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 you can create a single source of truth and gain enterprise-wide insight that helps your business maximize value and minimize risk.
In the second part of this series, we explore how that single source of truth delivers benefits to both the buy and sell sides of an organization.
How does having a single source of truth benefit the buy-side of contracting?
On the buy-side, it's important to align your SLAs and your contract terms with the needs of the organization; when using traditional, non-automated processes, it just isn't possible to obtain a complete picture.
Using the right contract lifecycle management (CLM) solution enables buy-side stakeholders to obtain actionable data from their contract portfolio. Key metrics— such as burn rate, whether business is on track to meet volumes, rebates, discounts, how much off-contract buying is occurring and the amount of earned value from existing contracts—are easily discoverable, and a well-managed supply chain is integral to profitability.
Operational compliance is a reality and contract leakage is drastically reduced. Overcharging, discounts, rebates, confirmation that you're buying from the right supplier, verification that prices match, shipping, delivery and payment metrics can be tracked to ensure standards are being met.
When used on the buy-side, a CLM platform integrated with eSourcing, eProcurement, project management and invoicing can link all contract terms to purchasing systems, streamlining and automating your procure-to-pay process. This introduces efficiency controls and provides actionable insights.
How does having a single source of truth benefit the sell-side of contracting?
Sell-side contract management is integral to managing risk and profitability. The right CLM connects the contract process to order fulfillment and billing, eliminating errors, reducing risk and ensuring that revenue can be forecasted more accurately. Empowered with information, you can treat contracts like what they are: Assets, providing deep insights and competitive advantages.
With a CLM, stakeholders are alerted to expiration dates, and can analyze contract performance and make recommendations well ahead of renewals — significantly shortening the sales cycle and accelerating revenue. Integrating with ERP and CRM systems provides insights that ensure your contracts are executed accurately, and that future agreements and pricing structures are in alignment with your objectives. On the sell-side, a CLM platform increases your sales velocity, expediting the lead-to-cash process and creating new opportunities for enhanced productivity.
Compliance issues are mitigated. The platform notifies users when the terms of a contract are non-compliant, and these actionable insights prevent the very real risk of fines and penalties that can occur using non-automated processes. Simply stated, contracts that are managed in silos underperform. Employing a cloud-based CLM makes it possible to extract the maximum amount of value from each agreement.
Icertis Contract Management
Icertis is the leading provider of contract lifecycle management in the cloud. Icertis Contract Management is an innovative, easy-to-use platform that is highly configurable and continually adapts to your complex business needs. Today, the Icertis platform is used to manage 2 million+ contracts, by 500,000+ users, in 90+ countries and 40+ languages. With its intelligent workflow and built-in analytics, the Icertis platform provides ongoing contractual insights and best- contract management, enabling customers to increase compliance, improve governance and mitigate risk.
What kind of real-world results can be achieved when you adopt ICM as your single source of truth?
Customer: Multinational pharmaceutical company with more than $20 billion in revenue
Contract types: Agency MSAs and SOWs, patient service agreements, standard supply agreements, clinical trial agreements, CDAs
Business challenges: Customer dissatisfaction—lowest rated among suppliers. Extremely long contract cycle times.
Icertis solution: Reduced contracting cycle time from 65+ days to 5 days. Replacing the manual process, ICM helped improve relationships and satisfaction with the company's tier 1 suppliers, and improved their overall operational efficiency.
With contract volume increasing 20% in the last five years, the business case is clear: business processes must be aligned and more efficient to maximize revenue and mitigate risk. Icertis Contract Management provides this alignment, creating a single source of truth for your contract portfolio and empowering you with a 360-degree view into your enterprise's contract operations.