How can you improve your organization's contract management and monitoring processes?

2 Implement a contract lifecycle management system

A contract lifecycle management (CLM) system is a software tool that helps you manage and monitor your contracts throughout their stages, from initiation to termination. A CLM system can help you automate, streamline, and standardize your contract processes, such as drafting, reviewing, approving, executing, storing, and renewing contracts. It can also help you track and report on your contract performance, compliance, and risks, as well as provide alerts and notifications for important events or issues. By implementing a CLM system, you can improve your efficiency, accuracy, and visibility of your contracts.

3 Conduct regular reviews and audits

One of the best ways to improve your contract management and monitoring processes is to conduct regular reviews and audits of your contracts. Reviews are periodic assessments of your contract performance, compliance, and risks, based on your predefined objectives and KPIs. Audits are more in-depth evaluations of your contract processes, documents, and data, based on your internal or external standards and regulations. By conducting reviews and audits, you can identify and address any gaps, issues, or opportunities for improvement in your contracts.

4 Communicate and collaborate with your suppliers

Another key factor for improving your contract management and monitoring processes is to communicate and collaborate with your suppliers. Communication is the exchange of information, feedback, and expectations between you and your suppliers, through various channels and methods, such as meetings, emails, phone calls, or surveys. Collaboration is the joint effort, coordination, and problem-solving between you and your suppliers, through various tools and techniques, such as workshops, dashboards, or action plans. By communicating and collaborating with your suppliers, you can build trust, transparency, and partnership in your contracts.

5 Manage changes and variations

Contracts are not static documents that remain unchanged throughout their duration. Contracts may need to be changed or varied due to various reasons, such as changing business needs, market conditions, supplier performance, or customer demands. Therefore, you need to have a robust process for managing changes and variations in your contracts, that ensures that they are properly documented, approved, communicated, and implemented. You also need to have a clear process for resolving any disputes or conflicts that may arise from changes or variations in your contracts.

6 Learn and improve

The final step for improving your contract management and monitoring processes is to learn and improve from your experiences. This means collecting and analyzing data and feedback from your contract activities, such as reviews, audits, communication, collaboration, changes, and variations. You also need to compare your actual results with your expected results, and identify any gaps, issues, or opportunities for improvement. Based on your findings, you need to implement corrective or preventive actions, or best practices, that can enhance your contract performance, compliance, and risks. You also need to share your lessons learned and recommendations with your stakeholders, and update your contract processes, documents, and data accordingly.

7 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?