What the price paid by others won't tell you

The request comes up in every serious negotiation: find me what others are paying. A local authority, a hospital, a ministry has surely bought the same software, and public contracts are public.

They are. That is where the reasoning stops.

What the public data actually contains

The technical note from the Direction des affaires juridiques at the ministère de l’Économie sets out what gets published: an amount excluding tax, either a fixed fee or a maximum estimate, covering the full duration of the contract.

One amount. Not a unit price, not a number of licences, not a pricing grid, not a discount.

A global amount divided by a number of licences you don’t know, over a duration you cannot isolate, with a scope described in one sentence, does not produce a reference price. It produces a figure your vendor will take apart in one meeting.

What the case of the largest contracts confirms

On the largest framework contracts, transparency stops even earlier. The software framework contract of the ministère des Armées, awarded through the State’s central purchasing body, was disclosed with prices and expiry date redacted. Fifteen years of contractual history, and not one readable price.

The right of access to administrative documents exists, it works, and it does not produce prices. Presenting it as a reliable negotiation lever would send you into a wall after a wait of several months.

The levers that remain, and that are better

Your own history. The price you paid three years ago, the scope that has moved since, the share of what you pay that goes unused. These figures sit in your accounting and in your admin consoles. They are unassailable, because they are yours.

The calendar. A renewal date, a notice period, an end of quarter for the vendor. The balance of power shifts by the month, not by what others pay.

The documented alternative. A competing quote at a comparable scope, a costed exit scenario, a scope reduction plan. A vendor does not respond to a reference price, it responds to a risk of losing revenue.

Actual consumption. The number of active accounts against the number of licences paid for is the one figure your vendor cannot dispute, and it is often the highest number in the discussion.

The sentence to remember

The price paid by others does not exist as public data. Your own consumption does.