Contract management for purchasing: 11 tools for managing contracts

After the strategic sourcing, after the supplier analysis, after the negotiations, there's the contract. It documents everything you've agreed on with your suppliers and is the guide on how you'll work with them and what they can charge. But contracts don't manage and enforce themselves. Here are tools to help you manage contracts. Descriptions are from suppliers.

By Purchasing Staff -- Purchasing, 3/12/2009 2:00:00 AM

After the strategic sourcing, after the supplier analysis, after the negotiations, there’s the contract. It documents everything you’ve agreed on with your suppliers and is the guide on how you’ll work with them and what they can charge. But contracts don’t manage and enforce themselves. Only you can do that. Here are some tools that can help.

PRODUCT NAME:

Ariba Contract Management

COMPANY:

Ariba, www.ariba.com

NEWEST RELEASE:

April 2009. Full electronic signature capabilities, in partnership with DocuSign.

MAJOR SOFTWARE FEATURES:

Enterprise-wide management of all contract functions, including buy-side and sell-side.

• Contract visibility/repository

• Automated contract creation/authoring

• Tools to structure pricing terms and conditions to automatically enforce contract call-offs, volume, tiered discounts and other factors

• Contract-management services

SUPPLIER'S CLAIM:

Software is a key component of Ariba spend-management suite and can be used with other suite applications such as sourcing, invoicing and spend visibility. Available in a variety of delivery modes, including on-demand.

PRICING:

Subscription-based fees based on usage.

PRODUCT NAME:

Contract Insight Enterprise Contract Management

COMPANY:

CobbleStone Systems, Inc., www.cobblestonesystems.com

NEWEST RELEASE:

January 2009

MAJOR SOFTWARE FEATURES:

• E-mail notification alerts

• Custom field tracking

• Calendaring alerts

• Task and milestone tracking

• Checklists

• File attachments/document management (with searching)

• Vendor and client management

• Scanning of documents

• Single document repository

• Multi-level security

• Integration with Word

• Auditing

• Custom user-defined fields

• Price/cost schedules

• Templates

• Custom reports

• Report builder

SUPPLIER'S CLAIM:

Software provides an expedited return on investment.

PRODUCT NAME:

Coupa e-Procurement

COMPANY:

Coupa Software, www.coupa.com

NEWEST RELEASE:

February 2009.

• Quickstart, a wizard to get companies up and running in less than an hour

• Coupa Supplier Network, a secure online website where suppliers can manage their contact information for their customers

MAJOR SOFTWARE FEATURES:

Start and end dates on a contract prevent ordering against contracts that are no longer valid, or that have not been renewed, and alert buyers to review contracts that are about to expire.

SUPPLIER'S CLAIM:

Companies can be up and running on Coupa e-Procurement in less than an hour, fully configured for users, suppliers, approval workflows, accounting codes and more, without IT involvement. The interface is easy to use, offering a consumer-like experience more like Amazon than enterprise software. The software is available as a service.

PRICING:

Coupa is available in two editions on an annual subscription basis. Details are listed at http://www.coupa.com/e-procurement-software-features-and-pricing/

PRODUCT NAME:

Emptoris Contract Management

COMPANY:

Emptoris, Inc., www.emptoris.com

NEWEST RELEASE:

November 2008.

• Mass contract amendments: To initiate the appropriate contractual amendment and re-negotiation process for all of those agreements

• Mass Contract Creation: Initiate new contracts, in parallel, rather than creating them one by one

• Contract Document Packages: Allows multiple legal documents to be reviewed by internal stake holders

• Contract Performance Visibility

MAJOR SOFTWARE FEATURES:

Emptoris Contract Management spans every stage of the contract lifecycle, from proposal and contract creation, negotiation, obligations management, and compliance enforcement, through contract amendment, renewal, and ongoing analysis.

SUPPLIER'S CLAIM:

• Rated highly by leading research firms. Emptoris Contract Management received the highest score for "Current Product Offering" in the recently released report, "The Forrester Wave: Contract Life-Cycle Management, Q3 2008." The solution also received top grades in the "MarketScope for Enterprise Contract Management," published by Gartner, Inc.

• More enterprise-wide, global deployments at Global 2000 companies

PRODUCT NAME:

SmartSource SRM™ or SmartContracts®

COMPANY:

Iasta; www. Iasta.com

NEWEST RELEASE: 

December 2008

MAJOR SOFTWARE FEATURES:
Iasta targets critical functionality that Sourcing Professionals need to do their jobs better. Contract management is included with SmartSource SRM at no additional cost. It is also available in a stand-alone platform, SmartContracts.

• Centralized contract repository – store, search, and manage

• Configurable triggers & alerts

• Configurable contract classification structure (for fields and types)

• User access and permissions controls

• Custom reporting

• Minimal deployment costs and timeframes

• Integrated with Iasta sourcing applications

SUPPLIER's CLAIM:

Both SmartSource SRM and SmartContracts are on-demand/SaaS applications. It’s  a low cost, high value contract management application that is flexible enough to grow with any organization. Since the contract management functionality was built by Iasta, it shares the same codebase as the company’s other sourcing applications, therefore it is truly integrated. Iasta’s applications have zero-cost deployment options with short deployment timeframes.

PRICING: 
no additional fees for SmartSource SRM customers; fees for SmartContracts based on an annual license and access agreement

PRODUCT NAME:

I-Many Contract Manager

COMPANY:

I-Many, Inc., www.imany.com

NEWEST RELEASE:

Contract Manager 6.5 - December 2008

• Advanced contract structured data modeling

• Enhanced document comparison

• Automated approval routing for changes during negotiations

• Pre-configured Microsoft Word table layouts

• Improved master data integration

• New Contract Analytics solution

MAJOR SOFTWARE FEATURES:

• Microsoft Word is the standard editor

• Contract repository—create, search, store and manage

• Clause Library and template library

• Pre-configured and flexible workflows

• User interface configuration for structured data, business rules and lifecycles

• Amendment creation and modeling

• Negotiation management

• Self service module

• Standard reports and contract analytics

• Security available at all levels

• Audit trail of user activity

• SAP NetWeaver certified platform with SAP interfaces for master and transactional data

• Optional master data management

SUPPLIER'S CLAIM:

• Integrated support is provided for any file type including PDF, MS Office documents, HTML and plain text

• Pre-configured Microsoft Word table layouts for structured data

• Rules-based and clause level negotiation management reduces inherent risk

• Track changes at the clause level and require approvals to any modified language

• Multiple amendment creation options and amendment modeling with respect to original agreement

• Contract Analytics solution for analyzing prospective agreements

• Flexible contract modeling for documentation and data, all configured through UI

• Security flexible to varying requirements

PRICING:

Varies based on project scope.

PRODUCT NAME:

Ketera Contract Management

COMPANY:

Ketera Technologies, Inc., www.ketera.com

NEWEST RELEASE:

December 2008. Software-as-a-service model with continuous updates

MAJOR SOFTWARE FEATURES:

• Single repository of all contracts

• Manages contract-management lifecycle

• Authoring tools

• Approvals

• Compliance monitoring

SUPPLIER'S CLAIM:

• On-demand services-delivery model and pay-as-you-go pricing model

• Contract on-boarding capability, converting existing paper-based contracts to a searchable digital format stored centrally

• Easy user interface

PRICING:

$39.95 per month per user

PRODUCT NAME:

Mumboe Express, Mumboe Pro

COMPANY:

Mumboe, www.mumboe.com

NEWEST RELEASE:

January 2009

• Read-Only Users

• Data Backup Service. Mumboe account administrators can create a snapshot of all the data

MAJOR SOFTWARE FEATURES:

• Secure contract repository

• Agreement template library

• On-demand contract intelligence

• Alerts and reminders

• Full-text search

• Tasks and collaboration tools

• Permission-based security

• User-defined fields and customizations

SUPPLIER'S CLAIM:

Ability to extract key dates, deadlines and other details from agreements, such as responsible parties, effective date, term and duration, governing law, scope and purpose and arbitration.

PRICING:

• Mumboe Express: includes up to 10 agreements or 50 MB of storage, and shared access for up to three users. Free with a valid e-mail address.

• Mumboe Pro: includes up to 250 agreements or 1 GB of storage. $24/user/month

• Additional Storage: up to 100 agreements or 1 GB of storage. $12/account/month

• Read-only users: $6 per user per month

• Account backup: $24 for a downloadable zip file for accounts with less than 750 MB of stored data, or $44 to order a backup DVD (price includes shipping and handling)

PRODUCT NAME:

Oracle Procurement Contracts

COMPANY:

Oracle, www.oracle.com

NEWEST RELEASE:

Oracle Advanced Procurement, Release 12. January 2007

• Microsoft Word synchronization

• Contract policy standards and deviations

• Clause usage analysis

• Complex contract payments

• Multi-organization access control

• Enhanced support for contract template translation

• Support RTF layout templates for printing

• Import clauses using XML interface

MAJOR SOFTWARE FEATURES:

Enterprise application. Enables standardization of contract processes, reduces time-to-contract and drives contract compliance.

SUPPLIER'S CLAIM:

Complete suite of contracts applications that includes Oracle Sales Contracts, Oracle Projects Contracts, Oracle Service Contracts, and Oracle Contract Lifecycle Manager.

• Integration to procurement and finance applications for automatic compliance

• Allows access from Professional Buyer's Work Center

• Configurable workflow hierarchy

• Visibility into both buy and sell-side contracts through a unified user interface

• Ability to use centralized terms and conditions library, contract template, and rule-based configuration of template contract on both the buy- and sell-side

PRICING:

$5,995 per application user. For additional details on pricing, visit http://www.oracle.com/corporate/pricing/pricelists.html

PRODUCT NAME:

SAP Contract Lifecycle Management

COMPANY:

SAP, www.sap.com

NEWEST RELEASE:

December 2008. Also released other products related to contract management, including supplier-relationship (with ability to distribute operational contract details to multiple SAP back-end systems), and modules for material management, public sector, sales and distribution customer-relationship management and incentive and rebate management.

• Enhancements to Contract Lifecycle Management include full-text search, streamlines contract creation and amendment management, new languages and platforms.

MAJOR SOFTWARE FEATURES:

• Project management

• Contract creation

• Contract authoring

• Repository

• Compliance and reporting tools

SUPPLIER'S CLAIM:

• Configurable platform

• Integrated sourcing and project management

• Integration with SAP ERP

PRICING:

Pricing model for Contract Lifecycle Management is changing. Pricing in 2009 will be based on number of contracts managed in the application. There are also user-license fees, though not for suppliers or third parties.


PRODUCT NAME:

SciQuest Contract Manager

COMPANY:

SciQuest, Inc. http://www.sciquest.com

NEWEST RELEASE:

November of 2008, as part of the 8.3 product

MAJOR SOFTWARE FEATURES:

• Search and order against services and non-product contracts in a single shopping platform along with product purchases.

• Centralize and decentralize contract ownership

• Configure security access by contract

• Track and provide visibility into contract budget versus contract spend

• Quickly identify high potential contract savings opportunities

• Track actual contract spend by requisitions, purchase orders and invoices

• Manage multiple prices from the same supplier

• Leverage integration between contract management and e-procurement for seamless tracking and reporting

• Renew contracts automatically

• Set multiple alert notifications based on spending milestones

• Set alert based on role: buyer, user, supplier, contract manager.

• Import existing contracts from third-party authoring systems, use a preformatted template or create contracts from scratch

 
SUPPLIER'S CLAIM:

Module strengthens an organization’s e-procurement strategy by integrating supplier contracts into the purchasing process. A centralized repository makes it easy to store, find and review contracts. Through tight integration with SciQuest’s other modules and any ERP system, the solution provides seamless tracking and reporting capabilities.

PRICING:

Subscription-based

PRODUCT NAME:

UpsideContract

COMPANY:

Upside Software, Inc., www.upsidesoft.com

NEWEST RELEASE:

UpsideContract version 6.1, Q4 2008

MAJOR SOFTWARE FEATURES:

• Full lifecycle contract request, creation, finalization and ongoing management

• Management of all types of contracts

• Completely configurable user interface

• Full and native integration with Microsoft Word

• Supports every language, including double byte characters (e.g. Japanese Kanji, etc.)

• Template/library management

• Integrates with ERP and CRM

• Handles conversion of existing contracts

• Ability to search through entire repository

• Workflow engine that can automate any process

SUPPLIER'S CLAIM:

• Consistently ranked in the top three providers by all major analysts

• One of the only CLM providers that leverages DeltaView WorkShare for redlining

PRICING:

Available license models are: Subscription (hosted or behind-the-firewall), Per Seat model (hosted or behind-the-firewall), Divisional License (hosted or behind-the-firewall) or Enterprise wide unrestricted license (hosted or behind-the-firewall)

PRODUCT NAME:

Zycus iContract

COMPANY: Zycus, Inc., www.zycus.com

NEWEST RELEASE:

February 2008

MAJOR SOFTWARE FEATURES:

• iContract repository

• Central repository

• Alerts and reminders

• Utilization tracker

• Compliance tracker

• Multi-parameter search

• Standard wizard-driven

• Reports and analysis

• iContract authoring

• Template library

• Clause library

• Collaborative authoring

• MS Word integration

• User-defined accessworkflow

SUPPLIER'S CLAIM:

• Contract utilization tracker

• Linkage with foreign exchange and commodity index

• Price-escalator and de-escalator clauses

• Matching of spend to contract

• Wizard-driven, configurable workflows

PRICING:

Contract repository and contract authoring are priced separately. Customers can either opt for Contract Repository only or Contract repository plus Contract Authoring.

Pricing for iContract is based upon the number of users.