Contract Management Solution for Supply Chain Group

Electronically capture and manage contracts

The Customer is a leader in professional services, providing food services, facilities management, and uniform and career apparel to health care institutions, universities and school districts, stadiums and arenas, and businesses around the world. In FORTUNE magazine's 2009 list of "World's Most Admired Companies," Customer was ranked number one in its industry. Since 1998, it has consistently ranked as one of the top three most admired companies in its industry. The Customer has approximately 260,000 employees serving clients in 22 countries and provides services in nearly every industry, including:

• Business and Industry
• Colleges and Universities
• Healthcare
• Sports and Entertainment
• School Districts
• Parks and Resorts
• Correctional Institutions
• Conference Centers
• Convention Centers
• Cultural Attractions
• Public Safety
• Senior Living

Client challenge

The Supply Chain group for the Customer authorizes vendors and suppliers for use by the Customer’s many profit centers. Throughout the authorization process, the group will generate, capture and keep important legal documentation that must be kept in reference of the process and the eventual contract with the supplier. Examples of the documentation that is part of the authorization process includes vendor warranties, certificates of liability insurance, contracts, exhibits of product information, recall procedures, and pricing.

Prior to the implementation of the Contract Management system, the Supply Chain Group kept these records in “hard copy” and on a network share after being scanned to an electronic image. It had difficulty identifying and easily accessing the pertinent information. Supply Chain Management sought to undertake the project to create a Contract Management System that would store the above information in an easily accessible manner to provide better service and support to its clients, customers and vendors. The system also had to generate automated notifications of contract renewals, approaching expiration or missing documentation.

The Customer requested that the objectives and scope of the effort would:

• Implement the business process, functional, and technical requirements identified during the project.
• Identify and access all captured documentation related to contracts for specific vendors.
• Move away from manual and paper-based processes.
• Reduce redundancy in data gathering effort and processing.
• Provide a solution that can be leveraged for growth.

Attevo solution

Through the course of the project, business drivers and goals that the Supply Chain group wanted to achieve were identified in the requirements gathering sessions. A number of the business drivers called for automating the method that they followed to track vendors, contracts and documents that were associated with their vendors. As a result, Attevo proposed and developed a Contract Management System for the Customer using an Open Text Document Management (“DM”) and Business Intelligence (“BI”) platform.

The defining business drivers for the Contract Management System were:

• Need for an electronic repository and automated tracking for contracts and documents to improve:

      •Better handling of food safety issues
      •Monitor high risk purchase codes and categories
      •Monitor high risk vendors

• Need for security and access control for the data and documents to allow for varied privileges and restrictions across multiple groups and users. While the contracts and supporting documents originate in the Supply Chain group, other groups of users will need varying access throughout the life cycle of each contract. Other groups include legal, finance, distribution, and purchasing.
• Supply Chain needs to manage thousands of vendor and supplier relationships that are not managed or tracked in Legal.

 

As a result of the requirements gathering and design sessions, the solution included the following:

• The Supply Chain group had a large amount of electronic and hard copy data and documents that needed to be captured and stored into the new system.
• Loading of data and documents was to be manual and automated where possible to ensure loading of quality information into the new system.
• The Contract Management database was set up to store and manage key metadata identifying both vendors and documents.
• Documents will include PDF, TIFF, Word and Excel application types.
• Notification and business process will be part of the solution to manage rules of the contract system.
• Reporting of exceptions will help the Supply Chain group to monitor vendors that are:

     •Authorized to do business with Customer
     •Current with a contract and complete set of required documentation
     •Monitor high risk vendors

• Current in terms of not having any expired documents or contracts.
• Electronic folders will be created dynamically for each vendor to easily organize and store documentation related to each contract.

Results

Attevo worked with the Customer project team to design and develop a Contract Management System for the Supply Chain Group. The following is an update as to the results of the project as well as plans for future use and phases to extend the system:

• The Contract Management System was a first phase for the system that met the key success criteria identified by the Customer.
• The resulting system is in use by the Supply Chain group and the users are capturing and tracking contracts and supporting documents on a going forward basis.
• To extend the use and value of the new system, the Supply Chain group requested that a legacy Lotus Notes database be migrated into the new system. This legacy database was being used to manually keep metadata and contracts.
• Requests by other groups within the organization to access the system are being received. As news to the success and value of the Contract Management System spread through the Customer’s organization, other groups want to gain access to allow the tracking and automating of the full contract management process. The other groups include purchasing, distribution, finance and legal.
• Customer plans for a future phase of the system to include implementing Business Process Management (“BPM”) to automate the processes used to manage their contract management life cycle.

Type

Contract Management Solution

Geographic areas served

US and Canada

Client challenge

Implement a system to capture and manage contracts and related documents to help monitor and act on them over the life cycle of each contract.  The intent and goal was to improve performance on contracts, to minimize risk to the organization and to learn why they have success or failure in going after contract opportunities.

Attevo solution

Implemented a Contract Management Solution to address key business drivers identified by the Customer:

• Need an electronic DM system to help improve:

     •Better handling of Food Safety issues
     •Monitor high risk purchase codes and categories
     •Monitor high risk Vendors

• Need for security and access control by group and user.
• Need to manage thousands of vendor relationships.

Results

Designed and developed a Contract Management System for the Supply Chain Group

• Completed first phase to meet the key success criteria.
• Migrated contracts from legacy Lotus Notes database into new system.
• System is in use by the Supply Chain Group with the users capturing and tracking contracts and supporting documents.
• Planning for phase 2 to include business process management of the contract approval process.

Partner products used

Open Text eDOCS

• Document Management
• Business Intelligence

To speak with an Attevo consultant, please email us or telephone us at one of our office locations.

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