THE SUBSCRIPTION TRAP Take charge of recurring costs

Subscriptions and service contracts can bleed your business dry. Steve Cassidy shares practical advice on managing the budget

- Steve Cassidy

If there’s one aspect of IT management that ticks me off, it’s the weird world of subscriptions. I’m frequently amazed by what businesses will tolerate when it comes to restrictive contracts, and by the lengths suppliers will go to in order to lock you into their services. This month we'll look at some warning signs that you're about to be snagged in a situation without an easy exit - but first, I want to make sure you understand the scale of the risks we're talking about, and to do that we need a quick diversion into the world of non-IT contracted services.

That might seem outside of our remit, but my intention is to illustrate an important point. Part of the appeal of subscriptions is that they do away with big one-off purchasing costs; the trouble is that in place of that one expense, you're taking on a never-ending commitment. Your fortunes might change, your budget might shrink, but you can’t take a payment holiday. The commitment and renewal model are enshrined in the contract, and if you try to wriggle out of them, you're not just going up against a supplier: you're putting yourself on the wrong side of the entire legal system.

This isn’t to say there's no possible way out. I’ve seen instances of customers in difficult straits simply refusing to continue paying, and the supplier deciding that enforcement of contract would be more damaging to their reputation than pursuing the matter. Reputation matters, which is why we have to think about different legal specialities when considering what to do with a restrictive or sneakily worded contractual obligation.