Colt Technology Services – Microsoft Enterprise Agreement Renewal
The Challenge
Colt Technology Services, a £2bn enterprise digital infrastructure and network services provider, engaged Swan Procurement to support the review and renegotiation of a major Microsoft Enterprise Agreement renewal.
Whilst the proposal initially appeared commercially competitive, the underlying structure of the agreement presented several long-term risks:
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Discounting heavily weighted toward Years 1 and 2
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Additional SKUs being introduced into scope
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Limited protection around future licence pricing
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Risk of commercial drift over the contract term
The incumbent reseller was acting primarily as a transactional partner and was providing limited independent commercial challenge or market benchmarking insight.
​Our Asssessment
Swan Procurement independently benchmarked the renewal against comparable enterprise Microsoft agreements and identified that the proposed discount levels were approximately 4% below current market positioning for organisations of similar scale and complexity.
Our review also identified several structural risks embedded within the agreement, including front-loaded discount mechanics, unnecessary SKU expansion and the absence of future pricing protections for incremental licensing requirements. We recommended:
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Rebalancing discount levels evenly across the agreement term
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Removing unnecessary SKUs
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Introducing a future pricing schedule to provide long-term commercial certainty
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Improving the overall renewal structure to strengthen future leverage with Microsoft
The Outcome
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Negotiated a further 4% reduction against the original Microsoft proposal
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Delivered approximately 10% overall commercial savings
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Improved long-term renewal leverage by smoothing discount levels across the contract term
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Removed unnecessary licensing and reduced future commercial exposure
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Secured future pricing protections for additional licences over the agreement term
Swan Procurement provided Colt with an independent market view of its commercial position, enabling the organisation to renegotiate the agreement from a position of significantly greater leverage and control.