Skip to main content
Tag

contract compliance

Jul 10

Procurement Contracts

By Procurement No Comments

Procurement contracts are more than mere pieces of paper requiring a signature; they are the bedrock of successful business transactions and play a vital role in procurement.

What is a Procurement Contract?

A procurement contract is an agreement between a buyer and a supplier to manage a project. This agreement obligates the supplier to provide the necessary materials and services at an agreed price, providing the foundation for successful project execution.

The Procurement Process: More Than Just Buying

The procurement process often starts with the buyer, who must determine whether a potential supplier can meet their needs. Through this process, the most suitable supplier for a project is selected, helping to minimize procurement fraud and misunderstandings down the line.

Why Are Procurement Contracts Important?

Procurement contracts are crucial to business transactions. They contain all negotiated terms and conditions, including payment details, a list of orders, delivery schedules, and correction measures. By fostering trust between the buyer and supplier, these contracts safeguard both parties from fraud and misrepresentation, ensuring smooth project management.

Advantages of Procurement Contracts

  1. Transparency: Procurement contracts establish transparency between the buyer and supplier, preventing deception and building a solid relationship. Full disclosure of prices and receipts strengthens the bond between both parties.
  2. Clarity: With everything stipulated in the contract, misunderstandings are minimized. Both the buyer and supplier understand their obligations, promoting cooperation and diligence in their performance.
  3. Legal Protection: Both parties are liable to perform their duties under the contract. Legal actions can be taken against a party that intends to defraud, providing safety in every business transaction.

Different Types of Procurement Contracts

  1. Fixed-price Contract: This is the most common type of contract used in business transactions. Regardless of any internal or external factors, the price set during the signing of the contract remains constant until the project ends.
  2. Cost-reimbursement Contracts: Here, the buyer agrees to pay the supplier for the direct and indirect costs of the project. The supplier only gets paid once the expenses have been validated, placing much of the risk on the supplier’s side.
  3. Time and Materials Contract: This type of contract reimburses the vendor for the materials and time spent on a project. It is most commonly used on projects that are not easily quantifiable.

With the rise of technology, procurement processes are becoming increasingly streamlined and data-driven, leading to optimized spending and reduced risk.

Tools like Icertis and SAP Ariba’s Contract Management Software are revolutionizing this space by providing contract intelligence and services that drive compliance, minimize risk, and maximize business impact.

In an ever-evolving business landscape, understanding and leveraging the power of procurement contracts is a vital strategy for any organization, particularly for finance and procurement executives in the midmarket and large enterprise space.

 

Click here to contact our team

Jun 26

Revolutionizing Procurement with Icertis Contract Intelligence

By Icertis and Premikati No Comments

Every cog in a corporate machine plays an important role, and procurement is no exception. As organizations strive for operational efficiency, procurement stands as a key driver for business success.

Yet, one area in procurement often proves challenging – contract lifecycle management. That’s where Icertis comes into play. By providing an intelligent, cloud-based CLM solution, Icertis is not just navigating but revolutionizing the procurement landscape.

The Importance of Efficient Procurement

Before we dive into Icertis’s unique solutions, let’s shed some light on the integral role procurement plays in a business.

A study by Deloitte shows that organizations with excellent procurement practices have 133% greater return on investment than their counterparts. These efficient operations can often be the difference between business success and failure.

Icertis: The CLM Trailblazer

So, how does Icertis fit into this scenario? Here’s the truth: contracts are at the heart of procurement. They define obligations, responsibilities, and performance metrics, and any mismanagement in CLM can lead to wasted resources, compliance issues, and poor supplier relationships.

Enter Icertis Contract Intelligence, the platform that’s making CLM an integral part of the procurement strategy. The platform seamlessly integrates with procurement processes, thus transforming contract management from a cumbersome chore to a streamlined, value-generating function.

Mitigating Risk with Icertis

Risk is an inherent part of any contract, and a robust mechanism to identify, analyze, and manage these risks is a necessity in the modern business world. This is where Icertis truly shines.

Icertis’ risk management capabilities allow organizations to stay proactive rather than reactive. The platform enables the tracking of contractual obligations and adherence, thereby reducing the likelihood of litigation, reputational damage, and financial loss.

Indeed, Gartner reports that by 2023, more than 30% of global enterprises will have automated contract obligation tracking, thus reducing risk exposure by 50%.

Ensuring Compliance: A Central Tenet of Icertis

Ensuring compliance in today’s complex regulatory landscape is no easy feat, yet Icertis tackles this challenge head-on. The platform provides a centralized repository for all contracts and associated documents.

This ensures every transaction, and every procurement activity, adheres to relevant regulations, avoiding the potential of legal entanglements.

Enhancing Supplier Relationships

Managing supplier relationships effectively is key to procurement success. Icertis takes this to a whole new level by facilitating communication and ensuring all parties adhere to their contractual terms. Better-managed contracts lead to more productive relationships and a more efficient procurement process.

Unparalleled Visibility and Control

One of the standout features of Icertis is the visibility it provides over the entire contract lifecycle. With this feature, procurement teams are empowered to make better decisions, improve efficiency, and increase control over procurement activities.

A 2020 Forrester study found that organizations using AI-infused CLM solutions like Icertis experienced a 75% reduction in uncontrolled contractual spend.

Key Benefits of Icertis in Procurement

Icertis provides a myriad of benefits, including:

  • Seamless Integration: Icertis dovetails with your procurement processes, enabling an effective and efficient CLM system.
  • Robust Risk Management: Identity, analyze, and manage contractual risks like never before.
  • Ensured Compliance: Centralized contract storage ensures that all your procurement activities adhere to relevant regulations and standards.
  • Enhanced Supplier Management: Streamline your procurement process and bolster supplier relationships.
  • Complete Visibility and Control: Make better decisions with complete transparency over your contract lifecycle.

 

In a world where efficiency is key, Icertis is leading the way in revolutionizing procurement. With robust risk management, compliance assurance, enhanced supplier management, and full lifecycle visibility, Icertis is delivering an efficient and effective CLM system that every procurement team needs.

Click here to connect with someone from our team

Apr 03

Contract Trends in 2023

By 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.

 

Sep 12
Contract management from Ariba for $30K

Contract Management from Ariba for $30K?

By 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.

______________________________________________________________________

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.

Close Menu

Contact Us

Call us at: (317) 682 4940
Email us with comments or questions
x