"Contract Management could well be the next thing of extreme importance to all organisations."
Leading savings, pensions and insurance group
Business contracts play a pivotal role in how your business is conducted and in the results it achieves. So failing to manage the creation and operation of contracts will expose your organisation to unnecessary and unknown risks, loss of revenue and excess costs.
In short, you cannot claim to be in control of your business if you are not in control of the contracts it depends on. And it follows that you should make the management of contracts a priority, and ensure your company approaches it in a professional and systematic manner.
You should undertake an internal review in your organisation. If you find any of the problems identified in this paper, then solve them by taking the following steps:
1. Give someone responsibility for the process
2. Have a central information repository to take control of the key elements of the process-the contracts themselves and the information around the contracts
3. Define the processes and proactively manage the search for opportunities
4. Use technology to support the process.
Taking these steps leads to substantial and sustainable benefits. Some companies have already paved the way, and Gartner has predicted that 60% of Global 2000 companies will have made contract management a highly visible programme of work by the time this report is published.
If your suppliers, customers and competitors have not initiated such programmes yet, they soon will. The potential benefits are huge-and any organisation failing to seize the opportunity to realise them will rapidly find itself at a competitive disadvantage. Forward-looking companies are getting serious about contract management.
It is time to take action.