Reviewing and enhancing our digital licensing service

The value of collective negotiation

Effective licensing is a critical foundation for UK education and research, ensuring institutions have affordable access to digital content and software solutions under terms and conditions that reflect UK institutional requirements.

We negotiate licensing agreements for over 300 software and digital content solutions on behalf of universities, colleges and customers. By aggregating the sector’s demand, members can get valuable discounts, terms and access conditions to licensed digital solutions.

In 2022/23 our negotiations saved our members over £580 million in time and money.

Licensing enhancement programme

In recognition of the increased need to secure affordable and sustainable agreements that match the evolving needs of UK education and research, we are expanding our licensing service. This will empower our members and customers to realise their research, teaching and learning and organisational ambitions.

Key developments

We will:

• Develop our portfolio of education, research and enterprise-wide agreements to align with priority needs and future challenges of our members and customers
• Enhance our strategic groups to ensure negotiation strategy reflects market conditions, continues to represent the diversity of our membership and maximises on the value of collective negotiation
• Fully integrate our Chest software arm into licensing and deliver a new single portal for the discovery, procurement and management of all our agreements
• Grow our vendor relationship management and customer success function to ensure our vendors are able to respond to UK education and research requirements and support the effective implementation and use of solutions
• Develop and implement (in addition to standard procurement due diligence) new due diligence in areas such as AI and data to support flexibility, choice and competition for our members
• Increase our contribution to the sustainability of Jisc through the collection of fees in return for the services we provide to vendors