Negotiation Exercise

Any and almost every project requires some level of negotiations, Negotiation plays a huge role with all day-to-day conversations that leads up to, during and after the projects is closed out. This negotiation process is done with the purpose of achieving the main goals as well as the exchange of ideas that may surround the project. Like all negotiation they are improvements and criteria's to be met. My biggest fear going into any negotiation is preparation for the task at hand. I believe that no stones should be left on touched whiles preparing for negotiations with vendors who will potentially become the driving force behind your project completion.

I am generally over concern that I may not always have the right tools at my disposals to better prepare me for the negotiations at hand. As to equip myself I make it my duty to find out every thing possible about the project and the persons I will be discussing with before I entering into negotiations. I've been in network engineering for the better part of my life, a 15 year run and still counting has exposed me to a wide range of communication technology and services.

I have provided my technical workmanship to Ross University for the past five years. The company is a medical school by profession and a very strong user of technology. Working in this environment has allotted me the privilege of being exposed to numerous negotiation situations. A perfect case to speak of was when I was asked to project manage the implementation of our VoIP and IP telephony system that would eventually replace our ailing PABX solution.

Our head office had decided that their five remote campuses would be scheduled for a PABX upgrade solution that would eventually save them lots of money and tie all the campuses seamlessly by telephone extensions and VoIP services, making it easier to communicate from the various countries we resided.

I was told to that my country (Saint. Kitts) would be the test for the solution. However I'd had to make a strong case for it to be so. I acted promptly by gathering call data from the old PABX along with requesting billing information for our long distance and local calling. Added to this I formulated technical documents that proved that our present system was end of life and had not been fully supported by vendor as a system for upgrade. I would demonstrate that the system was constantly failing and was volatile to power outage and spikes. I would also demonstrate signs of instability as we try to expand the network to meet our demand. More importantly I had to compare and contrast the costing of running this old system for another year as to having it replaced. This event constituted the first half of our negotiations