Hi Mohammed,

Great question. You have certainly come to the right place for some expert advice. I hope others jump in as well. You can find an array of resources at your fingertips (including case studies).. if you go into the resource library (Resources > Resource Library) and search by category = Negotiation. I would particularly recommend:

IACCM Dubai Member Meeting April 2019 Presentations
Ask The Expert: Negotiating and Contracting in the Middle East
The Power of Intent Workshop - IACCM APAC Conference 2019
Do Procurement practices cause dishonesty?
Negotiating in a time of coronavirus
In Negotiations, Givers Are Smarter Than Takers

In addition, you may wish to consider our new Managing Contracts Virtually training program (which is currently included as a member benefit) .. Training > Managing Contracts Virtually.

If you need help accessing any of these materials, please contact me at info@iaccm.com.

Regards, Paul

Good evening Abdullah - I'll contribute an observation on the first one. Perhaps others who have been doing contract management and procurement for longer than me might have a different view, or say it more eloquently, but here goes....

Purchasing is a subset of procurement. It is the giving effect to a lot of the procurement work that you've done earlier (i.e. establishing what you want, identifying suppliers etc).

That said, I think that you can purchase without doing procurement, and in fact, I'd go so far as to say that you can even get the same outcome.

However, only by procurement can you demonstrate that you've got the right outcome. If you only purchase, and don't understand your needs, identify the market and consider the offerings against your needs, you can't demonstrate that you've got the best outcome for the business.

And this is where I think we as a group can demonstrate our worth to the business. We can show with procurement the outcomes that we've avoided (goods not matching requirements, getting better pricing outcomes, repetitional damage etc) by running a fair and robust process ensures that the business is better off.

On many occasions I've seen my team has moved someone from their initial fixed ideas into better outcomes by taking the time to show them what's possible and what good looks like. Do that enough times, and you have more and more allies in the business to encourage others to use your services.

Regards


Darren

Hi, Abdullah,

Check out this article in the IACCM Library, 'Procurement' and 'Purchasing' Are Different:
www.iaccm.com/resources/

Having looked at this topic, there is actually already a lot written on the question of the difference between purchasing and procurement. As they observe, for the typical person they are probably the same, but apparently 'the experts' in procurement know the difference! Though once you start reading, there is plenty of contradiction...

When it comes to Supply Management, it is yet another variant and clear as mud whether it is actually different from Procurement. Supply Chain Management is certainly a more holistic activity of which procurement is part, but that's about all you can really deduce.

The net is, these terms are used with a high degree of variability and tend to mean whatever anyone wants them to mean; the only common factor is that they are all associated with the act of buying!

Tim Cummins

Hi Abdullah

Years ago Procurement and Purchasing were often used interchangeability. These days they have very different meanings. Procurement refers to the end-to-end activities from strategic category management, through to the operational analytics of spend and performance, to the tactical buying and sourcing activities which can happen in-house or in shared services.

As the Procurement function has 'grown up'it has become far more strategic, so although the term Procurement refers to all the activities conducted by the function, it also implies more strategic perspectives. The scope is also overlapping with other related functions like Finance (Accounts Payable as part of the purchase to pay process) and supply chain (Supply Planning, product innovation and supplier performance management). The increasing focus on digital in Procurement is also seeing more collaboration with other functions for example, RPA (Robotic Process Automation) and machine learning, process automation and contract management, and predictive analytics.

Purchasing is clearly the administrative activity of raising a purchase order, managing the goods/service receipt notice and approving to pay. More advanced companies use on-line catalogues to support this along with automated workflow routing and defined delegations of authority. Put simply, Purchasing includes the tactical purchase and approval activities to support buying.

When we speak about supply chain today, we tend to talk about a value chain. Some organizations are now including supply chain and Procurement in one organization given the overlaps, but predominantly they continue to be separate, but related functions.

Supply chain will include demand planning and forecasting, distribution planning, warehousing and logistics, manufacturing (which may also be a separate function), supply planning and often new product development.

Where Procurement gets involved most is in supply planning and supplier performance management, for instance, using contracts to enforce performance, and collaborating with supply chain and marketing for product and service innovation by tracking supply markets and innovations.

Conceptually, the Procurement function has shifted from managing costs to providing value. Using advanced analytics of COGS and SG&A data, digital tools and advanced supplier market research, the function is working far more collaboratively with other functions. As business cadence increases, functions are becoming more linked and lines between which function does what is blurring.

Hope this helps.

In addition to particular responses from other members who may have noticed such a potential decline in remuneration, if any, I would encourage the poster of this forum entry to regularly check IACCM annual salary review. Please refer to our IACCM library, by clicking on www.iaccm.com/resources/contract-management-resources/

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.

Hello Ayyub, I can only speak to how the titles you list up above are being used in North America, and only given my experience so far. Contracts Manager and Contracts Specialist are sometimes used by companies interchangeable, i.e. their job profile are quite often identical. The Contracts Administrator supports the Contracts Manager in his/her role and therefore is below Contracts Manager. I'm not familiar with the title Contracts Engineer and I have not seen this title or profile in job postings in the US and in Canada.

Hope this helps.

There is no hard written rules, but some are the tips and this is again based on your organisation size, business and structure;

Contracts Manager - Who processes exceptional skills and knowledge about various types of contracts, starting from pre-qualification of vendors, tender exercise, contract award, administration and contract close-outs, audit queries, and able to supervise, coach and advise the management and his staff, monitor good governance and compliances.

Contract Administrator - can be an assistant to contracts manager or post contract administrator, invoice processing, issuing call-off and variation orders, documentation, maintaining correspondences.

Contracts Engineer - ideally an engineer, who has exceptional skills to develop tendering and contracting activities and can negotiate, interpret the scope and changes, can develop pricing strategies and formulas, peer reviews, planning and costing knowledge as well as effectively interface with end-users etc and etc,

Contracts Specialist - can be a category specialist such as drilling, production and maintenance, vessel chartering etc and etc,

I can understand contractor reluctance and potential difficulty. Do you allow contractors to share details of their contracts with you?

In my view, best practices are to ask specific ques tigons regarding contractor's performance under contracts, focusing on areas you care about. You might also require references. In both cases, you might make clear that you are depending on these representations.

The contractors are right to push back on your request for obvious legal reasons. I'll suggest that you ask them for references from their past and present projects and get in touch with those references that are of interest to you in order to confirm the contractor's performance on the projects

There is an organization in Alberta Canada called Construction Owners Association of Alberta. I am a co-chair of the Contracts Committee and we have a number of best practices under our committee and are developing several more (like a standard format for a EPC scope of work).
One of our best practices is for Contractor Prequalification. I think you will find it of some help to you. the link is www.coaa.ab.ca/
Let me know what you think.

I have to agree with the post that talks to requiring past performance as well as reference checking. As a sidebar, if you are in the process of pre-qualifying a contractor how well defined can the period and scope be? There are times in my current role where we are in the pre-qual stage and know nothing more than a rough order of magnitude and have a rough period of performance. Sometimes these are not nailed down until 50% CD or later.

It depends on the objective of your pre-qual process. For our company, pre-qual only identifies if a prospective bidder should/should not receive an RFP across just 5 key risk areas (safety, finance, quality, technical, legal. Suppliers answer either yes/no or provide a number to each pre-qual question. We then allow these suppliers to attach any documents they believe strengthens or clarifies their answers. We do not force them to provide confidential contract info to us at this time. That might come later in either the RFP or negotiations.

If you are requesting specific contract sections from your bidders, you are most likely doing much more than pre-qualifying them. Before asking the supplier to provide contract sections, you should discuss this type of request with your legal counsel and counsel of the country in which the supplier resides.

From my experience, we have been asking contractors to provide contract completion letter or reference letter from previously completed jobs. Experience letter from similar industry are scored higher than others. Some smart contractors take good reference letters from their satisfied clients and use it freely for pre-qualification, which same time helps the project owners in their pre qualification process.

Hi Khalid,
As the vendor I would push back as already mentioned by other contributors here. Asking for references is fine, asking for value of contracts delivered to check whether a vendor has a capacity, skills, experience is also acceptable. Vendor's contracts and even customer's portfolio is simply treated as a trade secret. Unless a customer provides the vendor with references the contract very often prohibits a disclosure that the deal was done.
Regards,
Piotr