ABOUT

Susan Giannini

Founder & Principal, Accorda™

Across complex commercial environments, I consistently saw the same pattern: Sales teams were responsible for securing agreements, Legal teams were responsible for managing risk, and yet no defined function existed to actively lead the negotiation process between them.

As a result, the contracting phase became fragmented across stakeholders with different priorities, incentives, and constraints, often without a single point of ownership guiding the negotiation from commercial intent through to contract execution.

Over time, I built and embedded that missing function within the organizations I worked for, not as a standalone department but as a structured negotiation governance framework that aligned commercial objectives, legal requirements, and operational execution during the contracting process.

This framework was supported by structured, executive-ready outputs anchored on proactive risk mitigation, converting negotiated intent into actionable execution to ensure specialized concessions could be effectively operationalized after contract signature.

My experience spans nearly 20 years across B2B healthcare (medical devices and healthcare software), SaaS, and telecommunications environments, selling into hospital systems and integrated health networks, where contracting complexity is driven by regulatory constraints, procurement structures, and multi-stakeholder decision-making.

These environments consistently reinforced the same reality: deal success is not determined at the point of sale, but during the contracting phase where alignment either holds or breaks down.

Accorda was created from that operational gap, the absence of a defined negotiation function responsible for maintaining continuity from customer award through contract signature.

You can learn more about my professional background on LinkedIn.