Contract Management Blog

For procurement organizations, “category management” is considered a best practice for sourcing. Simply put, category management is the process by which companies segment all the goods and services they need to procure into discrete categories that reflect the specific common characteristics of the products they’re buying. For example, the procurement ...
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Managing risk and reducing cost for an enterprise are goals at the forefront of every General Counsel’s mind these days. GCs are playing an increasingly strategic role in the C-suite and need to think proactively about how they can reduce their company’s exposure to reputational, financial, and legal risk while ...
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When trying to get an organization to adopt new technology, managers should expect to encounter users who aren’t naturally technology savvy or are instantly distrustful of new ways to do things. The obvious problem with non-adoption: companies don’t get maximum benefit from new technology since more often than not their ...
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In today’s fast, competitive business environment, every organization wants their sales team focused on one thing: generating revenue for the company. Sales teams that are slow in responding to opportunities, or that can’t quickly and nimbly respond to customer demands, won’t last long. On the other hand, an enterprise must ...
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Change is afoot in the pharmaceutical industry. Merger-and-acquisition activity is high; regulations are becoming ever more stringent; companies are focusing on cost; and outsourcing is rising. And this just scratches the surface. Forward looking pharma leaders are exploring how the digital transformation of their processes can help meet these challenges ...
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The accelerating pace of business has created many new opportunities for today’s enterprises, and with it new and heightened risks for them to navigate. To help them succeed in such an environment, companies are relying on their general counsel to play an increasingly strategic role in determining a path to ...
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Is your sales organization spinning up a contract management RFP? When an executive team comes together to pick an enterprise contract management vendor, each will bring a unique set of needs to the table. Here is a roster of who should be involved in the selection process, and what they ...
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When organizations that deal with complex sell-side contracts decide it’s time to abandon their manual contract management process for something more sophisticated, they have a wide variety of solutions to choose from. Options range from those offered by software suites they already use, to those housed within the CRM or CPQ ...
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Third-party contracts—contracts that are authored by a counterparty rather than in house—are an inevitable part of doing business: Even the largest enterprises will at times enter into contracts that were written outside their own legal department, and for some businesses, they represent a major part of all contracting. Necessary though ...
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Legacy contracts represent a major challenge for every enterprise. They are scattered everywhere–across geographies, across multiple repositories including shared folders and SharePoint, and in many different formats. They are hard (impossible sometimes) to search, and the risks and obligations are buried deep within dense clauses (till they awaken to bite!) ...
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At this year’s Build developer conference, Microsoft unveiled major enhancements to its Cognitive Services offerings on Azure, and introduced Cognitive Search, an AI-first approach to content understanding. Icertis, who has been working closely with Microsoft on the latest Azure technologies, was invited to demonstrate how developers can use the tools ...
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Smart contracts are an emerging technology that could conceivably up-end contract management in the very near future. But what are they? First proposed by Nick Szabo in 1994, smart contracts are self-executing documents with the terms of the agreement written directly into lines of code. These contracts render transactions traceable, transparent, verifiable ...
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For the first time in the history of commerce, contracts are being completely digitized. This development, combined with the rapid evolution of artificial intelligence (AI), has business leaders entirely rethinking the role contracts can play in their enterprise. Contracts touch every facet of a business, including sales, procurement, and human ...
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Is your contract management software difficult to use, unable to provide valuable insights, and underutilized? If so, your organization could be missing out on revenue opportunities and susceptible to non-compliance risk. Consider these features if you're thinking about an upgrade: 1. Personalized Dashboard Contract management software shouldn’t be one-size-fits-all, and ...
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For the first time in the history of commerce, contracts are being completely digitized. This development has major implications for every industry—even professional football. Consider the recent report from ESPN that veteran NFL quarterback Josh McCown signed a new contract with the New York Jets while sitting at a Chick-fil-A ...
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The pace of commerce is accelerating, and today’s organizations face ever-growing demands to deliver faster time to revenue—the length of time from when contract negotiation starts to when it begins to generate income for the business. If a business deal takes twice as long to complete because of a suboptimal ...
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It’s not often that contract clause language makes it into an Oscar speech, but that’s what happened this year when Best Actress winner Frances McDormand used her acceptance to beseech the stars in the audience to demand “inclusion riders” in their contracts. Her comment led many to look up what ...
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Health insurance companies and other healthcare payors like PPOs and HMOs face serious challenges to containing costs for their clients while staying in compliance with government regulations. Better contract management can help payors face these challenges in many important ways, including by improving the process of provider contracting, in which ...
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Sourcing and procurement departments  play a strategic role in controlling spending and managing risks. They must think creatively to increase savings and draw insights from suppliers in an increasingly complex supply chain. Strategic sourcing processes that improve compliance, reduce risk and strengthen supplier collaboration result in increased sourcing performance and ...
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The healthcare and life sciences industry stands at a pivotal moment. Nearly every week, the marketplace is disrupted by news of acquisitions, mergers and emerging players—as in the case of Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway, and J.P. Morgan’s announcement they would be teaming up to form a new healthcare company. At the ...
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The term “programmable economy” was first coined in 2014 by the research firm Gartner Inc. to describe the radical changes occurring in the global economy due to technological innovations. In 2018, the programmable economy will be powered by disruptive technologies including blockchains, distributed ledgers, and smart contracts. These technologies will ...
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Manual contract creation, review, and approval often results in missed commitments, compliance mandates, possible discounts, and other milestones. This puts the business at risk. The contract management process changes for the better when buy-side, sell-side, and corporate contracts and workflows are aligned. Contract lifecycle management (CLM) addresses the critical issues ...
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According to the American Psychological Association, multitasking—when someone tries to perform two or more tasks at the same time or in rapid succession—can diminish a worker's productivity by as much as 40 percent. For business decision makers, this means that enterprise software can’t just be judged on its functionality, but ...
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The issue of vendor risk assessment by banks has gained more attention in recent years as the U.S. federal government tightens the rules around what a bank must due to ensure critical vendors don’t pose a serious risk to their operations. In 2013, the Office of the Comptroller of the ...
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Contracts are critical business assets. The importance of an effective contract management system cannot be overstated, as poor contract management can quickly undermine even the strongest organization. Spanning three key dimensions of the enterprise, contracts: Govern every dollar that goes in and out of an organization. Given this critical function, ...
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Ineffective contract management processes consume valuable time and resources and increase business risk. If contracting is holding back your business performance due to a lack of standardization, controls, or access, you may need rethink your current contract management process. Optimizing contract lifecycle management improves efficiency, visibility, and profitability. It also ...
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According to PricewaterhouseCoopers, the average Fortune 2000 company now holds 20,000-40,000 active contracts. Global supply chains, multi-jurisdictional businesses, and changing regulations have also made contract management more complex. Unfortunately for legal teams, contract management processes have not kept pace with marketplace changes. Manual contract management is still a common practice, ...
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The value of specific contracts vary significantly throughout a company. One contract may not have as much meaning to one person as it does to the next. Regardless, meeting contract obligations and taking advantage of entitlements will ultimately result in increased revenue and decreased expenses for the entire company. Proactively ...
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Digital transformation has quickly become the enterprise buzz word of the year – and for good reason. The pace of business is accelerating and organizations are facing pressure to increase their speed of operations while improving their ability to respond to changing market dynamics. In short, they face tough decisions ...
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An enterprise organization may have several thousand active contracts at any given time, and each one carries a potential risk of regulatory non-compliance, supply chain disruptions, and public relations disasters. Without a proper system for managing contract obligations and commitments, these risks remain hidden, which can cost the enterprise millions ...
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Procurement leaders have a lot to consider in the coming year – they are under pressure to deliver savings while reducing risk and accomplish more with less. But, the solution won’t come from applying more resources to the problem. Transforming procurement demands a completely new approach, one that places contract ...
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A contract lifecycle management (CLM) platform must do far more than streamline contract authoring and ensuring compliance. With contract analytics, a CLM platform can leverage data from enterprise systems to give you a holistic view of contract performance. Contract analytics has helped professionals in many industries to assess the value ...
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It's every CIO's dream: a rapid and successful digital transformation. Fortunately, it isn't just a dream, but a reality for some companies. Consider the recent examples of auto giant, Daimler AG, and World Wide Technology (WWT). Daimler, the parent company of Mercedes Benz, went live with the Icertis Contract Management ...
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Capturing the potential value in a third-party contract is an on-going challenge – especially for a global enterprise. Can your contract management system manage a third-party contract as well as the ones native to your organization? A recent study by PwC highlights the impact of not capturing the full value ...
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Creating, reviewing, and approving a contract can be a slow process. Automating this process helps organizations accelerate negotiations, improve governance, and enable more efficient authoring. But the real benefits of an enterprise contract management platform come after the contract is created. If contracts aren’t carefully tracked across the entire enterprise ...
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For sales teams, the pressure to meet revenue targets never relents. At the same time, contracts have become more complex. With multiple stakeholders connected by an intricate web of interdependencies, contracts often harbor a great deal of hidden risk. How can an organization meet sales goals without increasing that risk, ...
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The average Fortune 2000 company has between 20,000 and 40,000 active contracts at any given time. It is understandably difficult to manage that much information using a manual process. Yet failing to effectively manage contract risk can force an organization to forego millions of dollars in revenue, creating unnecessary risks, ...
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Managing supplier relationships, obligations and risks in the source-to-contract and the procure-to-pay processes is a significant challenge for procurement organizations. The source-to-contract process begins with the analysis of required products or services and development of a sourcing strategy to acquire those products or services. RFx creation, supplier selection, proposal or ...
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Today’s enterprises compete in a global marketplace characterized by uncertainty, complex supply chains, and stringent regulatory requirements. In this kind of business environment, compliance can be difficult to achieve on a consistent basis. “The corporate legal landscape is fraught with an increasingly complex regulatory environment, a never-ending balancing act between ...
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When you hear the word ‘contracts’, what do you think of? Closing deals? Generating revenue? Committing to obligations? Managing risk? Contracts are involved in nearly every aspect of operating a global business, and can nurture or degrade critical supplier relationships. Supplier relationships require clear communication and trust – but they ...
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Effectively managing contract renewals is essential for healthy supply chain performance. If a contract expires without notice, negative consequences may soon follow. Lapsed contracts can leave procurement teams scrambling to find new suppliers in order to meet customer demands. While timely contract renewals are critical for maintaining efficiency, organizations often ...
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Contract compliance and management have become a critical focus for executives in organizations across the business spectrum. According to the PricewaterhouseCoopers State of Compliance Study 2016, 98% of responding executives said that senior leadership is committed to compliance and ethics, and 89% said that compliance monitoring is a primary area ...
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Managing the complexity of third-party contracts is an on-going challenge – especially for a global enterprise. Can your contract management system manage a third-party contract as well as the ones native to your organization? A recent study by PwC highlights the impact of not capturing the full value of third-party ...
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Several teams within every large organization handle contracts. But they approach enterprise contract management and creation from different perspectives and with different priorities: Procurement is focused on supplier and supply chain performance, creating efficiencies and maximizing economies of scale where possible. The legal team seeks consistency of contract terms, formats, ...
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What’s it worth for your company to stay off the front page of the Wall Street Journal? We’re not talking about positive press here, but rather the negative press that comes with big supply chain disruptions and compliance lapses. The type of events that not only cost tens or hundreds ...
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A report from The International Association for Contract and Commercial Management revealed a startling statistic: sell-side contracts consume more than 76% of contracting resources. For half of these contracts, the cycle time from bid to execution can take 21 weeks or longer. When a global organization devotes that many resources ...
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The Three Keys to Improving Buy-side Contracting Velocity For a global enterprise, negotiating a major new contract with a supplier can take months. The glacial speed of a manual contracting process can strain relationships and derail a supplier agreement and potentially sales. Many procurement organizations that Icertis has worked with ...
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In a world where your pizza chain can tell you exactly where your pizza is and when it will arrive, why can't large companies keep track of their contracts, including critical obligations and renewals? PwC estimates the average Fortune 2000 company has between 20,000 and 40,000 active contracts. When these ...
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There was $3.7 trillion in merger and acquisition activity in 2016 according to the Wall Street Journal – the third highest year in terms of deal value. Peter Weinberg, adviser on two of the largest transactions, remarked, "I haven’t seen a set of factors that’s been more bullish for M&A ...
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In today’s world we are increasingly accustomed to knowing "where things are" from both a physical and service standpoint. Ecommerce sites can tell you where your order is, when it leaves the warehouse and estimate when it will arrive at your house. You can find out where a flight is ...
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Yesterday, the 2016 Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded to two economists for their contributions in the field of "Contract Theory". Oliver Hart and Bengt Holmstrom are being recognized for creating frameworks to write contracts – improving both the design of contracts and shedding light on how contracts help us ...
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According to a recent Gartner study, the demand for Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) software will steadily increase for the foreseeable future. Shortened time-to-market cycles, increased M&A activity and the ever-present challenges of governance, risk and compliance all put pressure on an organization to exercise greater control over their contracting process. ...
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Britain's vote to leave the EU stunned the world and sent shockwaves through the global financial markets. While the initial shock has faded, it’s still unclear the impact Brexit will have on global commerce. The decision - the first of its kind - calls for Britain to renegotiate all new ...
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In our last blog, we explored why in today’s data centric, fragmented and siloed business world, contracts are an enterprise’s “single source of truth”. Traditional data management systems make it difficult to aggregate data and gain meaningful insight from contracts, but by deploying a cloud-based Contract Life-cycle Management (CLM) solution ...
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Contracts are the central nervous system of your enterprise, communicating a vast amount of information that defines the scope of your operations. The importance of contracts can't be overstated: in fact, more than 80% of a company's transactions are tied to contracts. In a perfect world, your contract portfolio provides ...
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There's no question that the enterprise software of the past caused significant angst for end users. Clunky, hard to implement and difficult to use, these “solutions” were often enterprise-wide headaches. Today, thanks to parallel advances in consumer technology and Cloud computing, enterprise software products can offer the same user-centric, smart, ...
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The most important part of managing contracts at Fortune 500 companies is not what you know about them—it's what you don't know that can cost you. The risk is real. Without an enterprise approach to contract lifecycle management, your organization runs the risk of taking a hit to the bottom ...
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