This is a major responsibility of the purchasing group.many factors influences what is a "right price" and, again comprehensible discussion is hardly possible.In a broad sense ,a right price is one that is "right" for all concerened- the purchaser,vendor,buyer's customer,public.
In the past the way to avoid the price increases that Forrester and Gartner are initiating on a regular basis would be to use the usual purchasing best practices. These include waiting until the last minute before the end of the quarter or better yet end of the fiscal year to finalize a contract, playing one firm off another, signing up for a multi-year contract, and consolidating purchases to obtain a larger discount.
Alas, these techniques are not as effective now with Forrester and Gartner as they were in the past.
While there are hundreds of analyst firms, with some large ones like AMR Research and IDC, the unfortunate reality is that when it comes to the market for end-user advisory analysts, Forrester and Gartner have achieved a de facto duopoly. Because the market for their services is so underpenetrated, neither firm has to compete on price to grow revenues, clients, and market share. Therefore they can concentrate on improving margins while growing revenues by expanding their sales forces. It is a very cozy duopoly. To date there have been no serious contenders to the Big 2 as replacements for the acquired Giga and META. As long as firm executives continue to impose pricing and discounting discipline on their sales forces the opportunity to negotiate a better price with the Big 2 is limited. Gartner has been especially disciplined, using a “Bloomberg model” of a price for the first seat, a slight discount for the second seat and no incremental increase in discounts after the second seat regardless of volume. So while it is still possible to negotiate on price, the opportunity is not as great as in the past.
The best way to get the right price for the analysts services you require is not to put all your effort into trying to whittle down Gartner’s or Forrester’s price. Rather, the approach for getting the right price is to get the right service from the right firm as laid out in parts 3 and 4 of this series (see below for links). By not falling into the trap of buying the most expensive services from Forrester or Gartner, you can still get the right price.
