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Negotiations with library materials vendors can have a significant impact on a library’s success in terms of service to its users and effective use of its financial resources. As such, it is important to review key points to consider in negotiations with vendors. These negotiation points have increased dramatically within the past ten years as vendors have developed new services well beyond just obtaining the material as quickly and as inexpensively as possible. This article describes how to prepare for negotiations (including what materials and service issues to address) primarily for the firm order relationship, but many of the principles also apply to all methods of acquisition. It also reviews the major negotiation points for the library to consider in making decisions regarding vendor choice and services.

While it has long been recognized that vendor selection is multi‐objective in nature, little has been done to develop techniques for measuring vendors’ performance on multiple criteria. Demonstrates the use of data envelopment analysis (DEA) as a tool for measuring the performance of vendors on multiple criteria and for use in vendor negotiations. Describes the DEA model, develops a DEA formulation for measuring vendor efficiency and, finally, shows how a baby food manufacturer applied the DEA technique in a just‐in‐time environment. Shows how application of the DEA technique can provide savings in monetary and other measurable terms.

This paper aims to examine how libraries can create relative bargaining power and presents a methodology for analyzing collections and preparing for negotiations.

A brief literature review of the current state of collection budgets and electronic resource prices is presented prior to proposing a methodology based on business analysis frameworks and techniques.

Electronic resource subscription prices are increasing at a rate significantly higher than inflation, while collection budgets grow slowly, remain stagnant or decrease. Academic libraries have the ability to counteract this trend by creating relative bargaining power through organizational efforts that take advantage of size and concentration (e.g. consortia), vertical integration through practices such as library publishing and open access and through individual efforts using information. This paper proposes metrics and methodologies that librarians can use to analyze their collections, set negotiation priorities and prepare for individual resource negotiations to create relative bargaining power.

The proposed methodology enables librarians and buyers of information resources to harness the information available about their electronic resource collections to better position themselves when entering negotiations with vendors.

This paper presents metrics, some not commonly used (i.e. average annual price increase/decrease), that aid in understanding price sensitivity. Pareto analysis has been traditionally used to analyze usage, but this paper suggests using it in relation to costs and budgets for setting negotiation priorities.

The purpose of this paper is to provide practical guidance to business librarians in academic and public libraries for applying essential concepts of licensing electronic resources in entrepreneurial contexts.

The paper is an outcome of a preconference presentation on licensing business resources, based on the practical experience of the authors in licensing and vendor negotiations. It also presents results of the preconference presurvey, gauging awareness among business librarians about licensing concepts and concerns about the usage of licensed databases by entrepreneurs.

For-profit goals of entrepreneurs using library e-resources lead to concerns among business librarians about compliance with non-commercial clauses of library license agreements and potentially to unnecessary restrictions on patrons’ database use. License agreements of business e-resources are likely to have more restrictive terms of use because of perceived value of their intellectual property by vendors, a wider range of content types and clauses carried over from commercial license agreements. Business librarians generally have only basic awareness of licensing concepts. Because of organizational silos, special terms of use sometimes are not clearly conveyed from the licensing staff to librarians who work directly with entrepreneurs.

The paper proposes a definition of entrepreneurial uses of licensed e-resources and practical approaches to manage compliance risk.

The paper provides a practical framework for business librarians to assess compliance with license agreements in the context of entrepreneurial uses.

Nothing can guarantee that an automated system selection process will be successful, but adherence to a set of common‐sense principles can help in securing a successful outcome. The focus of the process has to be on the long term and must take account of the institutional context into which the system will fit. With the shift towards user empowerment, the involvement of users in the selection process is increasingly critical. The components of the selection process can be envisioned and combined in many different ways. The process used by the Purdue University Libraries serves to illustrate one way the process can play itself out.

Keller Manufacturing, a mid‐sized furniture manufacturer, completed the purchase of an enterprise resource planning (ERP) software solution in August of 1996 at a cost of US$1 million. From 12 individuals who participated on Keller’s acquisition team, the four principals were interviewed for this case. The structure of the acquisition process that emerged from the data revealed six distinctive iterative, recursive and inter‐related processes that, together, form a complex web of activity and tasks for the acquisition of ERP software. These activities and tasks are described and analyzed as a function of the six processes. The ERP acquisition process developed by Keller for this purchase was atypical of their normal purchasing practices and proved to be a significant learning experience for the entire organization. This case provides a useful illustration of “good practice” and sets forth the framework for the ERP acquisition process.

Presents an approach for evaluating the number of vendors to employ in a procurement situation using multi‐objective programming (MOP) and data envelopment analysis (DEA). The approach advocates developing vendor‐order quantity solutions (referred to as supervendors) using MOP and then evaluating the efficiency of these supervendors on multiple criteria using DEA. Formulations are presented for both the MOP and DEA models. A case study is presented for a Fortune 500 company in a just‐in‐time (JIT) manufacturing environment.

With the globalisation of markets, firms are continuously searching for ways to remain competitive. In such an environment the purchasing and management of raw materials, supplies, parts, etc., has emerged as a critical area for a firm to achieve its strategic goals. Purchasing controls typically one‐quarter to one‐third of the expenses incurred by the firm in manufacturing its products. The objective of the article is to identify and illustrate how different computer‐based decision support tools/techniques could be applied to various purchasing decisions. Through in‐depth applications the potential improvements in managerial effectiveness, increased user involvement, and ease in problem solving are highlighted.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the effectiveness of negotiation training delivered to senior clinicians, managers and executives, by exploring whether staff members implemented negotiation skills in their workplace following the training, and if so, how and when.

This is a qualitative study involving face-to-face interviews with 18 senior clinicians, managers and executives who completed a two-day intensive negotiation skills training course. Interviews were transcribed verbatim, and inductive interpretive analysis techniques were used to identify common themes. Research setting was a large tertiary care hospital and health service in regional Australia.

Participants generally reported positive affective and utility reactions to the training, and attempted to implement at least some of the skills in the workplace. The main enabler was provision of a Negotiation Toolkit to assist in preparing and conducting negotiations. The main barrier was lack of time to reflect on the principles and prepare for upcoming negotiations. Participants reported that ongoing skill development and retention were not adequately addressed; suggestions for improving sustainability included provision of refresher training and mentoring.

Limitations include self-reported data, and interview questions positively elicited examples of training translation.

The training was well matched to participant needs, with negotiation a common and daily activity for most healthcare professionals. Implementation of the skills showed potential for improving collaboration and problem solving in the workplace. Practical examples of how the skills were used in the workplace are provided.

To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first international study aimed at evaluating the effectiveness of an integrative bargaining negotiation training program targeting executives, senior clinicians and management staff in a large healthcare organization.