Biddle & Colletti Contract Game
© Copyright 1997 Biddle & Colletti, P.C. All rights reserved.

Dewey, representing the software vendor Behemoth Hospital Systems
[Dewey]
Tanya, representing General Hospital
[Tanya]
The Situation: General Hospital has been using its existing computerized billing system for years. While it works fine, within its limits, the system is starting to show its age. For example, the system cannot be cost-effectively upgraded or integrated with other systems to enable General Hospital to collect and process the financial, clinical and management information that is crucial to its continued success. Accordingly, the Board of Trustees of General Hospital has mandated that its Chief Information Officer (Tanya Techie) select, acquire and implement a new hospital information system to help guide General Hospital into the 21st century.

Tanya hired Huge Consulting Firm ("HCF") who, over the course of several months, interviewed every single employee, staff member and volunteer that ever worked at General Hospital, developed a mission statement for the Hospital’s next 100 years and delivered a 650 page, bound, engraved, gold-edged Request for Proposals document. By the way, HCF also delivered an invoice in the high six figures for their services. After reviewing the responses from dozens of bidders, Tanya and her consultant from HCF have narrowed the vendors down to two contenders: the market leader (Behemoth Hospital Systems, or "BHS") and a relatively new entrant with exciting, state of the art technology (Zero Clients Technology, or "ZCT"). The Hospital’s Chief Executive Officer has made it quite clear to Tanya that BHS is the preferred choice.

Tanya is currently negotiating a contract with a BHS sales representative named Dewey Cheatem. Dewey has included the BHS standard form of license agreement as part of BHS’ response to the Request for Proposals. This "standard form" is the document which he and Ms. Techie are working from.

Somehow, you have been magically transported into the middle of this negotiation! Interestingly, whoever has transported you has also given you the option of taking on the role of either Dewey or Tanya. In this meeting, Tanya and Dewey will cover several provisions of BHS’ standard form contract in an attempt to negotiate terms and conditions that are acceptable to both. You must negotiate the best terms that you can for your respective employer.

About the Scoring: For each of the choices you make, you will be given a score. The scores are somewhat arbitrary, but in general, a zero means that you have made a relatively reasonable choice, a positive number means that you have conceded something and a negative number means that you have tried to obtain a benefit. If you concede too much (big positive numbers), you may end up with a weak contract. Keep in mind however, that if you push too far (ie., your scores are big negative numbers), the other party may just get up and walk away from the transaction. Of course, Dewey has other sales leads he can call on and Tanya still has ZCT as an alternative vendor. However, it is highly recommended that you try to avoid this -- both Dewey’s and Tanya’s own jobs might be in jeopardy if they have to report back to their superiors that the deal went "bust." If you keep track of your scores, you can add them up at the end of the game and see how you fared.

Good luck!

If your computer has sound capability, you can click below for a short word of advice from a famous negotiator from history.

LISTEN!: [Sound file] au format (44k) or [Sound file] wav format (121k)

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