Archive for the ‘Contract Management’ tag
NCMA World Congress 2010
We recently arrived back in Houston from the NCMA World Congress held in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Part of me wishes I could report that Pete and I played on the beach all day and came back with beautiful tans, but instead of skipping the conference and getting a tan, Pete and I spent time at NCMA talking with some very interesting people and learning about the challenges of their jobs.
The majority of the people attending the conference were in procurement, and most worked in government, therefore they had a lot in common. We noted several common challenges among the people we talked to: Read the rest of this entry »
The Enterprise Cloud ..by Mike Palmer
Cloud Computing is a viable module for Enterprise Level Business Applications, and Prodagio has been deploying in this manner for years. Now, cloud computing is becoming more mainstream with our clients for a three primary reasons. It is technically viable, economically advantageous, and (to paraphrase Senator Stuart Smalley – AKA Al Franken) doggone it, users like it.
Many of the concepts behind cloud computing have been around for years. For instance, the idea of a thin-client driven by services on a remote virtual machine dates back to the mainframe era. (Funny, now we are back where we started). Internet performance and security have matured enough to make web-based cloud computing a viable enterprise platform. Each cloud offering has the same pattern of light, user-friendly interfaces pointing to an array of high-value services. As companies such as Salesforce.com and Amazon continue to demonstrate successes with this model, IT decision-maker acceptance is more widespread.
Today’s economic environment has put the spotlight on overall business spending. Cloud computing provides a “pay as you go” model which helps to reduce or eliminate capital expenditures and high-cost software licensing. Cloud applications are able to offer this model because the technological underpinnings at the server level are architected for easy and dynamic scalability. When you need more bandwidth or computational power, it’s just a phone-call or email away and the results are instantaneous.
Lastly, the cloud model is more likely to provide the most productive interface for the latest generation of workers. It offers more flexibility of workspace and time; workers can log in from anywhere, anytime to perform tasks. That, combined with a rich user interface, makes for an easy to use solution that most mimics the collaborative and social nature of computing at which they are so adept.
Mike
Contract management and insurance coverage are not strange bedfellows
In ever-growing numbers, contracts contain language impacting the relationship between a contracting party and an insurance carrier. Contracts may include a variety of new insurance based terms that require:
- Coverage against a certain kind of loss
- Policy limits at or above specified levels
- That a party be added as an additional insured under another party’s policy
Proof that these requirements have been satisfied may be an essential condition of the contract, without which it has no binding effects at all.
Ensuring adherence to these insurance requirements presents a challenge that absolutely must be met. Where an insurance requirement is not satisfied, the organization can be exposed to liability for something it had believed to be a covered risk. Where an event such as a mass tort, environmental contamination or injury occurs, the attendant loss can be significant and even catastrophic.Risk rises exponentially without visibility into the contracts.For organizations handling a large number of contracts, the only means to ensure that insurance requirements are satisfied (and to avoid the significant loss) is systemic contract management deployed on an enterprise-wide scale.
So, how is this risk managed across the enterprise? By tools featuring obligation monitoring and linkage with related documents. These features are critical in managing the contract lifecycle.Obligations Tracking enables 360-degree visibility into every contract requirement across the organization. Automatic reminders will email staff months before obligations are due. Linkage among two or more contracts promotes awareness of change in not only one, but all connected bargain terms. This connection ensures that you can sync your committed obligations with the insurance requirements. Prodagio Contracts contains what is necessary to the overcome the challenges that face corporate legal groups.
If you in the are in the Austin area, check out the Contracts Seminar. We will be touching on these topics.
IAPP Annual Field Report
Field reports from IAPP have been full of interesting trends and buzz. The edgy and dark side of the conference is most participants feel the pressure to innovate or be outsourced. From our perspective, we have built the right products for managers to innovate and transform AP into a strategic financial management tool, instead of a commodity to be outsourced. Here is a quick recap of the show and how our products can help AP to capitalize on current trends:
- Supplier Interaction – We think this awareness is more that timely. We are getting more interest in our Prodagio VSS product – Vendor Self Service. A few of our customers are starting to view themselves as customer service centers or at least are looking to that industry for the best practices on how to effectivley manage vendors in real-time. The solution logic is strong – push the responsibility for invoice entry out to your suppliers. This increases accuracy and lowers operating cost, but more importantly creates a automated vehicle to engage in Dynamic Supplier Management.
- Linking Contracts with AP and Procurement - Another trend is linking AP with contracts. Prodagio has long seen this linkage in contracts and is the reason behind our investment in Prodagio Contracts.
- Scanning or e-Invoicing – Sounds like the current trend is to do one or the other, but not both because of the time and cost involved. We built our Entry Channel Rules technology to handle transactions from any source so our customers are not limited by invoice ingestion technologies.
- Dynamic Supplier Management – As we discussed in our webcast “An invoice is a demand on your cash” in February, the huge opportunity exists for companies to create a real-time linkage between AP and cash Management. Prodagio Analytics makes identifying these opportunities easy and Prodagio AP allows you to take immediate action.
More to come.
User Tips – Reminders vs Obligations in Prodagio Case Management and Prodagio Contracts Management
Reminders and Obligations are task items that are frequently used in both Prodagio Contracts and Prodagio Case Management. Even though both Reminders and Obligations send emails and both can be viewed as items in the My Tasks View, Reminders and Obligations each serve a different functional purpose.
A Reminder is an informal notice that requires no contractual or legal action, where an Obligation on the other hand is a notice that does require some kind of contractual or legal action.
The following list compares the functional similarities and differences between Reminders and Obligations.
Reminders
• Include Automated Reminders (set up by a BA).
• Priority can not be set.
• Due Date is not required.
• Can not be part of a series.
• Notification date specifies when an email notification will be sent.
• Can be set to recur weekly, bi-weekly, semi-monthly, monthly, quarterly, semi-annually, or annually.
• Predefined action can be selected from a drop-down selection list.
• Special instructions can be added.
• Comments can be added only when closing a reminder.
• Esignature is not required to close.
• Status categories include Scheduled, Open, and Completed.
• E-mail sent to each recipient or group with action named in the subject line.
• Can be added to Outlook Calendar.
• Instructions, Comments, and Task and Dashboard link included in e-mail.
Obligations
• Include both Financial and Non-Financial Obligations.
• Priority of high is automatically set.
• Due Date is required.
• Can be part of a series.
• Notification date specifies when an email notification will be sent.
• Can be set to recur weekly, bi-weekly, semi-monthly, monthly, quarterly, semi-annually, or annually.
• Predefined action not available.
• Special instructions can be added.
• Comments can be added when creating a new obligation.
• Esignature is required to close.
• Status categories include Scheduled, Open, Completed, and Deleted.
• E-mail sent to each recipient or group.
• Can be added to Outlook Calendar.
• Instructions, Comments, and Task and Dashboard link included in e-mail.