plano lately swallowed by a computer firm in Round Rock Texas. We spent months upon months defining terms and fighting the infamous TPI SLA penalty matrix. (Do ask me to explain this some time)

I can go on Bob but us helpless carriers are not always the bad guys. We encounter extremely tough global customers. Of course, with someone like me on our team, we always win. I am willing to argue this point with you if you are brave enough for discourse with someone in the field.

Warm regards,

As a Sr. Price Strategy / Contract Negotiation Consultant at Verizon Business (ex-MCI), I see a lot of my accounts (global integrators) routinely trying to force our pricing down to the levels of cut-rate providers and I also see them trying to utilize current market conditions and “business downturn” clauses to escape their contracts.

However, where you speak of loyalty, I have only encountered one (1) account out of a dozen or so I have supported where the personal relationship kept them with us, the carrier. Most enterprise accounts are always shopping our contract rates to the rest of the Big Three and increasingly, where they do not see our value, to lesser, Tier 2 providers (Level 3, Global Crossing). Their procurement or cost rationalization objections then lead to a potential price war.

I then have the unhappy chore of trying to enforce contract commitments and slow down price erosion while somehow helping account teams to win new business.

I don’t see much loyalty Pete. I see an increasingly commoditized industry where enterprise customers don’t see much value in Dumb Pipe providers and thus are ruthlessly renegotiations ts and cs as a result.

Regards,