Assess your needs

You Are Not Alone
Despite the recent industry growth in Contract Management Software, over one-third of organizations still use a manual process to manage contracts and only 8% of organizations have a fully automated process that uses a common system company-wide.* You may possess serious concerns about the effectiveness of your current process. But you are not alone. Fifty-four percent (54%) of enterprises plan to adopt technology to improve contract reporting and analytics around contract data.** To maintain or improve your competitive positioning, it may be time to seriously pursue a comprehensive contract management system for your enterprise.

Challenges You May Be Facing
There may be broad or specific reasons prompting you to consider Contract Management Software. There are likely other reasons you have not yet even considered that could dramatically improve contract management across your enterprise.

The list below reflects some of the common challenges that our customers faced before implementing Contraxx. If any of these resonate with your current experience with contract management, then your organization could benefit from implementing Contraxx.

Would your organization have a problem if one of your contract managers left suddenly?
Has your organization ever missed a key date in a contract, such as an option renewal, automatic rollover or exclusive negotiation period?
Do you maintain contract summaries separate from the contracts themselves?
When senior management asks about specific contracts are you generally able to respond with the answer while the executive is still on the phone?
Does contract preparation add a day or more to your sales close cycle?
Do your sales people think that there is a bottleneck getting contracts created or modified to complete a sale?
Do your sales people present non-standard terms to prospects?
Could your organization exceed risk or business levels with a single supplier because different parts of the organization have, unbeknownst to each other, contracted with the same party?
Can you provide a summary of your company’s contractual contingent liabilities?
Can you track cash in/out of the company back to a contract?
Does your organization have a reputation of being easy to deal with regarding contract preparation and execution?
If you expect to make any acquisitions in the next year, are you prepared to handle the acquired company’s contracts?
Have the primary contracts for your company’s product or service been significantly revised within the last 5 years?
Do your contracts generally include separate insurance riders and if so, do you have a process for making sure the riders are current?
Can you readily say how many of the contracts you manage will expire in the next 4 months?
Has your organization ever missed a contract negative option, and ended up paying for something you did not want?
Do you know and can you control the status of contracts in process?
Do you ever grant MFN status to your counterparts?

Quantifying Your Risk
How can one quantify the cost associated with a missed option date? An unearned discount for volume purchasing? A potentially renegotiated rate on an automatic renewal? Or, incomplete regulatory reporting? These costs are not only financial, but may also carry real personal risk for your CFO and/or CEO.

The challenge in quantifying this risk is that errors are often errors of omission or failed prevention, and thus slip by undetected. The opportunities lost are lost precisely because they are never noticed. The risks are often hidden in the depths of a contract, or exist as an unintended result in the aggregation of several contracts. We often hear in confidence from our customers about a disastrous contract management error. It’s typically what prompts them to contact us.

With Contract Management Software, organizations mitigate risk by ensuring that risk-bearing contract details are visible and accessible to the appropriate business users. Through automated exception reporting, senior management is assured that should risks exist, they are brought to the forefront of decision making rather than slipping by undetected. The potential financial implication for your bottom line is limitless.

*Contract Management: The Quote-to-Cash Cycle. Aberdeen Group, December 2006.
**Contract Lifecycle Management and the CFO. Aberdeen Group, April 2007.