Suppliers understandably complain about the unreasonable terms and narrow evaluation methods used by some of their customers. They are often right to point at the failures that result from such behavior, when it results in incompetent and sometimes dishonest suppliers winning business that they have no chance of performing, or the burden of risk promotes an adversarial relationship.

According to a recent report, almost 14% of the UK’s law graduates who move straight into employment are working as waiters or bar staff. That probably doesn’t reflect the aspirations they had when they started in law school, nor of course where their career will ultimately take them.

In a recent blog, I highlighted the importance of a proactive approach to contract and commercial digitization. Many still hesitate – they want to know what benefits it will bring, they say they can’t obtain funding, they even ask ‘what is digitization?’. So I promised a series of case studies and this is the second of them. The core message: if you hesitate, you will have been left behind.

“Memorial Sloan Kettering is in turmoil over a deal officials made to share cancer patient data with a for-profit artificial intelligence start-up.”

Although senior managers understand that contracts are important, most do not grasp the challenges – or potential contribution – that are associated with contract management. On the surface, it seems such an obvious and straight-forward activity – and therefore struggles to gain investment.

At the start of this week, I had two very different conversations. In each case, the conversation was with the global head of the Commercial & Contract Management function and in each case they were handling major outsourcing and services agreements. But at this point the story starts to diverge. They are summarized below:

At a recent IACCM roundtable, participants discussed the seemingly insoluble issue of maximising value from supply relationships. It was widely agreed that loyalty and collaboration are important characteristics, since they support more open communication and opportunity evaluation. Yet loyalty and collaboration depend on levels of long-term trust and integrity that are rarely achieved. The key issues – especially for buyers – are ‘How do I stop suppliers taking advantage of me and how do I ensure I’m not overpaying or missing out on innovation?’

Competitiive bidding lies at the heart of most procurement strategies. In the case of the public sector, it is foundational to  public procurement regulations.

Elon Musk is on a mission. Writing on Twitter, he said: “We’re trying to get rid of contracts completely. Should just be ‘tap here & you get your car’. Then, if you don’t like it for any reason, just return it like any other product.”

At its simplest, the word ‘negotiation’ means no more than having a discussion that is aimed at reaching an agreement. In this context, it seems safe to say that negotiations will survive; it is the current approach to negotiating that, while not yet dead, is in terminal decline.