What? The International Association for Contract and Commercial Management (IACCM) has published its annual report on the most negotiated terms in business contracts.
So What? This shows that, as in previous years, the most negotiated terms are liabilities and indemnities, price and intellectual property rights, liquidated damages and performance undertakings.
This year, the study also included analysis of the most frequent causes of claim and dispute. The president of the IACCM said that the three core messages of the report are:
- Organisations tend to focus their negotiations on terms that
relate to the consequence of things going wrong rather than on
clarity of purpose and process for governance
- The key phase when things go wrong is during acceptance and
delivery. He comments that this is a massive indictment of project
management quality if contracts can reach this final stage before
fundamental problems are identified; and
- Large organisations rarely monitor and analyse their experiences from bidding, negotiation or contract management.
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