Gartner Expert

Melanie Alexander

Sr Director Analyst

Melanie Alexander joined Gartner in 2016 and is a Sr. Director Analyst on the Sourcing, Procurement and Vendor Management team. Ms. Alexander advises organizations on software licensing, pricing and contract negotiation strategies to achieve sustainable, best-in-class deals with major business application software vendors such as Oracle and RPA vendors. She advises on software asset management and audit and compliance for major software vendors such as Oracle. She also provides best-practice advice on negotiating SaaS agreements, hidden costs and SLAs.

Previous experience

Before joining Gartner, Ms. Alexander worked in IT sourcing and procurement in the hospitality and tradeshow industries, performing in a variety of roles from strategic sourcing to IT financial and asset management. Her experience also includes procurement process improvement initiatives and management of software implementation projects.

She managed negotiations of multimillion dollar agreements including software, service-level agreements, and SaaS and PaaS agreements. She also led a team of Sourcing Managers in negotiations of similar agreements, performed procurement process improvement initiatives, developed statistical reporting for procurement activities, managed software implementation projects and administration of document management system.

Professional background

MGM Resorts International

Director of Strategic Sourcing - Technology

Viad Corp/Global Experience Specialists

IT Procurement and Budget Manager

Areas of coverage

IT Contracts Negotiations

IT Vendor Ecosystems Management

Education

Bachelor's Degree, Summa Cum Laude, Business Administration

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Top Issues That I Help Clients Address

1Negotiation/Pricing strategies for RPA software

2Negotiation of AI software contracts

3Negotiation/Pricing strategies for IT software vendor Oracle (on-prem, SaaS, and PaaS/IaaS)

4Negotiating effective and sustainable software contracts with IT vendors

5Oracle license audit tactics