‘I Will Kick You Out of the Room’: Erin Burke’s Big Rule for Tech Contract Negotiations

Tech procurement specialist, Erin Burke, does one simple yet effective thing when negotiating contracts with IT suppliers: she tells them what she doesn’t want.

Burke, who is Head of Procurement and Support at Australian fintech, Pepperstone, says when she goes to market for technology, the documentation will include details about the services that are required as well as those that are not.

“A supplier is always going to try and sell you everything they can; [they operate] a for-profit business and they’ve got targets to hit. But if you don’t tell them, ‘I don’t want this, I don’t want you wasting my time talking about this’, they’re going to tell you about it. That goes beyond the RFP [request for proposal], it’s throughout the totality of the arrangement,” she tells ADAPT.

“I tell my suppliers, ‘Do not talk to my C-suite about this…I will kick you out of the room.…