Reducing Supply Chain Risk with Better Contract Management

Preventing reputational and brand damage caused by poor supplier practices should be first on the executive agenda, according to Pierre-Francois Thaler, co-founder and co-CEO of EcoVadis. "Our world is more connected and social than ever. Today's environment puts a laser focus on not just your own actions, but on the behavior and practices of the suppliers you engage to do business on your behalf," he said in a recent Forbes report.

"Our world is more connected and social than ever. Today's environment puts a laser focus on not just your own actions, but on the behavior and practices of the suppliers you engage to do business on your behalf,"

Organizations are becoming more and more concerned about supply chain risk, making the need for better visibility more critical than ever before. Enterprise contract management software provides that visibility by tracking what a firm's worldwide obligations, entitlements and business relationships truly are.

Advantages of Enterprise Contract Management Software

Enterprise contract management software gives organizations a firm grasp on their supply chain, key suppliers, the composition of the products they’re purchasing and the locales in which they’re operating. The software does this by:

Protection from reputational damage

Providing visibility into commercial engagements to help prevent the organization from using suppliers that could hurt their reputation.

Regulatory compliance

Giving insight into what an organization is buying at the bill of materials level to help ensure the organization is compliant with regulations such as Registration, Evaluation, Authorization, and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH) and Restriction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS).

Supply chain visibility

Showing where an organization is sourcing from to provide a better understanding of what regulations are in force along the supply chain, thereby enhancing supply chain sustainability.

Holistic 360 Views

Offering visibility into top suppliers from multiple perspectives—not just spending—to help an organization understand which suppliers require closer scrutiny.

Standardized review process

Visibility into contracts and related documents can also help organizations track in-house or third-party quality testing and review processes within the supply base.

Powerful Contract Insights

The Icertis Contract Management Platform (ICM) equips stakeholders with quick, easy and smart access to contract data. Users can search across relationships, configure results, and export data. Users can search against the full text of documents including metadata, and dashboards can be personalized to monitor specific key performance indicators in the supply chain.

Contracts at the Center of the Sourcing Process

Contracts are the hub for all data related to sourcing—and proper contract management provides enterprise-wide insights that help your business maximize value and minimize risk. ICM brings together information from the sourcing and contract processes to capture the full lifecycle of the sourcing process and integrates with enterprise systems. This single source of truth is then layered with pre-built analytics to surface performance metrics, which help track governance and compliance, measure actual spend against budgets, calculate savings and benefits from contracted transactions, and track progressive improvements in renewals.

For more information on how the Icertis platform can address supply chain risks at your organization, download the Spend Matters Analyst Report: The Intersection of Contract Invisibility and Risk Management.

Vivek Bharti is General Manager of Product Management at Icertis.