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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
Sourcing, Procurement and Vendor Management Leaders
IT Contracts Negotiations
IT Vendor Ecosystems Management
Education
Bachelor's Degree, Summa Cum Laude, Business Administration
Top Issues That I Help Clients Address
1Negotiation/Pricing strategies for IT software vendor Oracle (on-prem, SaaS, and PaaS/IaaS)
2Oracle license audit tactics
3Negotiation/Pricing strategies for RPA software
4Negotiation of AI software contracts
5Negotiating effective and sustainable software contracts with IT vendors