Continuing my attempts to bring Shakespeare into as many posts as I can….
Let specialties be therefore drawn between us,
That covenants may be kept on either hand.(Taming of the Shrew II. i. 127-8)
A couple of weeks ago, I presented at the HR Technology Conference in Chicago, the topic being SaaS Contracts: how not to get ripped off. I made an animation to start the presentation, as talking about contracts can be a bit dry.
Watch it here. My goal was to show the naivete of the typical buyer when dealing with a smooth salesperson. In the space of about 2 minutes, the buyer makes at least 9 major blunders. See if you can spot them. It is supposed to be funny, but I’ll let you be the judge of that.
A week or so after the event I did a podcast on the Bill Kutik Radio Show, where I go into a bit more detail. Have a listen here. I’m not a lawyer, so this doesn’t constitute legal advice, but I’m saddened by the ignorance on the side of the buyer, and the willingness of the seller to exploit that. That is business, I guess.
Or as Camillo said in The Winter’s tale:
You pay a great deal too dear for what’s given freely.
Also we have a lot of research on how to buy cloud/SaaS solutions. Gartner clients should definitely check out Alexa Bona’s research. Whether buying or selling, getting a fair contract is best in the long run.
(I’m very impressed with the Xtranormal tool for animation. I checked with their legal folks on usage, what a pleasure to deal with them).
