# When should a club retain, add, replace or buy nothing?


**Make the recommendation at the level of the club’s required workflow.** The following decision rules are our proposed closing framework.

| Decision | Evidence that would justify it | Final check before commitment |
|---|---|---|
| Retain | The incumbent meets essential requirements and alternatives show insufficient improvement | Confirm renewal scope and unresolved weaknesses |
| Add | A challenger closes a meaningful gap without unacceptable integration or rights burden | Identify which work will change and who owns adoption |
| Replace | The challenger preserves essential capabilities and improves the agreed comparison | Complete migration, retention and parallel-running tests |
| Consolidate | Fewer contracts preserve the necessary evidence and workflows | Check permissions, lost discounts and exit dependencies |
| Build | Requirements are differentiated, inputs are licensed and maintenance has an owner | Approve ongoing staffing and operational support |
| Commission an expert | A bounded assessment or contextual gap is better addressed through an assignment | Specify assessors, deliverables, conflicts and acceptance criteria |
| Buy nothing | Current tools, training or process changes meet the requirement | Retest the baseline and document the decision |

### What should the final decision memo contain?

Keep the executive decision brief to one page, backed by the full workbook:

1. **Decision:** retain, add, replace, consolidate, build, commission or buy nothing.
2. **Recruitment question:** what the club needed to decide.
3. **Baseline:** what existing subscriptions already supplied.
4. **Verified difference:** additional evidence, interpretation or workflow improvement.
5. **Conditions:** unresolved coverage, rights, technical or adoption issues.
6. **Cost:** cash commitment and internal capacity separately.
7. **Accountability:** owner, implementation date and review point.

**Bottom line:** public sources establish meaningful differences in offerings and several important 2026 product changes. They do not establish account-level current coverage, negotiated professional pricing, comparative accuracy or realised adoption. Those remaining questions require authorised samples, equivalent quotations, contract review and a controlled trial—not a longer supplier directory.