Being a contract manager is hard enough. A merger or acquisition adds difficult and often overwhelming challenges. Your company is about to inherit hundreds, possibly thousands, of new contracts virtually overnight. Some are up for renewal. Others include critical features that must be addressed quickly. A few will require immediate attention or they will put the business at risk.
The consequences
As a contract manager, you need to quickly assess the situation. Here are some of the challenges you face on the customer side:
- Delayed or missed customer invoices
- Lapses from subscription discount rates to full price
- Delays or interruptions in customer service
- Missed opportunities to renew or upsell contracts
- Decreased customer satisfaction and actual lost sales
And on the vendor side, here are additional challenges:
- Accidental renewal of contracts or unneeded services
- Duplication of vendor services
- Missed opportunities to renegotiate terms
- Suspension of vendor services due to late or missed payments
The cure
To avoid these problems and get a handle on all those new contracts, you need a contract management system that provides these core functions:
- System up and running in less than 24 hours
- Contract coding services available to rapidly prepare documents for analysts
- A centralized storage location
- Consistent tagging of contract data
- Scalable, intuitive reporting, notification and alerting capabilities
To help you assess the urgency of your situation and build a business case for a new system, Merrill Corporation has created a complimentary white paper: Urgent problems requiring contract management solutions: Five key needs to get executive attention.
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