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The administration of commercial and government contracts is an expensive, time-consuming process with demanding deadlines, which if not managed in a disciplined fashion can result in significant financial exposure. This exposure is exacerbated when companies are reliant on over-burdened employees’ ability to successfully navigate highly manual, paper- or Excel-based processes.

Is my contracting process broken?

Although the enterprise systems that manage higher level business processes intersect with portions of the contracting process, these systems often leave smaller functions and teams with gaps in coverage. These gaps are particularly rife in the areas of offer development, contract administration, rebate claim tracking and contract productivity and performance reporting. We find that these gaps exist even when “fully automated contracting solutions” are in place! Which of these customer pain points are true of your organization’s contracting process? (Top)

What is preciseCONTRACT?

Transformation Associates uses a three-step method that focuses first and foremost on transforming the total contracting experience through process streamlining and optimization, then only after the process has been proven to work well, it is technology-enabled using our preciseCONTRACT^TM system. (Top)

We assess the existing process and technology, then design a process and enabling technology solution that makes sense for the team and meets the needs of the organization. Contracting teams, stakeholders and customers will benefit from significant improvements in:

• Task management and productivity reporting – Pushes task assignments and notifications to team members and stakeholders and logs task completion for real-time reporting of cycle time and productivity, increasing transparency and accountability. Built-in validation tools eliminate incomplete requests, pushing more of the responsibility for gathering initial offer information back to the sales team. The metrics dashboard provides management with a single location for the performance and operational metrics required to maximize efficiency.
• Pricing and proposed offer calculations – The system compares the approved pricing matrix with account data to auto-generate pricing options within guidelines. Any proposed pricing submitted by an Account Executive that is outside of approved pricing guidelines is flagged. The system also tracks the number of offers that are escalated to the Pricing Committee and allows the team to set a target for maximum number of offers that should be escalated in a given timeframe and monitor progress against that target.
• Contract compliance monitoring – The system compares contract terms with customer sales data over a given timeframe to measure contract compliance. Notifications for out-of-compliance contracts are routed to relevant roles and follow up tasks are assigned. In addition, the search function allows the team to quickly verify contract status for a submitted claim’s time period to protect against erroneous and fraudulent rebate claims.
• Contract data and document maintenance – All documents, analyses, data and correspondence related to the development and administration of the contract can be stored in the system. Access to records is controlled through role-based security.
• Workload balancing – The system provides reporting and analysis for managers to track workload at the team and individual level. Number of completed tasks, time to complete and other metrics can be monitored to balance workloads and optimize the workflow through the group.
• Sales force visibility – The system identifies expiring contracts and begins sending reminders to Account Executives early, preventing the urgent, last-minute requests made to the Offer Development team just before expiration. Visibility into the status of contracts at the Account Executive level helps to hold this group accountable for their part in the contracting process.

In addition to addressing and bridging the process gaps left by existing systems, preciseCONTRACT^TM can be configured to manage all portions of the contracting workflow. The system is easy to implement, simple to learn and scalable to accommodate future business growth and process changes. Elements that are unique to specific organization such as branding and custom reporting can be configured and deployed with ease.