£2m+ annual savings secured for a media client via contract renegotiation
Unclear contract negotiation strategy
With a major Managed Services Agreement (MSA) approaching expiry, our client needed to verify whether the incumbent deal still represented fair market value and whether service performance matched the rhythms of a modern media business (linear, OTT, live, and digital spikes).
The leadership wanted a clear, time boxed negotiation strategy, a view of viable sourcing options by technology service tower, and hard evidence to correct misaligned SLAs, service credits and a resource model that wasn’t tracking internal demand - without risking mission critical playout and the content distribution supply chain.
Contract review and identification of negotiation levers
We executed a rapid contract review across schedules and towers - rate cards, SLAs, service credits, benchmarking, and red lines - grounded in SME workshops to capture current pain points and target state.
Our work identified gaps and commercial levers per tower and ran a soft market scan with 9 potential cloud support partners spanning Tier 1 SIs, Indian pure plays and specialist MSPs to gather indicative pricing and delivery constructs. We developed sourcing options (retain/compete/hybrid), a high level RFP strategy and plan, schedule specific diligence, and a red line pack for clauses affecting flexibility, exit, service credits, and change control.
Finally, we built the incumbent negotiation playbook - BATNA, leverage items, sequencing and timeline - and recommended a resourcing and commercial model tuned to live broadcast events and digital demand curves.
Run-rate savings
- £2m+ annual savings opportunity identified without compromising broadcast critical resilience and core service levels
- Negotiation leverage secured via market priced benchmarks and a red lined MSA (flexibility, SLAs/service credits, exit & change control) to reset commercial terms
- Demand-aligned resourcing model sized to demand peaks, live events and OTT spikes, reducing over/under staffing and service variance
- Renewal ready options identified (retain/compete/hybrid) accelerating decision making and lowering vendor lock in risk
