Situation
Senior leadership at this Fortune 500 Financial Services company had worked with G2 on a prior engagement while employed at a different Fortune 100 multinational conglomerate. Due to the outstanding results delivered on that project, the leadership team solicited the services of G2 to run a competitive RFP for U.S. Wireless services with their two incumbent wireless carriers. Utilizing the latest technology and devices is critical to this company’s success as a leading household name in the financial services sector. Known for their high-quality customer care and strong financial services portfolio, this company had unique requirements to ensure their workforce has the most current and powerful technology at its disposal. Over 27,000 corporate and employee-liable wireless devices were in play for the RFP. Early upgrade options and aggressive pricing, especially for next-generation devices, were highest on the list of success criteria for this project. Nearly 80% of the devices were smartphones, with the rest comprised of tablets, MiFi and feature phones.
Negotiation
Legacy contracts and corporate usage patterns already had this company close the leading-edge of the market with both incumbents. However, utilizing our Benchmark Intelligence and wide-ranging market knowledge, G2 was able to quickly identify key areas for improvement while meeting our client’s goals. The RFP was built to push the boundaries of the market pricing and to “future-proof” the contracts to ensure access to the latest technology, without having to renegotiate multiple times during the lifecycle of the new contracts. Once again, G2’s credibility and negotiation results from other client engagements was leveraged in instances where the carriers claimed they could not improve further. Extensive carrier coaching through two rounds of negotiations produced results that exceeded the expectations of our client’s team and allowed them to over-achieve against the project goals mandated by their Chief Financial Officer. Last minute additional demands from leadership also required immediate escalation to successfully close the deals with both carriers.
Result
The G2-led negotiations resulted in 21.7% savings in the aggregate, which delivered nearly $2M in savings to their bottom line. Through G2’s efforts, pricing and other key terms and conditions ended up on par or better than even larger Fortune 500 companies with considerably greater spend and device volumes and further redefined the leading-edge of the market. In addition, pricing and contractual protections were developed to ensure next- generation technology and equipment would be available as early as possible without requiring additional negotiation. Final results also included free devices, increased allotments for early termination waivers, dedicated in-building solutions funding and even secured aggressive advance pricing for devices that had not even been released yet! All of these results were also achieved without requiring any transition of services or operational disruption.
