business software

Contract Assistant Enterprise Edition 6.1: More customization, enhancements and record history

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One thing we take seriously at Blueridge Software is customer feedback. So we’ve been listening when it came to customer observations about certain features. The new Contract Assistant Enterprise Edition 6.1 version reflects some of this feedback and features a refreshed look, more customization options, and even tracks email notifications and record modifications.

Look forward to additional customization:

  • Field Level Locking, which allows field hiding and setting of read/write permissions by feature, field by field, user by user
  • Removing the Delete button from users’ screens
  • Hiding unused fields
  • Prevent users from modifying the Mass Update master lists (yet still allow them to choose items from those lists)

Enhancements to the Client User Interface and Report Designer include:

  • Modify and save personalized settings of main screen proportions of the main screen for use with widescreen monitors and to easily view longer contract names in the Index
  • Work within a more intuitive Report Designer, including an updated interface
  • Access additional pre-built reporting sources and more starter reports, including reports designed specifically to report on selected key elements and on email notification

And what’s new on the back-end?

  • Email Notification Tracing records a history of all emails sent by the database and the specifics of each email (both content and technical)
  • Contract Modification Tracing records a history of actions taken on a contract record by type of action (Imported, Add, Update, Delete), user, time and date

Consider the impact of modification tracking: now you will be able to know who modified what information when. This takes the term “institutional memory” to new heights – your organization really will have a memory of what happens to contracts.

Email notification tracing history is key too. Are the right notifications going to the right people? You can use this to both troubleshoot internal information flow and optimize it as well.

Scanning documents isn’t helping you go “paperless”

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You know the drill: to avoid losing hard copy documents, you scan and store documents for future retrieval and sharing. Problem solved, right? You are on your way to a “paperless office,” right?

Not quite. Unless your company has a protocol for what to do with important scanned documents (and contracts definitely fall into that category), then you may be making things worse.

Run-of-the-mill document scanning devices and applications help clean-up the piles of paper on the desks of the finance and administration departments. But scanned documents filed away in a folder (nested in another folder, of another folder) or drive can be forgotten, “mislaid” and overlooked as easily as paper documents.

And that’s dangerous. Who has access to these sensitive documents? Are they being shared across unprotected networks? Also, not centralizing these documents can leave different parties making different changes to the same contract document. Imagine the headache when a note is not entered on a centralized record that notes an important “make good” a vendor owes you. One department says it is owed something from the vendor while another knows nothing about it – and bills as a result of that.

Some large enterprises try to get around this common problem with document retention policies. But more often than not, applying a document retention policy depends on how well your tools do the job for you.

This is one of the better reasons to consider contract management software. Contract Assistant, for example, eliminates file chaos by:

  • Providing quick and easy access to important information
  • Centralizing a place for all contract records
  • Linking to or actually storing electronic versions of paper documents
  • Generating standard and custom reports
  • Sending automatic reminders of critical dates and more

With Contract Assistant, at least for contract documents and records, you would know there is one place to go, one central repository of information that can then be used appropriately. We can’t guarantee Contract Assistant would help your company go “paperless” (that’s between you and your fleet of printers to determine), but it certainly will help your electronic filing chaos.

Can you answer these 5 questions about your business’s contracts?

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Take a moment to think about your business and the vendor contracts that govern its operations. Can you answer these basic, yet crucial, questions?

  • Which is your most profitable contract?
  • Which is the least profitable?
  • Is your business paying for duplicated or overlapping services?
  • Which contracts are up for renewal?
  • Is your business already past the time to decline any auto-renewals?

If you can answer these questions quickly and confidently, congratulations. But there is a good chance that you don’t have an answer for some or even most of these questions.

It’s easy to think of contract management software as a “nice to have” administrative tool. But having a full-featured contract management tool will give you the kind of information you need to answer the above questions – and know a lot more about the true costs of contracts.

If you think of contract management software as a key reporting tool, you are closer to the mark than thinking of it as primarily “administrative” in nature. Reporting is a crucial step in the contract life cycle and one that can be automated and enhanced by using contract management software.

Contract Assistant, for example, has rich reporting functions. Knowing the importance of reporting to end users, Blueridge Software includes in the Standard Edition a library of starter report templates. At the PRO and Enterprise edition level, users get a rich starter library as well as a report generation tool – Report Designer.

Reporting even basic information on all your company’s contracts on a regular basis for review and analysis can really pay off. Depending on your management structure, contract managers may be required to report on the full spectrum of contract performance metrics, or may only be asked to deliver reports and notifications when exceptions are discovered. In either case, the information gathered from contract management software from the very beginning of a contract becomes the basis for all reporting, no matter the format or detail.

The flexibility of Contract Assistant, for example, allows for so much customization that you can gather data on select fields quickly and easily.  If you want to find out more about all the benefits of contract management software, download this complimentary executive summary report, “Contract Management Software – Reduce Risk While Saving Time & Money.”

How to get buy-in for a contract management software purchase

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Let’s assume that you’ve decided that your company or department needs contract management software. You’ve done your legwork, examined all the features, maybe you even took advantage of a 30-day trial.

But that may not be enough – there’s another step that’s highly recommended. For users who work in large enterprises, the true effectiveness of contract management software is magnified many times when there is full buy-in from key stakeholders. Contract management for large enterprises is rarely a one-department function, so wider interest for a solution will help you get to implementation quicker.

By sharing what you’ve learned about the way contract management improves efficiency and reduce risks (from missed contract deliverables, rising admin costs, etc.) you can also share the workload during roll-out.

To get enterprise-wide buy-in for a solution, consider the following tactic. Form a working group to examine the need for contract management:

  •  Get participation from likely hands-on users, but also those in departments most likely to use the information gathered from contract management software.
  • For possible end-users, try to expose them to a trial version or to participate in any live demos.
  • Be sure to record the working groups efforts to share with management (to document progress).
  • Get input on objectives/goals of centralized contract management from all stakeholders.
  • Ensure the goals go beyond administrative goals (for example: make contract info records easy to access) to specific financial goals (for example: document operating costs such as invoicing preparation time).
  • Have the working group prepare questions for a prospective vendor about key support needs beyond implementation (different users may have different ongoing needs).

While it could feel daunting to roll-out contract management at once to an entire company, forming a working group and “spreading the workload” among all the interested parties will make the job far easier.

Beware of the Evergreen Clause

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Unfortunately, some businesses only recognize the need for contract management software once a problem arises – when it’s too late to enact “an ounce of prevention.”

Here’s a perfect example: Consider the “evergreen clause,” or the autorenewal.

Investopedia defines the evergreen clause as: “A contract provision that automatically renews the length of the agreement after a predetermined period, unless notice for termination is given. Evergreens are often used for long term agreements such as memberships or maintenance contracts.”

How does this sneak up on the unsuspecting contract administrator? In an article on the website Mondaq, author Steve Dutton poses the situation of a business owner deciding to cancel the license agreement for a certain computer software which was purchased to improve productivity, but ended up not being effectively used.

Upon calling the vendor, the representative notifies the business owner that the license agreement does not allow a simple cancellation. Instead, the business owner is contractually obligated to continue paying for the software for another full year. The real culprits here are the terms and conditions of the software license containing the automatic renewal or evergreen clause.

Automatic renewals often come with a definition of when notice must be given to cancel a contract. The problem isn’t that evergreen clauses are inherently bad. It’s that notification dates for cancellation have a habit of being institutionally “forgotten” – unless there’s a serious problem.

Contract management software helps you shed light on these forgotten contracts in two key ways. First, you can customize notes and fields to record specific deliverables of vendor/service providers, thus giving you a history of performance. Second, you can set up automatic reminders for key renewal dates. This feature is in all Contract Assistant versions, and in the Enterprise edition you can even configure alerts to be distributed via email.

Setting an alert or reminder 60 to 90 days out from a renewal notice cut-off notice date should give you enough time to review performance and get input before contacting the vendor/service provider. At the very least, it may give your business the leverage it needs to alter a contract to meet your company’s needs better.

For additional discussion and recommendations about evergreen clauses, read this blog post by Law 4 Small Business.

It may not always be possible to avoid evergreen clauses, but you can certainly get ahead of any potential problems if you’re using good contract management software.