IT services providers...Top 5 tips for negotiating your customer contracts

Nobody likes IT services contracts. They're long, boring and complicated. But yes, you need them. Here are our Top 5 tips for what yours should cover.

1. Who owns what? Unless you're renting out your hardware, if your customer has paid for it, it makes sense for them to own it too. But most hardware won't work without software, and the software you provide contains valuable IP rights. Make sure you don't pass on your ownership rights in the software to your customer, a limited licence to use is sufficient.
2. What are you actually providing? It's important to set out clearly what you are and aren't providing. This enables you to negotiate further fees if your customer requests things outside the original scope (you should also have a good change request process).