Your hotline renewal countdown: what to do in the 12 months before your contract renews

Hotline contracts often run three years and auto-renew unless you give written notice inside a set window. Most vendors won't remind you, so catching the window is on you. A real vendor evaluation takes months, and if you start late, the decision gets made for you.

This countdown works backward from your renewal date. Notice windows often run 90 days or more, so step one is giving notice early. It costs you nothing: you can still sign a new term with your current vendor once you've seen what else is out there.

Don't know your notice deadline? Our contract-check prompt finds it, along with how notice has to be sent.

12 months out: give notice

• Send written notice of non-renewal now. Notice windows can run 90 days or more, and most vendors won't flag the date for you. Giving notice early costs nothing.
• Follow the contract's instructions exactly. If it says certified mail to a specific address, do that, and keep proof.
• Know what notice does. It stops the automatic renewal. You can still negotiate a new term with your current vendor if they turn out to be the right fit.

9 months out: take stock

• Pull 12 to 24 months of report data. Volume, substantiation rate, anonymity rate, and time to close tell you whether the program is working or just running. If getting that data takes a support ticket and a long wait, that's worth knowing before you renew.
• Call your own hotline in more than one language, then submit a test web report. Note the wait, the menus, and whether an employee would hang up.
• Ask your investigators, HR, and legal team what slows them down. And what they've stopped asking the vendor to fix.

"Call your hotline and check how the experience is. Is your script working? Is the intake specialist doing a good job? Everyone should do that with their hotline every quarter, in multiple languages."

Billy Hughes, Chief Ethics & Compliance Officer, Ethena

6 months out: set your requirements

• List what you need from any vendor, including yours. Cover reporter experience, case management, board reporting, support, security, and data privacy.
• Put data rights on the list. You should be able to export your full case history in a usable format before the contract ends.
• Mark each item must-have or nice-to-have. It keeps demos from turning into feature tours.

4 months out: evaluate your options

• Demo vendors on cases that reflect your business. Use composite cases or anonymized versions of real reports your team has received. Your cases show how a product handles your program; a scripted demo doesn't.
• Walk one case from intake to close. Watch routing, case summaries, and reporting happen live, and count how many clicks each step takes.
• Have your team drive the demo. Put an investigator, an HR partner, and an admin at the keyboard. A modern platform should feel intuitive without a training session.
• Check every new contract's renewal, notice, and price terms. You'll be living with the next one, too.

90 days out: decide

• Make the call against your must-haves. Score your finalists on the list you built, and bring legal in early on the new contract.
• If you stay, renegotiate with a real alternative in hand. Ask to shorten auto-renewal, cap price increases, and put data export and support times in writing.
• Plan the handoff. Overlap the old and new lines, update reporting channels everywhere employees see them, and keep access to past records.

Either way, the decision is yours.

Missed the window?

You may not be as stuck as you think. Ethena will buy out your current contract, so you can switch now and your invoices start when your existing term ends. We'll also import your existing cases, so your history comes with you. Terms and conditions apply. Talk to our team.