Dear David,
The performance of the Contract Manager role and the performance of the Contract Management Process in general is one of our key points in each one of our recent IACCM anual conferences and networking events, as the matter takes us to the question: "How should we measure and demonstrate success?"
Indeed, while transactional performance is clearly important, it rarely offers the insights that we need, if we are to raise our status and our contribution.
Our thinking and our measurements must start to focus on driving benefits at a portfolio level and relate directly to achieving the strategic goals of our business.
Value will be delivered through a process based view, through monitoring the outcomes of what we do, through generating measured innovation and continuous improvement.
This depends upon capturing and analysing performance data, through challenging established rules and procedures, through inspiring the new models and approaches we have discussed this week. And it also depends on courage - developing leadership and influencing skills.
Keep in mind one of IACCM survey findings: 'Contract Management is one of the least automated processes... and this results in inefficiency and weaknesses in PERFORMANCE oversight, as well as in the absence of management reporting and information'. Here we value the importance of Contract Management Automation and that´s why we are focused on this topic in recent Ask the Expert sessions and in our future events (Australasia and The Americas conferences).
Best regards,
Pablo Cilotta

Dear David, have you thought about listing out every task that contact managers are responsible for in your corporation then, assigning a numerical value to each task. Then, assigning a score to each task to analyse and create a quantified report on your overall contract management performance?

e.g. you mentioned governance, negotiation, change process as a few of the tasks. Perhaps you could write these tasks in a spreadsheet and assign values like so:

Total Value = 100

Governance - 30
Negotiation - 20
Change Process - 10
Deliverables Tracking - 10
Obligations Tracking - 10
Exit Management - 20

Then, for each contract manager, you could assess their performance based on a score. Score could be for example, between 1 and 10.

e.g.

Score Values = 1 through 10

Performance Assessment for: Joe Smith (Sr. Contract Manager) for Q1

Governance - 30 - 8
Negotiation - 20 - 6
Change Process - 10 - 9
Deliverables Tracking - 10 - 9.5
Obligations Tracking - 10 - 7
Exit Management - 20 - 9

You could average each of the score values and weigh it against how important each of the tasks are (based on their numerical value). From a high level point of view, based on these numbers, you could create a percentage of "contract management performance efficiency" per quarter/month/week/day for each of your contract managers.

This is just one idea. As full disclosure, I work with a contract management software vendor where we help our clients effectively manage their contracts online. We don't have this particular feature built out on our software yet, but would be open to discussing further and building it our for you in our Analytics & Reporting function, if you'd be interested.

Feel free to contact me directly at nazar.abdul@sysintellects.com

Hope the above ideas help!

The less standardization you have on your services the greater the difficulty will be in establishing useful performance metrics that span your portfolio. For example, a BPO contract or a customer IT services agreement will have many specific considerations that can lengthen the time of negotiation and result in contracts that vary substantially from other contracts in the same portfolio.

There are a few disadvantages from the pass-through approach. First, the party bearing the cost is not in direct negotiation with the source of the cost. As such, some costs that might be more aggressively addressed are not fully addressed. The discussions around how to best manage and mitigate the costs will exclude the party who is ultimately most interested and invested in those costs. As such, there is seldom much innovation or break-through thinking generated in these discussions.

There are other disadvantages arising under pass-through approaches related to the contractual terms, which also impact costs.

That's what SI's do. You go to an SI to be a one-stop shop. It is inevitable that he wont be able to do it all himself so much will be subcontracted. Where this is done at zero margin (!) we call it pass through. It does make me wonder why an SI would want the admin and risk burden of such a large pass through without any reward and, I agree with Anonymous that you are distanced from the party actually completing the work, so you don't have direct control over half of your project.

Hire a good PM and split the SI contract into two and deal direct with both.

Not sure of the size of your proposed project nor of your organization. I just finished leading negotiation of a large, multi-year ERP implementation project that will span several countries and be vital to our company's future. We have a single SI who has the resources to complete the work themselves (we reserved the right to review and approve any proposed subcontractor/subcontractor resources prior to their use). Not sure why you have an SI that wants to, if I understand correctly, use one or more subcontractors to perform a significant portion of the work.

If you are using a smaller Systems Integrator, then I would want to make sure that the SI is responsible for consistency in how the work is performed and that consistent methodology is used; and that ultimately the SI is FULLY responsible for the work delivered. Depending on the size of the ERP work and your organization, you may want to hire a Project Management team or at least Project Manager to help oversee the timely completion of the work.

As to you question about whether or not the project is worth executing - without knowing the business case, the cost and understanding the risks, I'm not sure anyone can answer that, but I would be cautious with such a large percentage being subcontracted.

Communications is a repeated source of success or failure in contract management (as with so many other pursuits!). Unfortunately, communications are treated as a step or action item. Successful contract management programs often cite their sustainable communication strategy, and not merely an occasional tactic, as the key driver of their success.

It would be interesting to see whether any members have examples of sustainable communication strategies that they can share across the IACCM membership base.

I've noticed generally that younger, less mature organizations have a less enthusiastic view of the contract management function, whereas a large, mature organization usually has realized at some point that it is essential. To a certain extent, I think that we in legal or contract management roles are unreasonable if we expect that others will really "get" what we do. Normally they just want answers or results. But time and time again I've seen the greatest successes come in situations where the legal/contracts function sits down and works directly with the business leads as partners. Once the business leads feel supported, they will become evangelists, that is, provided that the support we give is creative, responsive, and timely.

Contract Management needs to be driven as strategic initiative, with top down approach to see success. Integrating the activities of contract management with existing quality audit process and project execution norms may give the required boost or importance. Continuous improvement with revision in tools and checklists, creating extensions of contract management process within the stakeholders like sales and operations, by providing enough ammunition through trainings and continuous dialogue to resolve issues. Management attention and involvement in the process can be increased by helping in provisioning of visual metrics depicting risk analysis, risk profiling without consuming the precious hours.

I would like to reply (after two years :)) to the second comment here below which starts with a great observation on the effect on maturity of organisations on how they perceive contract management bu then states that "Normally they just want answers or results. But time and time again I've seen the greatest successes come in situations where the legal/contracts function sits down and works directly with the business leads as partners. Once the business leads feel supported, they will become evangelists, that is, provided that the support we give is creative, responsive, and timely."

Actually my view is that if this would be sales-side contract management this exactly describes the way less mature organisations look at contract management. Contract management 'only' as supporting function and not as performance monitor, 'checks and balances' of sales and delivery, profit maximizer and risk reducer which goes much further then working together with other functions but actually keeping them on track.

In my team its cross functional; procurement, finance, project management. Whoever the beneficial user is may the best person to advise if the requirement is being delivered to time, quality etc. Suggest you might want to think about creating a cross function contract management team.

Dear Ted, it pretty much depends on your organisational ambition & objectives with the Contract Management function. In my oppinion many organisations don't realize the potential (strategic advantages and benefits) of Commercial Excellence - if the organisational understanding & culture around Contracts & Commercials are at a low maturity level you can see Contract Management placed as a sub-function in eg. Legal or Finance (being a somewhat defensive approach), while the few org. (as I know it) who realize the potentials are placing it higher in the organisation, some even spilt it out to a stand-alone veritical (making sure that the context of being a "support function" is embedded, implemented & maintained) of course balanced with the organisations overall aspiration, purpose and "nature". BR Ole

In our organization, Contract management resides within the business; however Supply chain (Finance) own the process. Over the last 5 years we have been fully integrating Category Management and as a result putting in more strategic, long term agreements with an overview to the category rather than the need. Putting in such a strategic shift in business has saved us millions in our new contracts by looking at all the driving forces behind the need. Now that we have a robust Category Management program in place which covers 80% of our spend - we need to ensure that a enterprise wide practice is in place to make sure we are getting what we need, when we need it and are paying the right price otherwise the contract is simply a piece of paper. That is why Supply chain owns the process but the business is responsible for managing the work and providing the required resources to do so.

Hi Ted

In my company the contracts team sits in Operations as the contracts they manager supports our deliverable pipeline. However, we have close links with our legal team and procurement sits in Finance. Looking at some of the replies it seems there doesn't seem to be any best practice.

Cheers

Jan

Here are a couple that I just quickly came up with:

1. Can you recall the last time that you engaged with our team. Was it;
a) In the past 7 days
b) In the past 4 weeks
c) In the past 3-6 months
d) More than 12 months ago
c) Who is this?

2. When you engaged with our team, did you know the name of the person you were contacting?
a) No, I had to look someone up using either the contract, website, intranet, LinkedIn
b) Vaguely, I have spoken to a few different people in the course of business
c) Yes, I have regular communications with a consistent point of contact

Dear Daniel - In my view any legal training/education will help you going forward and demonstrate to a new employeer that you have legal competencies in place.

If I was hiring my interest in you being such a strong technical profile would increase if you had legal merits to show.

Hope this was of some help !

/Ole

Daniel - I recommend you go for it. However, I have two perspectives on this based on experience; and one personal perspective that underlies my decision to take the same course of action you're contemplating. I worked as a US Federal Contracting Officer for almost ten years - the first seven before I attended/completed law school. Subsequently, I have worked in the private sector including large, global agreements in the IT industry.

Experience perspective 1: Some attorneys and paralegals felt threatened in some manner because I had a law degree. Their perspective is that they are "legal" and I should only be dealing with commercial matters, leaving the "legal" issues to them. I've actually heard some in legal oppose the hiring of Contract Management professionals who also possess a law degree. Finally, I also had at least one manager who apparently felt threatened that subordinates (I and five other Contract Managers) had law degrees from colleges and universities from around the world and had told me that he would not agree to hire an "attorney" for a role I had on my team.

Experience perspective 2: Other attorneys and paralegals I have worked with were more self-confident and not threatened by the fact I had a law degree and was licensed to practice law. Instead, we worked together to leverage my legal knowledge/skills to help manage their time. I would escalate issues and have regular touch-point meeting so that they were informed as to ongoing issues and permit us to collaborate and discuss difficult legal/contractual issues. It also gave me more flexibility to negotiate agreements that protected the legal and business interests of the party I worked for without having to go back to "mommy/daddy" each time an issue arose in the negotiations. At the same time, we also had a working knowledge of the limits of my authority and a good working relationship where I could quickly escalate and propose a solution for them to consider and ask questions about - something we called the "4Cs", ("Communicate, Collaborate, Consult and Crosscheck"). I had learned this from a wonderful attorney who had been the general counsel where I had once worked.

Personal perspective: I decided to go to law school because as a US Government Contracting Officer I had to regularly discuss issues with our attorneys. Not having a sound understanding of the broad areas of the law that applied (not just contracts) sometimes caused me confusion when the attorney would try to explain something - particularly when it ultimately impacted the contract or the enforceability of a provision in the contract. I decided to go to law school to gain a better understanding. It resulted in me have a much deeper understanding of contract principles that must be applied and of the concepts we all rely on (whether or not we realize it) when we draft, negotiate, operationalize and enforce our contracts. I recommend you go for it.

Hi Daniel,

If you can afford the time & cost for the legal degree (LLB or JD)- then will be worth considering that.

From my personal experience, some sort of Commercial/ Contracts/ Business law certifications or diploma will give the required knowledge and upper edge for the jobs.

Regards,
Gaurav Seth

Hi Daniel, I don't believe a law degree is necessary. It depends on the role.

I am legally qualified and I echo Mark's comments. I find that I am better able to articulate the risk I see with my legal friends.

The main thing is do you want to do it? A law degree will give you additional skill such a negotiation etc. It will also give you confidence in the law around contract law, construction, tort and tax.

But a law degree will also give you so much detail on those areas that you won't need all in your role.

Hi Daniel,

I was also a Commercial Manager at GE for approx. 4 years and with the company 11 years. Since my redundancy just over a year ago, I have been trying to find a like-for-like Commercial Operations function like we had at GE but a number of Commercial Manager roles sit either in the Finance function or the Legal function, not as their own Commercial Operations function.

I'm contemplating doing a Juris Doctor to gain legal qualifications on top of my BBus and MBA Exec as I don't want to go down a CA/CPA path. Otherwise I am exploring the IACCM certification.


Hope it all goes well for you with the decision,
Tania

Depends on how your organization is structured but typically no. In fact there is a good argument that they should not be lawyers as that role has different specialties.

Hi. This is an exciting endeavor in organizational design and development ... congratulations. Below are my recommendations, perhaps just to get you started:

1) Identify [or refer] to your Enterprise-wide strategic directives or initiatives (typically, for the next 3-5 years or sometimes longer). Also, identify what is your organization's (1) mission or vision statement and (2) core values. You may also want to look at your annual report to get some sense of your leadership's plan for the next year or so.
2)Once you have 'identified who [you] are as an organization ....' I would then look at the business unit's [that is, your contracts department] very own value proposition that aligns with the organization's vision/mission statement, values, etc. If you do not have this 'cultural' framework in place then I would simply [again] align the contract department's short-term, performance goals (for the year or the next couple of years) with that of your organization's business/strategic goals. (check out www.shrm.org)
3) Remember also that your contract department's short-term, performance goals must be measurable (apply KPI's) and should result in meeting or ultimately contributing to the overall business.
4) You may want to take a deeper dive into your contract department's (i) processes/tools; (ii) systems (technology); (iii) job roles; (iv) critical behaviors/mindset; performance review (skills) -- and assess their impact on or degree of relevance in reaching your contract department's performance goals. (check out IACCM's resource library page)
5) Next, I would look at the purpose of the need for a marketing strategy with emphasis on employee-branding. Ask questions like (i) why the need for this strategy; (ii) why now; and (iii) what are the risks of not changing or implementing this strategy. For example, you want to increase your collaboration with the other business units and enhance Customer Experience (which is typically a strategic directive coming from the top management)
6) Then, I would look at developing a communications plan - identify resources within your company that would be able to support your marketing or 'employee-branding' branding initiative. I focus on employee-branding first because any organization change starts at the employee level. I am applying Prosci's tenet - that is, 'organizations don't change; employees do.' (see also www.prosci.com)
7) When developing a communication plan intended for an enterprise-wide audience, focus on the right audience; with the right message; at the right time; with the right channel; and by the right sender.

Lastly, when looking for benchmark data, I would take into consideration any company-wide survey results (whether aimed at Engagement, Cultural competency, Rewards, Best places to work, etc.) They are valuable indicators on your organization/contract department's current state and what the future state should look like - that challenge is to bridging the gap or managing the transition phase.

I hope this is of help.

Best of luck,
RM

Hi I would agree with all that Rose has said and would add, consider you stakeholders needs right now. You may already have a relationship with your stakeholders or your sourcing and/or contract team would have. What do they need? Are they look for innovation in their suppliers? Let them know if you are doing this. Let them know if you are doing social procurement, if that is what they care about. Try not to lead with cost savings that is usually one of the things that are important to your stakeholders but not the key. Are you helping resolve some key problems eg Relationship issues with your supplier, Reliance risk? Key items on my stakeholders agendas are supplier reliance, key man risk with suppliers, innovation project with external vendors.

Hi , You are firstly on the right tract on confirming what your identity is , ( importantly internally and externally ) and what your objective of your branding will be.

The objectives and stakeholder types you want to engage / market yourself to will help you formalise the "storyboard" and messages you want to communicate / transmit.

Inclusive of this you should adopt a variant of human centred design in understanding what your stakeholders want from you and importantly survey the voice of the customer of how they current perceive you.

Once you have this you can then look to design a team brand which not only looks to brand what you want to communicate and advertise but also make it tuned in to what your stakeholders are looking for based upon a gap analysis of where you are currently in branding and where you want to get to.

Good luck on your endeavours, am sure you will make it a success

Regards

MD