Contract Management with ContractX

Contract Creation

The contract creation module of ContractX allows authorised users to generate new contracts from standard clause and template libraries whilst applying appropriate business rules. It manages and monitors contract negotiation, revision, roles and responsibilities.

ContractX is an enterprise application for the management of contract partners and contract data. It can handles the entire contract life cycle for all partners and all contract types and significantly help to optimize contract based relationships

• Centralised administration of contracts but with secure and decentralised access across the enterprise
• Proactive management of all contract types and contract details such as identifications, dates, conditions, legal aspects, benchmarks, obligations, directorates, positions, risks, relationships, evaluations, qualifications, real estate, prices, orders, invoices, etc
• Speed of decision due to the accessibility of contract data analysis and partner evaluations
• Transparency into all contract contents and visibility/control of any related risks
• Reduced time for the creation and management of contracts
• Management of contracts based on actual documents and activities
• Standardisation and conformity of partner relations extending across multiple areas of the organisation
• Significant time savings during contract research and analysis
• Configurable security and confidentiality - of critical importance in a web based system
• Efficient checking of contracts with detailed audit traces of all activities

Activation

Contract data and documents may be stored in the ContractX repository either manually, semi-automatically, or entirely automatically:

• Manual capture of contractual data and documents via the Internet browser interface
• Data capture from SAP/other ERP with periodic updates by an automatic WebService in case of any modifications external to ContractX
• Inclusion of digitised documents from a scanner either individually or as a batch operation from for example an Excel data file
• Data capture via an eForm such as Microsoft InfoPath and automatic upload to ContractX
• Capture of the entire contract data via Microsoft Word Intelligent Documents (from Office 2003 / 2007) and automatic/simultaneous storage within ContractX
• Interview driven creation of a contract and automatic upload
• Creation of a contract by means of the ContractX module CCWF (Contract Creation & Workflow) and entirely automatic storage of the documents metadata (contract details)

The contract template is highly configurable and practically without restriction, including :

• Multiple contract origins - contract templates, clause libraries, base contracts, bespoke contracts etc. - all with an unlimited amount of data capture per contract
• Partner data - contact information, proposal generation and evaluation, key performance indicators (KPI's), and associated data such as annual reports, price lists, financial results, etc.
• Objects related to contracts such as property and equipment, third parties (e.g. legal counsel), cadastre, plans, governing bodies, wills, mandates and critical clauses for compliance and performance monitoring
• Contractual information - configurable registers containing all relevant contract dates/durations, conditions, notices, products, etc
• Original documents - in different formats such as pdf, doc, xml, msg, html, xls, ppt, tif, jpg ... (32 formats)

Compliance

Compliance requirements now represent a significant challenge for all sizes of enterprise. ContractX addresses compliance demands in a clear, rapid and concise manner, authorised users have an immediate and global visibility on critical contractual information.

• Central repository for contracts
• Control and follow-up of contracts
• Compliance verification and proactive partner/vendor management
• Coordination across different operations/divisions of an organisation
• Transparency of risks, obligations or conditions

Optimisation

ContractX is an efficient solution for all types of contracts which offers significant commercial and procedural benefits and a rapid "return on investment".

The centralised repository coupled with its decentralised data capture enables enterprise wide visibility of specific contract information such as costs, quantities, schedules, legal dependencies, references, etc.

Contract transparency and rapid data access improves the management of contractual engagements and helps to avoid costly mistakes for example, missed renewals, and re-negotiation opportunities.

ContractX enables an organisation to PROACTIVELY manage its relationships with contracted partners such as vendors through:

• Evaluation and qualification of contractual partners
• Evaluation of Key Performance Indicators (KPI's) such as quality, total cost of ownership - TCO, on time shipments tracking, risks, innovation, payment reliability etc.
• Compliance conformity by sites, dispositions legal requirements and agreements
• Consolidation/optimisation of suppliers
• Visibility of offerings from co-contractors. Possibilities of more favourable renegotiations
• Adjustment of payments related to specific contract obligations and invoice verification
• Control and verification of agreed terms and terminations
• Integrated planning and reporting tool
• Management of financial obligations and critical data

Analytics

• Performance evaluation of contracting partners (suppliers, customers, banks, insurances, company divisions, etc.)
• Evaluation of all types of contracts, of their clauses, related documents and annexes
• Evaluation of entities related to contracts or contractors such as projects, proposals, consultants, geographical regions or business divisions
• Assessment of partners with respect to quality, business trends, business results, and conformity to anticipated standards
• Analysis of partners - Management of partners - Auditing of partners
• Self-declaration by suppliers via web portal
• Controlling the effectiveness of contracted engagements and results review across all relevant domains
• Service management, offers - discounts, qualification, conditions, status, evaluation, values
• Risk analysis - financial, legal, operational, strategic, human resource

The visualisation of defined evaluation criteria specific to a user's requirements allows the follow-up and evaluation of all partner relations and contractual details. Vendors may, if permitted, be able to update their own current commercial offerings via an external web portal. (self-declaration and modification).

Archive

• Management of all documents, contracts, metadata et annexes
• The integrated archiving functionality may be ultimately configured to precise customer requirements
• All types of documents (PDF, Word, Excel, emails, photos etc.)
• Archived data may be searched (including full text, wild card and approximate)
• Hyperlink or XML data links to other archive systems
• Archiving structure may be based on documents just as much as activities
• Linking to scanners, optional
• Batch loading of digitised documents and automatic linking
• Control and tracking of versions, authors, business criteria, partners etc
• Unlimited number and type of archive attributes
• Re-activation controlled by security roles
• Plain text search in metadata and archived documents

All contractual archive documents are made available to any authorised user from a central and secure repository with full search and data drilldown capabilities.

Integration

• Import and export of files in the formats Excel, Word, RTF, PDF et XML
• Import of user data, of suppliers, of invoices and of performance indicators
• Establishment of evaluations in the formats Excel, Word, RTF, PDF et XML
• Interface capability to ERP's such as SAP, Oracle, etc.
• Interface capability with LDAP or Active Directory - to provide an enterprise wide "Single Sign On"
• Interface capability with Microsoft Outlook - synchronisation and direct linking
• Interface capability with the partner product HotDocs from LexisNexis to provide contract creation via an interview response dialogue
• Interface capability with eForms such as InfoPath and Word from Microsoft (known as Intelligent Documents)
• Loading of large quantities of legacy data from existing systems
• On-line or off-line capture of data concerning partners or contract specifics
• Adaptors to Access, text files or ERP data
• Integration with ContractX Module CCWF (contract creation and workflow)

The use of standard interfaces based on XML, web services and standard protocols such as SOAP, http(s) and TCP/IP ensures a ready integration to external systems. ContractX provides a "contract portal" to ALL contract types across the organisation taking advantage of data in related systems but avoiding the unnecessary complexity of presenting irrelevant data or of a complex and costly ERP reconfiguration.

Notifications

• Alerts and notifications sent automatically both by email and via the system
• Automatic event driven alerts driven by, for example :
• • A change of contract status
  • Total contract activities pass a certain threshold value e.g. 20'000
  • Evaluation of a supplier falls below a stated minimum performance level
  • No response from an appointed contract manager after a stated number of reminder alerts, i.e. alert escalation
  
  
• Verification of email alerts either repeated (no response) or completed
• Access directly to the related contract from the email alert within Outlook
• Support for various email addresses: users, managers and external
• Email escalation after multiple resends and no response
• Free formatting of email notifications
• Optional definition of any delay preferred within Outlook calendar
• Compliance verification rules freely definable and alerted against
• Automatic reports as attachments to E-Mails

The contract responsible user defines him or herself the dates and events which will automatically set off any future alert. The resulting access to the related contract is made either within the system or via a single click within the email.

Reporting

• Report generation in real time to show "in effect" contract view. Reports may be configured exactly as required
• Direct forwarding of any report as an attachment to an email
• Listing of all associated contract documents within a report
• 15 standard default reports available such as: overviews, summaries, financials, risks, contracts terminating in the next quarter, contracts to renegotiate, supplier performance (quality, on time, business results, KPI, etc.), special conditions in the current contract, generation of standard contracts from metadata inputs, etc.
• All reports may be generated in the formats Excel, RTF (doc), XML or PDF
• Selection of multiple modes for review of the financial year (e.g. cash flow analysis periods)
• Choice of the currency used for reporting
• Automatic representation of any search criteria used to pre-select contracts for reporting
• Other types of reports: annual budget, monthly cash flow, payment corrections, list of outstanding notifications for the contract responsible etc.
• Personalized Dashboards for immediate and relevant overviews
• Flexible sorting within any single report

ANY defined data item including attached documents may be searched and reported against. This include a full text search capability within attached documents. All reports may in addition be generated in XML or Excel for further data mining or analysis.

Searching

• Rapid contract selection via multi parameter searching from the "Start Page"
• All defined data elements are automatically made available to the search engine
• Unrestricted, flexible search definitions according to a users exact requirements
• Capability to save all required personal search configurations
• Full text searches in partners, contracts, entities email alerts and even linked documents
• Wild card searches and unlimited binary definition combinations utilising "and/or"
• Searches across formats PDF, Excel, RTF or XML
• On screen display of results with further capabilities to incrementally drill down into results
• Scalable solution enabling the searching of extremely large amounts of data
• Direct sending of search results via email

Use of the search engines is extremely intuitive. ALL defined data is available to the search engine which enables unlimited definition of ad hoc search algorithms or storage and reuse of repeatedly used configurations.

Security

• Authentication and access authorisation via LDAP/AD for single sign-on.
• Fine granularity security profiling for users or user roles/groups.
• 5 types of security access enabling virtually unlimited security profile definitions
• Possibility to assign multiple roles to any single user. Personalised access definable to include "read only", "read-write", "no access".
• Assignment of several functions (e.g. create a contract, modify a partner or delete an entity) to a user - personalized configuration to include "read only", "read-write", "no access".
• Assignment of several templates to a user - personalized configuration to include "read only", "read-write", "no access".
• Assignment of several registers (e.g. financial data, prices, risks, etc.) to a user - personalized configuration to include "read only", "read-write", "no access".
• Assignment of several reports to a user - personalised configuration to include "read only", "read-write", "no access".
• Single Sign On for user identification

Each user of the system may be allocated its own precise access rights. This guarantee of high security also allows the tracking of all historic events during the lifetime of a contract (who changed what and when). This capability is all the more important when several users have access to the same contract. The access rights of users may be managed by the system administrator.

Track & Trace Audit Trail

• Storage of all activities
• Recording of the date and time of every activity by any user
• More than 50 different type of activities are tracked and recorded - for example :
• Modification of a contract partner
• Login
• Creation of a new contract entry
• Change of password
• Removal of a user etc.
• Any tracked changes are always stored to display the old value and the new value of each contract data element
• Tracked data may then be searched and sorted by activity, user, date or time period
• Selected activities per user may then be reported against in any required form
• Recorded activities may be noted by contract (generally made available to the contract responsible) or globally (generally only made visible for the system administrator)
• Attribution of roles for all activities
• Configuration possible for the degree of detail required for tracking (definition of the required data by individual activity)

In the case where several users are empowered as a function of their security roles to modify a contract or when an audit trail is required this module can guarantee the precise recording of all system activities by all users.

For more information about contract management solutions and software contact us.

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