Case Study 1

Doctored IT

GP practice The Braids is looking for a new IT services operator, as its current provider is not able to keep up with the demands of the growing practice and when the contract comes to an end in two months' time the practice has no intention of renewing it. The current intranet system needs upgrading and the practice is looking for a better on-call service engineer to deal with any issues with the fourteen PCs on site. The doctors need to make sure the data is secure and always available to any member of the team - even the mobile doctors through their laptops, smartphones or tablets. Ideally, they want cover guaranteed 24/7 with a maximum wait time for a callout of two hours.

The Braids practice manager, Bea Sharp, is looking forward to meeting the IT company representative on Monday, so she is keen to get some preparation work done before the weekend. It is important to get this contract in place as soon as possible, to avoid having no other option but to renew the old one, which management agree would be a backward step for the practice.

Bea had been comparing local and national prices for this sort of service provision - they ranged from a rather cheap-looking 30 per month to a very expensive 3000 per month. This hadn't really helped her to set a realistic opening position. Her budget was a maximum of 1000 per month, but she would like to pay considerably less, as long as it didn't compromise the quality of service. It was imperative that the IT systems stayed working and that any downtime was completely minimised, because patients would be at risk if the doctors couldn't access their full records.

Having a service engineer available 24/7 is hugely important, and having a guarantee that someone will be on the premises to fix any issue within an hour would be ideal, though Bea would be willing to push that to two hours if the penalty for non-compliance was strong enough - perhaps as much as 50% of the fee that month?

Security was also a big concern, so some kind of guarantee and high-level security protocols would be important. Bea wasn't quite sure of the right thing to ask for here, so she would have to rely on the information from the IT company on what it could provide and what that would mean for the medical practice.

Bea did not have a strict requirement on the length of contract, as long as there was an easy termination clause in case any of the promises were not kept. Another solution could be to have a six-month trial period when both parties could leave without any financial cost. Ultimately, though, she would like it to run for at least two years, but if the company performed well, she would be happy to extend that indefinitely.

Questions

1. What are Bea's Interests in this negotiation?

2. What are the negotiable Issues for this negotiation?

3. How should Bea set her Entry and Exit points?

4. Suggest a Proposal Bea could make.

5. What is Bea's BATNA, and how could it influence her negotiation?

please answer all 5 questions