contract automation Archives

Apr 03

Contract Trends in 2023

By Parker Sproul Procurement No Comments

Contract management is a critical aspect of any organization’s operations, and it’s especially important for executives who are responsible for managing the financial health of their organizations. Effective contract management can help you mitigate risk, increase revenue, and reduce costs, but it can also be a complex and time-consuming process. In this post, we’ll explore the top five pain points that businesses like yours face with regard to contract management, and we’ll provide some best-in-class solutions to help address these challenges.

Lack of visibility into contract terms and obligations

One of the biggest challenges with regard to contract management is the lack of visibility into contract terms and obligations. This can result in missed opportunities to save money, increase revenue, or mitigate risk.

Best-in-class solutions for this challenge include contract lifecycle management (CLM) software that centralizes all contracts in a single repository and provides advanced search and reporting capabilities. With CLM software, you and your team can easily access all contract data, including key terms, obligations, and milestones, and they can quickly generate reports to help them make informed decisions.

According to a report by the International Association for Contract and Commercial Management (IACCM), companies implementing CLM software can reduce contract cycle times by 50% and increase compliance by 80%.

Inefficient contract creation and negotiation processes

Creating and negotiating contracts can be a time-consuming and inefficient process, especially when done manually.

Best-in-class solutions for this challenge include contract authoring software that streamlines the contract creation process and automates workflows – which can easily help you create contracts using pre-approved templates and standardized language, and automate workflows to ensure that contracts are reviewed and approved in a timely manner.

A study by Aberdeen Group found that companies that use contract authoring software can reduce contract cycle times by 50% and increase contract accuracy by 90%.

Poor contract management workflow and process

Inefficient workflows and processes for managing contracts can lead to delays, missed deadlines, and increased risk. CLM software can easily manage contract workflows and approvals, as well as receive automated alerts for key contract milestones and renewal dates.

According to a report by the IACCM, companies that implement CLM software can reduce cycle times by up to 50%, increase compliance by up to 80%, and reduce legal costs by up to 30%.

Poor contract compliance and governance

According to a study by Forrester, companies that use CLM software can reduce legal costs by up to 30% and increase compliance by up to 70%.

While contract compliance and governance can be a complex and time-consuming process. Best-in-class solutions for this challenge include CLM software that provides automated compliance and governance workflows, as well as real-time alerts for non-compliant activities.

Limited scalability and flexibility

Scalability is a concern for any growing business. Solutions like SAP Ariba CLM or ICertis CLM software provide scalability and flexibility, as well as customizable workflows and integrations with other business systems. These will ensure your contract management processes can adapt to changing needs, reducing risk and increasing efficiency.

To learn more about:

Contract management and its impact on procurement click here.

Complex contract management solutions click here.

Oct 05

5 Ways Legal Teams Gain A Boost From Contract Management Software

By Parker Sproul Procurement, Procurement Managed Services No Comments

Navigating procurement contracts as a legal professional and feel like walking through a minefield, especially if your company is still relying on outdated procurement practices. A good, digital contract management system such as SAP Ariba causes risk to plummet using mitigation techniques like full, auditable visibility and alerts about potential risk factors. It also saves legal departments a lot of time reviewing almost-identical contracts. Here are a few reasons contract management software is critical to modern legal professionals working in the procurement:

Verifiably Maintain Compliance

Compliance is non-negotiable within your organization, but verifying and maintaining compliance can seem like an insurmountable task. Proper contract management using SAP Ariba software offers legal teams many compliance protections including clear visibility into the entire contract lifecycle, alerts for nonstandard contract agreements, and a full audit trail along the way.

External compliance such as rules put in place from regulatory bodies like state and local governments can be handled within the system as well as internal compliance concerns such as quality expectations. If any issues arise, they can be quickly addressed to avoid any further risk while still fostering a trusting relationship with your suppliers.

Gain Unprecedented Visibility Throughout The Entire Contract Lifecycle

On the point of visibility, contract management extends from the initiation phase through to negotiation and onward into contract renewal. Being able to see the entire lifecycle can help legal professionals spot risks before they become an issue, so they can be addressed with urgency.

Traceable Esignatures

Esignatures have put pens on the backburner. Not only is the digital signature completed online without the need for paper mail or tedious faxing, it is traceable in ways that a pen signature cannot be. Esignatures also offer a boost to contract accuracy because it guides suppliers through each step of the signing process (sign here, initial here, etc.) so your legal team no longer has to deal with missed steps and incorrectly managed paperwork.

Additionally, esignature platforms offer reminders for suppliers who take a bit longer to add their signature. This helps ensure that all contracts are signed fully to avoid any legal snafus that can arise from liabilities caused by incomplete contracts (which are ,effectively, no contracts.)

Controlled, Automated Processes You Can Rely On

Using templates and clause libraries, procurement teams are able to put together their own contracts using pre-approved language. In the event that a nonstandard contract needs to be created, a notification for review will be sent. This helps ensure that all contracts are legally admissible without consuming focus and massive swaths of time. Legal professionals can use their time providing greater value for the company than constantly reviewing nearly-indentical contracts.

Reduce Risk With Performance Insights

Whenever supplier deliveries aren’t meeting standards, or if a supplier chooses to utilize non-compliant tactics, the issue must be dealt with swiftly in order to avoid as much damage as possible. The SAP Ariba contract management system makes it easy to track performance and view the information from a centralized dashboard. Intervening early can help salvage supplier relationships as well as reduce overall legal risks associated with defective or non-compliant parts.

If you want to see what we can do for you with our SAP Ariba-backed contract management system, reach out to us today.

About Premikati

Premikati is a woman-owned business of procurement experts providing best-in-class software to maximize your company’s ROI.

Our award-winning team has a 100% success rate implementing on-time and on-budget, due to our agility, leanness, operational experience, and the ability to tailor the transformation process from C-level to end user. (For more information, visit www.premikati.com)

Sep 12

Contract Management from Ariba for $30K?

By Parker Sproul Procurement No Comments

When a company decides it has a need for a Contract Management software, the first step is generally to send out an RFI/RFP. A number of weeks and many pages of responses later, the field is generally narrowed to a couple of contenders. Then comes the demos… The team watches each vendor demonstrate their technology, usually with fairly little difference between them. Reporting, templates, clause libraries, redlining, and electronic signatures are usually the top things that everyone wants to see.

At the end of the day, since most of the top tools can all accomplish the same things, two factors typically make the decision. 1) The one that the team deems most “user friendly” and 2) price.

Once implementation is underway, the team starts to realize that they simply aren’t ready with templates and a clause library. Creating those from scratch takes a considerable amount of effort, particularly from an already overburdened legal team. They also realize that redlining might not work quite as easily as it was shown in the demo. These two items are then pushed off to a Phase II (which often never occurs) and the system is basically used as a repository.

The software vendors typically do not have different “levels” of their software at different price points. If you want a “repository only” solution, you would need choose a lower cost, less sophisticated software, effectively eliminating a progression path towards those features such as templates, clause libraries, and redlining that can be beneficial as your organization matures.

With Premikati recently becoming a BPO Partner of SAP Ariba, we have opened up a new set of options.

Premikati can now purchase and operate the SAP Ariba Contract Management Professional software on your behalf. We have two paths, one for Enterprise customers, and another for companies below $500MM in annual revenue.

First, for the Enterprise. Premikati can purchase an individual realm to operate on your behalf. Frankly, our status as a BPO Partner enables us to buy it at a significantly lower price point that you can. Our team will own and operate the system on your behalf, performing Contract Administration Services and, of course, all of the system administrative functions as well. This allows your team to focus its energy on more strategic opportunities, not the tactical day to day activities of keeping track of contracts. When you consider the total cost of ownership, you will be hard pressed to find a service/solution that provides more value for the price.

For companies below $500MM in revenue, we have a whole new way of thinking.

Since we realize that initially you most likely only need a “repository” with reporting and the ability to do electronic signatures, that is all you are going to pay for.

Depending on a variety of factors, our pricing starts as low as $30K for an annual subscription that includes Contract Administration Services and all system administration.

Implementation is similarly value priced starting at $25K with a Go-Live in as little as two weeks.

This is still for the full version of the Ariba Contract Management Professional system although integration with other systems is not available in this situation. However, during your maturation as an organization, both in revenue and sophistication, we can always move you over to an Enterprise realm with ease and no downtime.

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Premikati is a certified Woman Owned Management Consulting and Legal Process Outsourcing firm, and an SAP Ariba Silver Partner, that is specifically tailored to Procurement and Supply Chain.

contract automation