Decision Brief · Confidential — Illustrative Sample
Scheduling platform: renew, switch, or consolidate
Our scheduling tool renews in 21 days at a 40% price increase. Three options, one recommendation, and the two things that would change my mind.
Consolidate onto the platform we already pay for. Do not renew.
It covers 90% of what we actually use, is already licensed and paid for through March, and saves $14,400/year. We lose one feature that three people use weekly, and there's a workable substitute. I'd want your call on the migration window before I schedule anything.
01The situation
Our standalone scheduling platform auto-renews in 21 days. The renewal quote came in at $2,400/mo — up from $1,700, a 40% increase with no added functionality. That's $28,800/year for a tool used by 31 people.
When I pulled usage data, the picture is narrower than the licence implies: 31 seats provisioned, 19 active in the last 30 days, and only 3 people using the one feature that genuinely differentiates this tool from what we already own.
02Options
| Option | Annual cost | Pros | Cons | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| A. Renew as quoted | $28,800 | Zero disruption; nobody has to learn anything | Pays a 40% premium for a tool 12 people don't open; sets the precedent for next renewal | Not advised |
| B. Switch to a competitor | $18,000 | Cheaper than renewal; feature parity | Full migration, new vendor risk, new security review — all to still run a second tool | Not advised |
| C. Consolidate onto current suite | $14,400 | Already licensed and paid; already security-reviewed; one fewer vendor; one fewer login | Loses one feature (3 weekly users); ~3 weeks of migration friction | Recommended |
Option C cost is the incremental cost of the additional module on our existing suite contract.
03The honest downside
Option C is not free of cost, and I'd rather you hear it from me than from the three people it affects.
- We lose automated round-robin routing. Three people on the sales team use it weekly. The substitute is a shared calendar rule — noticeably clunkier, and they will feel the downgrade.
- Migration lands on the ops team for roughly three weeks. Not full-time, but it's real work in a quarter that's already tight.
- External booking links change. Anything published externally needs updating, and some will get missed. I'd budget for a few broken links surfacing in month one.
Two things. One: if round-robin routing is load-bearing for a revenue process I'm not seeing, the $14.4k saving is not worth breaking it — tell me and I'll re-run this. Two: if the Q3 ops load makes a three-week migration genuinely untenable, we can negotiate a short renewal extension rather than the full term, and revisit in Q4.
04If you approve
What I need from you: a yes/no on Option C, and a steer on whether the three-week window works against Q3. If I don't hear back within 14 days I'll assume we're renewing and will negotiate the increase down — but that's the worse outcome and I'd rather not default into it.