How to Manage Your Contract Management Risk with Software
Contracts represent binding agreements between two parties, such as a business and an external contractor. These agreements become the bedrock of business continuity by guaranteeing supply in a manufacturing process, securing intellectual capital to spur innovation, and augmenting workforce capacity to meet customer demand. Documented commitments of this nature are as common as sales meetings and office luncheons.
Other agreements like business licenses, real estate agreements, service agreements, and memorandums of understanding are also binding to companies. Filled with legal requirements and triggers that must be acted upon to comply with terms and conditions, these deals are sometimes forgotten contracts that can become real liabilities to businesses that store them away in filing cabinets. These stored agreements become risky time bombs that may expose the company to unwanted damages.
Mitigating these risks is best handled through contract management software. Incantations of contract software are installed in company data centers around the world. These systems can be a paper files that track key information and are reviewed on a regular basis to major Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems that integrate purchasing, contracts, general ledger, accounts payable, inventory, and supply chain management all in one robust management system. Each approach comes with a ledger sheet of cost considerations, implementation complexities, support issues, and most of all, ease of use realities.
Espousing the benefits of contract software include protecting company assets against liability claims, monitoring contract costs, projecting future expenditures, conducting historical reviews and analysis, evaluating contract performance, rating vendor performance, ensuring information security, and so much more.
Contract Logix bundles all of these features into a robust contract management software (CMS) solution. Built around a central repository that stores and retrieves agreement information, this CMS solution easily handles every company agreement, pulling crumpled documents from staff bookcases, filing cabinets, and desks and securely storing each in a powerful database engine that act as a clearinghouse for all the business contracts. This model is the best way for companies to manage their liability and exposure to risk.
Analysis reporting in this software provides drill-down and drill-through capabilities so that management and analysts get clear visibility into contract terms, values, spend by vendor, aging, renewals, and historical performance. Every company is unique in the way it performs analytics, and this completely customized solution is available to query, pivot, and compute complex analysis. The reality for many companies is that contract management first began on a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. This software offers the ease-of-use tools to generate these same familiar reports. But these reports are developed using intuitive tools that are backed by the powerful software management tools that will keep data accurate and protect company assets.
The introductory costs to start-up and implement this software are low, so the time-to-value window is short, allowing the business to realize cost saving very quickly.