Contracts are the life-blood of any organization, and in particular of the modern organization—contracts form the virtual and documentable “fabric” that binds people, customers, suppliers, and organizations into coherent working relationships whereby goods and services may be exchanged in a mutually agreeable framework. In a recent study by the Institute for Supply Management, it was determined that, between 60% and 80% of all business-to-business transactions are governed by a formal trade agreement, with the typical Fortune 1000 company maintaining 20,000 to 40,000 active contracts at any given time. Yet most organizations lack the controls and processes to manage contracts effectively. Contract management in most organizations usually involves relying on manual, disjointed and decentralized processes which results in limited visibility into contracts and their performance, missed revenue opportunities, inflated costs, diminished negotiation leverage, and poor compliance with regulations. Thus an increasing number of organizations are recognizing the importance of employing procedures and systems to holistically manage the contract lifecycle at an enterprise level.

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Bottom Line: If you are not in control of your contracts, you are not in control of your business  

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Pono Group's Enterprise Contract Management Group can provide your organization with the following ECM services:

• Assessment of your current competence levels in ECM function.

• Assist in ECM software evaluation, selection, acquisition, and implementation based on your unique and specific business requirements.

• Assist in the development of your business case for ECM improvement initiatives.

• Assist in the development of your strategy and vision for ECM excellence, and support it with a project plan to implement.

• Provide resources knowledgeable in ECM processes, ECM technology solutions, Project Implementation Methodologies, as well as in integrating your ECM solution with other enterprise-wide applications.

• Assist with change management aspects of the implementation as it relates to ECM improvement initiatives.

• Assist in the design and implementation of a continuous improvement plan (based on Six-Sigma principles) for driving continuous improvement in your ECM function.

• Data gathering, data cleansing, data formatting, and uploading into the chosen ECM solution database.

• Contract template design, breaking down contract templates into clauses, and loading templates into the chosen ECM solution.

• Legal document language translation services for most international languages.

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Are you facing these problems with your Contracts?

• Do you know how many contracts you have, and can you rapidly locate your contracts?

• Are your contracts coordinated over jurisdictions, geographies, and languages?

• Do you know how much of your spend is “off-contracts”—by commodity?

• Do you know when your contracts are going to expire?

• Do you know how your suppliers are performing against your contracts?

• Do you know when a contract term is achieved or violated?

• Are you capturing all the rebates and discounts accurately in your supply contracts?

• Are you capturing all revenue related to your sales contracts?

• Do you know what your financial and operating risks are?

• Do you know whether your contracts are in compliance with local/national/global regulations?

 

Benefits of Enterprise Contract Management

 

Increase Revenues

• Negotiate better contracts

• Invoice for all services rendered

• Collect fees and charges

• Up-sell and cross-sell opportunities

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Decrease Costs

• Avoid overpayments

• Leverage global pricing and discount opportunities

• Cut unnecessary contract renewals

• Reduce hidden costs and penalties

• Reduce audit costs

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Streamline Operations

• Improve efficiency and effectiveness in every stage of contract lifecycle

• Eliminate duplication of contracts and need for “shadow” systems and tracking mechanisms

• Improve stakeholder participation — internally and externally

 

Enhance Visibility

• Improve contract visibility and access

• Consolidated contract databases and repository

• Standardized access control

• User friendly tools for searching, sorting and reporting

 

Improve Operational Compliance

• Reduce maverick (“off-contract”) spend

• Adhere to revenue recognition rules

• Establish and implement standard business processes and contracting best practices

Improve Contractual Compliance

• Monitor compliance and performance of parties against contracts

• Ensure adherence to all deliverables, terms and conditions, commitments and timing.

Improve Regulatory Compliance

• Enforce and ensure use of standard clause and contract templates

• Increase visibility of financial and operational risk

• Maintain audit trail

• Real-time disclosure