What A Contract Management System Need To Have?

A Contract Management System (CMS), sometimes called Control Lifecycle Management manages the production and management of contracts, Service Level Agreements (SLA) and Procurement Master Agreements.

Contracts are core to any business’s procurement activities. They set out the prices, service levels, terms and supplier relationship and ensure that your company is regularly supplied with their direct and indirect supplies.

A company’s Contract Management System not only sets out these important details but also controls a company’s risk of a vendor not performing correctly. Features of a good Contract Management System includes:

• Storage of the company’s standardized contracts.
• A core workflow management system to facilitate and manage the drawing up and execution of new contracts.
• Flexibility to cope with a vendor relationship and its interactions.
• Calendars that include milestones that the vendor should meet.
• Check lists to manage information and activities within the contract life cycle.
• Compliance monitoring.
• Alerts to indicate movements from expected behaviour.
• Agreed delivery schedules and the ability to track them
• Prices and budgeting for each product line and vendor.
• Document depositories to hold the live contracts and standard contracts for use by the company.
• Event management for any problems.
• Claims administration to cope with any non-adherence with the contract.
• Request For Proposal (RFP) management that includes: Template based creation.Interactive and dynamic workflow managed creation.Structured RFP management through its life cycle.
• Contract management that includes: Template based creation.Interactive and dynamic workflow managed creation.Structured contract management through its life cycle.
• Management information that will show which contracts: Have the greatest risk potential.Are costly to manage.Are the most valuable.Are close to being renewed.Take an excess amount of time to manage.

You can find a Contract Management System for large, medium and small companies and most of them claim to:

• Save time.
• Simplify the procurement contract process.
• Allow for compliance with internal and external regulations.
• Identify and manage risk.
• Enhance the standardization of the contract process.
• Maximum realization of revenue and cost savings through the maximization of the benefits of each contract.
• Introduce paper free contracts.

If any Contract management system meets the claims of the vendor, it’s a different issue for which you need to decide yourself. Part of the information here would definitely help.

 

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