The contract you renewed by doing nothing

Every supplier agreement has a short window where the price is negotiable and a long stretch where it isn't, and most businesses only ever notice the second one.

By Steve 5 min read
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A new supplier gets scrutinised. Three quotes, a business case, someone senior asking whether it’s really needed. The same supplier, four years later, takes a price increase that nobody reads, on a contract that renewed itself in a month when everyone was busy. The first decision consumed a fortnight of management attention. The second, which is now larger in cash terms, consumed none. This is not a discipline failure. It is a structural feature of how supplier relationships accumulate, and it has a specific mechanism worth understanding, because the leverage…

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