Masha Roberts and Linda Peyton come from two entirely different industries serving different markets and facing different business pressures. But when it comes to buying software, they have a common strategy: Figure out your needs, network, develop a strategy for vetting vendors, set milestones, and test, test, test.

Interestingly, it's the same strategy, minus the testing, that software companies use to get your business.

Like salespeople in other businesses, software sales forces spend a lot of time gathering information on prospects' needs and trying to guess how badly they need the product, says Jeff Muscarella, a managing partner at NPI Financial, an Atlanta-based consulting firm that helps companies work with software vendors. "They try to assess whether you're missing deadlines or experiencing any other problems that will help them close the deal," he says. His advice: "Make sure you keep your options open."

Roberts and Peyton did just that recently as each negotiated software purchases for their respective companies—and they're both happy with the results.

Roberts, supplier manager for indirect materials and services for Rockford, Ill.-based aerospace supplier Woodward, recently purchased licenses for two vastly different software packages, one for asset management and one to track financial data in the company. "For the asset-management software, which our IT department needed to manage the company's help desk remotely, we had a clean slate because IT did not have a predetermined software package in mind," she says.

The software-evaluation team started by nailing down the specifics of what Woodward's IT department wanted and needed, including identifying the features that were must-haves. Then, working with Gartner, a consulting group, Roberts and her team got a list of the top 15 desktop-management-software vendors whose products had those features plus the six vendors Gartner told her were the best. After interviewing all six and getting quotes, they narrowed the choice down to three. Then came the tests.

"First, we asked for full demos of the products," Roberts says, and then they followed the demos with extensive interviews. Result: Roberts eliminated one of the vendors from the competition and concentrated on the remaining two. At that point, the tests got more intense.

"We ran extensive side-by-side lab runs with both software packages, putting them through the paces to see how they handled the tasks we needed done," she says. "And, before making our final decision, we looked at the hidden costs, such as training and implementation risks." The winning product: LANDesk software. After intense negotiations, Roberts and her team convinced the supplier to cut the overall price by 5%. NPI Financial, which was working with Woodward on other projects at the time, advised Roberts that the price was in line with the market and represented fair market value.

For the financial software buy, her task was both easier and more difficult. It was easier because the IT department had already decided which software package they wanted, so Roberts didn't have to research the available options. But, of course, that made it harder because there was no opportunity to compare features and costs among competing packages, and not much ammunition for negotiating price.

Roberts negotiated the price down by a couple of points, then called NPI Financial for assistance. "They knew the market and the prices the vendor had been charging others with similar needs," she says. Timing was on Roberts' side because the vendor was near the end of its fiscal year and wanted to conclude the sale quickly. "With their understanding of the vendor's pricing history and its financial needs, NPI was able to help us cut the total cost by 18%," she says.

One piece of advice Roberts has for others is to check with software resellers before buying. "Sometimes, companies can get great price concessions or other perks by buying software through a reseller, because the chances are the reseller has more clout with the software vendor than you do," she says. Indeed, she says she worked with resellers in both of these recent software purchases.

Linda Peyton, director of procurement technology for Blyth, did her negotiations on her own when she recently purchased e-sourcing and spend-management software. It helped that she was free to talk with any supplier, just as Roberts was in her desktop-management-software buy.

"We consider spend management to be the foundation for e-sourcing," she says. The company already had a spend-management package, which Peyton had purchased several years before to overcome the lack of visibility the company then had into its spend. "We had seven different business units buying from different vendors under different terms," she recalls. She had purchased the software after performing an in-depth needs analysis. Next was to find the right e-sourcing system.

To find the most likely suppliers, she got a list of possibilities from the Conference Board, where she is a member of that organization's procurement-strategy council. She narrowed the possibilities on the list to five, compared their business models and ran a series of pilot tests with two of the companies before selecting the winner, Procuri.

Meanwhile, the spend-management supplier she used was purchased by another company, which gave Peyton the opportunity to see if she could upgrade to a different product with more functionality. "SAS had just partnered with Procuri, so we thought that we could leverage that relationship and get a better package and a better agreement," she says. They did. Not only did Peyton get a lower total cost, but the vendors agreed to some customization at no charge.

Peyton's advice on software purchases: Be realistic about change management. "A lot of employees use the software, and you have to prove return on investment to them as well as senior management," she says. And, she adds, it helps to have your IT department on your project team since IT will have to administer the products.