Word comes down from on high that we can sell more widgets if we enhance our data mining operations. We select software, hardware and consulting expertise to do the job. Inevitably, this is the last time that my department hears from these key people. The terms are fabulous. You should take a peek at them some day.
Every purchase made on our terms is a walking claim against a vendor.
The trouble is, these terms do not account for some of the special attributes of IT products. First, there's the ownership of the intellectual property. Our standard purchasing terms require that we own everything that we pay for, and that the vendor walks away with nothing. These terms make sense if we are hiring the vendor to improve our widgets or even to invent a new machine that will make widgets faster and better. That's because widgets are our business.