Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Contract lifecycle management as is processes hello. Thank you for joining us. This is what Counts, a podcast created by Trailblazer Consulting. Here we highlight proven solutions developed through our experience working with companies across various industries. We talk about how you can apply these solutions to your company. We share our experience solving information management challenges like creating and implementing your records or mention schedule, creating an asset data hierarchy, or helping with email management. This is Lee, and in this episode, Laura and I will talk about as is processes as opposed to two B processes or contract lifecycle management. That sounds like a lot of consulting. Speak with these as is and to be processes. So can you clean it up a little bit and tell us how important it really is to map out your as is process?
[00:00:55] Speaker B: So I was going to say, where are we on consulting bingo today? Because you win. Or maybe I win because I noted what you did. Anyway, when we're talking about process, a lot of people's eyes glaze over when you start talking about as is or to be processes, process modeling, anything in that whole realm, because it sounds very, I don't know, sterile and sort of removed from reality to talk about process.
So breaking this down, we've been talking about managing contracts. Contracts are like the lifeblood of a business. The contract outlines what you're going to pay for something. If you're buying products from someone or you're buying materials for your business to come into so that you can build whatever it is you build, or it's the contracts between you and your customers that outline, what are they going to pay you? How is your business going to make any money? So either way, these contracts are important. And that's why we're having this whole arc on contract management in the past couple of episodes, and we got a couple more. So the process piece is what do you do when you need a new contract? When you need to go buy a new product or service, or you want to sell your products or services to a new customer? How do you get that set up? What are the steps?
Those steps are your process. And in a lot of companies, especially smaller companies, the steps tend to be pretty informal. So we're a small company. You and I might have a conversation, I need a new laptop keyboard. And you were like, okay. And I bought it. That was a very easy process.
It was under a certain dollar amount. I was able to just order it on the credit card, and it came the next day, which is great because now I can type again, but something much bigger. For instance, we're a small business, but we're going to go through a process to become a qualified vendor for a large business. And we've done a few of these over the past few years. And they're hard because the large business has a lot of rules in place about what do they need to know about their vendors, their suppliers before they will even enter into a discussion about a contract. So their process involves that vendor qualification step, probably involves a nondisclosure agreement, and then you got terms and conditions and that's on the buy side. The big company trying to just buy services or products from some other company. When you get to the sell side, that big company is going to sell its products or services to some other big company or to consumers. There's a lot more detail. So when you start to think about a contract management solution and how you are going to manage contracts in your company, in your business, think about what are those steps that are so quick and easy and informal and often happen in an email and write them down, even if it's just I emailed Lee to say, I'm going to sign a contract for our upS box. That's a process step because we documented it. That price is over a certain amount and it also is our official address, for instance, for something, could be for billing or whatever. So we have a process to do that.
You in your company, just write it down. Talk to everybody who's involved, is legal involved, who gets to say, hey, we need a new vendor. I don't want to buy my staples from Staples now. I want to buy them from office depot or some other place from Staples Rs down the street. Who makes that decision and how do they go about doing it? Who do they have to ask if there's a contract involved? Who's reviewing terms? Who's allowed to sign it? Those are all part of your as is process. And when you write those down, even if you just write them down in order steps one through six in words, that's a good start because now, you know, if you start writing them down as like a diagram, a flowchart or a workflow diagram, and you can see, okay, this group can create the idea and then they have to go talk to seven other people and the document gets sent around in an email to a lot of people who make comments or they redline it or they edit it, and then it has to come back to the original person who puts together a clean version and they have to send it out again. Then they send it to the other guy and the outside party and they have to redline it. Once you kind of take your list of steps and you try and draw a workflow diagram, you might start to see that your process is kind of clunky, kind of redundant. Maybe it circles back on itself a few times. Maybe it gets stuck if somebody's on vacation and it doesn't get out of their inbox. So putting in place a new contract management solution is a great opportunity for fix this process. Let's make it more streamlined. Let's cut out some of those redundant steps, and let's really think about what are the key elements of the last time. If you remember, we talked about the contract lifecycle from creation through close out. So in the creation step, creation phase, what are all your steps, who's involved, and how does it go from one step to another that gets you to, okay, I have this contract, I have a draft contract. Maybe I've used clauses or templates. Maybe I've done some redlining. Maybe I had to escalate because legal had to approve a variation on insurance requirements or something else by writing down each step. And what are the variables in each step, what are the decision points, drawing out your workflows.
And it doesn't have to be fancy. It's just enough for you to communicate with other people in your group, in your team, in your world of champions that you've been collecting in your information governance journey for a year or so.
So you can talk to them and say, hey, these are the things that we do every day that we don't even think about. And here's how I'm suggesting that we can improve it, either in an automated contract management solution. Or even if you don't have an automated contract management solution, you can still make your process better. That also gives you a checklist to make sure that before you sign a contract, you've gone through all the steps and you've gotten the right approval every time. And then once you've signed a contract and it's in place, there's another set of steps, which are how do we follow this contract? What rules do we have to follow? What reporting did we agree on? What was our timing for delivery? Kind of like whenever I ask you about what's due next or you ask me about what's due next in a contract, Lee and I say, what does the proposal say?
So that's our contract, that proposal that outlines our deliverables and our schedule. So that's what your two B process can do for you can make sure you're not skipping steps. And if you have a solution that you're trying to put in place it can automate those steps, making life easier all the way around.
[00:08:25] Speaker A: So it's not just consulting speak. It's actually a good thing to do.
You talked about creation, called it initiation, whatever it is. But just trying to understand where contracts start in your organization. How does it come into your organization if that's in fact how things occur? Some of your examples were things that we started internal, how we started getting new printers from staples or wherever your example was. But there may be a situation where somebody's sending it to you. Do you always get an email? Does it come through snail mail? Does it come through another way, shape or form? Maybe it's just a phone call and somebody, if that triggers it. Just mapping all of those nuances I think are important too, so that you can kind of try to get it centralized in one area.
That'll be a very big help.
[00:09:22] Speaker B: I agree, and we've seen the impact of that, and that's why it's become a buzword for consultants, is to say, oh, process mapping or process reengineering. That was the original buzword, I think. But the fact is that you spend all your day doing processes, whether you know it or not. And so if you're looking to improve your contract management, because we've talked about how important contracts are to your business, and you're looking to make sure that you're not missing any steps, that you're not dropping the ball, and that you know where your contracts are looking at the processes, both how you are doing it today and how you could improve it in the new world when you have implemented your new contract management approach and whether or not that involves a contract management solution.
[00:10:17] Speaker A: Right. I was going to get to a tagline of ours, which is software alone is not enough. And I think everything we're talking about here is exactly the reason why you can't just buy a piece of software and expect it to correct a broken process, map out those processes, figure out where the errors, issues, bottlenecks are, fix them, and then move into a software package.
[00:10:45] Speaker B: Yes. No, that's a great point.
It is a tagline for us for a reason, because just buying a piece of software and not fixing your process just gives you a messier process faster.
[00:10:59] Speaker A: Excellent.
Well, we've often said moving one file cabinet to another, if you're just going from one system to another and not cleaning up some of the data initially.
[00:11:12] Speaker B: From a paper file cabinet to an electronic file cabinet, that is not a market improvement. And it could actually be a step backwards. Because a real file cabinet you might run into every day, literally or figuratively, an electronic file cabinet, many things are hidden from sight.
[00:11:31] Speaker A: Absolutely. I think that's good for today, though.
[00:11:35] Speaker B: I agree there's a lot more we could talk about around processes, but I think that's a good context for in the world of contract management. Take a look at process.
[00:11:46] Speaker A: Think you're absolutely right.
If you have any questions, please send us an email at info at trailblazer us.com or look us up on the web at www. Dot Trailblazer us. Thank you for listening and please tune into our next episode. Also, if you like this episode, please be a champion and share it with people in your social media network. As always, we appreciate you, the listeners. Special thanks goes to Jason Blake, who created our music.
[00:12:14] Speaker B: Thanks everyone. See you next time.
