Ep 58: Thinking in Contractually Mature Terms feat. Jeanette Nyden

Procurement may think of contracts as dusty old stacks of paper to be filed away or stuck in a drawer - but they are not. The combination of complex events we are all witnessing - a pandemic, war in eastern Europe, skyrocketing inflation - may not have been predictable, but they are a test of our current supply agreements. And as much as we are consumed with them right now, these conditions will not last forever. Supply agreements must be designed to bend and flex but not break if companies want to be resilient. 

In this episode of The Sourcing Hero podcast, Host Kelly Barner welcomes Jeanette Nyden. Jeanette is a contracts and negotiation expert who regularly uses her skills to bolster those of buy and sell-side contract professionals. She specializes in performance-based and outcome-based customer/supplier relationships, and has written four books on the subject.

In this conversation, Jeanette shares her expertise in legal and procurement to answer these key questions for the times we are working through:

• Why it is important to understand ‘fixed fee agreements’ given today’s inflationary environment
• The contract clause types procurement should be looking for or adding to contracts as a way of dealing with inflation
• How procurement should respond (with business input, of course) if a supplier seeks to change the price in a fixed fee contract