Mid-cycle exit from a 3-year HCM contract — what's actually enforceable?

We're 14 months into a 3-year HCM contract and the platform is clearly not working for us. The contract has a "early termination fee" clause of "remaining months × monthly fee" — about $180K to walk.

For anyone who's actually exited mid-contract: did you pay the full early-term fee? Or did you negotiate down by citing specific service-level failures? What was the lever that worked — uptime SLA breaches, missed implementation milestones, support response times?