Contract management is often underestimated in importance
and is also misunderstood as a business process within an organisation.
So what exactly is contract management? Every business has
suppliers, customers or partners and for each of these there will be a contract
or agreement which documents the terms and conditions relating to products and
services supplied or defines parameters which have been set. The management of
these contracts starts with the negotiation stage and carries on through all
the other processes which lead up to the production of the final legally
binding agreement between parties.
After an agreement has been reached it remains equally
important to continue to manage all contracts efficiently to ensure compliance
and to avoid over payments or missed renewal dates. The problem for most
businesses, however, is that contracts and agreements are in paper format and
there are no formal procedures in place for managing them. The solution to this
is to use contract management software to automate the contract lifecycle and
standardise the processes enterprise wide. A contracts management system stores
all documents electronically and has workflow to ensure that every process is
completed before moving on to the next stage. Current paper based contracts and
associated documents can be scanned into the contracts management system and if
in house resource is an issue, the scanning can be outsourced to a document
scanning bureau. Automated email alerts ensure that deadlines are not missed
and audit trail and reporting features make it easy to track activity within
the system and monitor costs.
For further information and advice on contract management
and contract management systems, please click here or call The IPC Group on
08081 45 46 47.