Hello everyone. Hope all of you are doing good. Today I would like to talk about a very interesting topic, Master service agreements. Large colocation providers use two types of legally binding documents. The first one is the service agreement of colocation contract, and the second one is master service agreement (MSA). But both are mostly similar in most aspects, they are used differently in theory. Both service agreement will be meant to be flexible and suitable for all customers. In reality, and as a general rule, provides mostly science service agreements, and its respective escalates terms and conditions with their customers as a mixed pricing, and service expectations to be fixed throughout a given period, usually one year.

Master services agreements or what other people might call multi-year contracts. So, a lot of the times in this industry, you end up looking at an event, and you're signing up a production partner for that one year for that one conference, and you're oftentimes your production partner says; "hey...sign a multi-year agreement", and you're like, whoa...hold your horses. You know what? What is in it for me? The meeting planner to sign a multi-year agreement.

So, I'm here a minute because I'm got lots of insights as to what is in a multi-year agreement for the meeting planner? And what is the best benefit of the multi-year agreement? Well, before I get into that brand, you know, I don't like to be locked down, and so this is very personal to me, no contract. But honestly, one of the biggest reasons to do this is I think it breeds familiarity. I think, doing this for 15 plus years, like seeing the same faces over and over just helps not only your attendees the meeting planners. But even us engaged in the event itself, and I think it's the familiarity of it. So that's one of the reasons, I would agree.

I think if you bring a team together, and you say; "hey, this is the first time this team is going to play a game, they go out there". You know, there's a lot of chemistry that isn't there. There's a lot of effort that has to be built to kind of make that team effective. However, if that team comes together month after month, or in this case, maybe year after year on your events, there's an amazing amount of chemistry, familiarity, efficiency, that is gained by that team working together. Not only the production team, but also the meeting planning team, the attendees, the presenters. And what happens is each year that the event elevates and improves gets better and better, just because the group is working together.

So, master service agreements aren't all about the money. I think there's a lot of value in those master service agreements outside the financial side. But the financial side is also very important. So, when you look at your overall multi-year agreement, what happens is when you work with your provider, or with clarity, in this case, you can have a predictable spend year after year. So, why does that happen for the multi-year agreements in some model with the meeting? Well, what should be done with the MSA is as lock in the equipment pricing, and the labor pricing for three to five years. Which obviously now as a meeting planner. You know what your budget is not only this year, but the next few years out. I think of all the things we speak about, though the pricing issue is the least essential. I think it's a familiarity, but as far as pricing going back to it. The predictable spin, I mean, how can you not want that knowing that you have a good partner. You're cost controlled for at least three years. And you can count on to do good work, and the quality is going to get better in a year, because they learn your event and make a big impact.

So, I definitely believe that the spend is very critical part of being able to predict what you're going to do every year if your program changes, or you want to enhance your overall event. You know you want to kind of spice it up a bit, you absolutely can add to that. It's very flexible on the spend each year, but it's a very predictable outcome with a partner who you're very familiar with. The other thing that I would say, really makes a difference when you work with the same company on your event year after year. Is there's something that happens after that first year working with them? Where they learn your culture? They learn what your event look and feel should be. And they learn how your attendees react to different things, and what happens is the engineers kind of feed off of that, and then the next year they do things that are a little bit, a little bit unique, a little bit different. And they bring excitement, they bring enthusiasm to that, they bring creativity. And so that second year, that third year, that fourth year, the event continues to have like more energy and more excitement, because the engineers get to know how your event should feel, how it should look, we key off of that, and they're excited to make that happen.

Yeah, to add to that, just looking back on the last ten years of doing this. ,and the incremental situations were like when an engineer knows your presenters, they know their music type, they know what engages them. Which in the end makes the audience feel better, because when the moment a presenter is engaged in their topic, they're gonna deliver a great presentation, and the attendees are gonna enjoy and that's the whole point of this. So, with that all being said, I do think all that the little knowledge is that you pick up after the first year, the second year, the incremental growth is actually making the event so much better, even after the first year

So, yeah, do you think there's a huge time savings too in multi-year agreement. So, you know if you're the type of company that every year tries to go out, you're in a different city, you're trying to get bids from the in-house production company or local production company. Maybe someone used before you have to explain the event over and over again, you have to evaluate all those different proposals that come in. And you know, you're spending a lot of your time trying to figure that out.

In a multi-year agreement, the production company already knows that you're in advance. That event is going to take place, and they're able to work with the in-house, they're able to negotiate rigging power high speed. All that can be done well in advance. Which you have a lot better chance of accomplishing that. You know rather than if you're dealing with a 90-day or 120-day window, you don't know if you're going to win the event. So, that kind of there's a lot of value that happens by having that year over year consistency. In the overall, from the customer, and from the production company together.