Contract Management Software Blog

A Data-Driven World

Never in the history of our world, has the ability to discover, extract, interpret and intelligently act on data been so important. And never before has the amount of data been more overwhelming. According to Eric Schmidt, Google’s Chief Executive Officer, the world creates 5 exabytes of data every two days. That is roughly the same amount created between the start of civilization and 2003 . To be fair, we are talking about digital data only. Data has been generated for as long as people have been around to create it. Until relatively recently, however, (i.e. the last 50 years) it has been siloed in minds, file folders, file cabinets and ledgers, where by comparison, it has also been relatively inaccessible from a discovery and analysis perspective.

How We See It

Our world changes quickly and we desperately need to begin to change the way we think about ourselves, each other and the world we share. We believe we have a stewardship obligation and a choice. We can either decide to work together and help each other, or allow self-interest and malaise be the foundation of our society’s guiding principles. We think not.

No Panacea

Saavy CEOs are constantly looking for tools and methodologies than can make their organizations more efficient, that help reduce costs and drive incremental revenue. In this age of widespread business automation, many vendors purport to offer their solutions as a panacea, a salve to solve the most nagging enterprise problems. If CEOs have learned anything over the last 2 decades, it is that often the most appealing solutions can be a nightmare to implement, and it is rare that the hoped for results are ever achieved without the requisite pound of flesh. This is true in most instances. Interestingly, some well-behaved Contract Life-Cycle Management (CLM) solutions can deliver impressive results without the requisite pain.

A Corporate Leadership Role

The modern role of a General Counsel (GC) is both as a corporate lawyer and a business executive. General Counsels are no longer limited to a reactive role overseeing litigation farmed out to law firms, but instead are key members of the corporate decision-making team. For many, they find the job unmatched within the legal profession, both from the demands placed on them and the rewards they receive. The job offers enormous opportunities for innovation, leadership and decision-making at the highest levels—especially as companies have gone global. Over the last 20 years the role and responsibilities of GCs have changed remarkably.

Getting to the metaphorical contract negotiation handshake can be long or short, relatively easy or painfully difficult.  Whenever a contract is negotiated, the negotiation process is burdened by things that are out or our control. Will it be balanced? Does our counterpart care about win-win? Will it be predatory? Will it be truthful? Will unfair contract terms be imposed as a result of the size and economic strength of the other party? This is a partial list of the many things that make contract negotiations challenging, and perhaps even impossible to control. The ability to intelligently manage what can a highly complex process can easily be the difference between a successful negotiation and one that is not. For maximum effectiveness, it only makes sense to control those elements within your purview.

Physician, heal thyself. How healthy is your contract management process and oversight? Do you understand the long term financial impact of not treating your condition promptly?

Ruben “Rube” Goldberg was an American cartoonist, sculptor, author, engineer and inventor whose cartoons popularized how simple tasks could be executed in indirect, complicated and convoluted ways. Rube left his mortal coil in 1970, yet 50 years later, he continues to be synonymous with the ability to take something well understood and make it overly complicated. On the other end of the spectrum we have the K.I.S.S. principal, as in Keep It Simple Stupid, espoused by our armed forces as the best way to manage any processs. It all makes sense. The less complicated the item or process, the fewer the number of parts or steps and the more structured it is, and greater the likelihood of success. So what does this have to do with “Working Without a Contract Management Template”? Seems disconnected? Hardly. Let me tell you why.

You have standardized on Box.com. Isn’t it about time you learned about Box.com contract management issues? Isn’t it time to come clean, to air dirty the laundry?

Can Contract Life-Cycle Management (LCM), Enterprise Content Management (ECM) and Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) solutions be modifed to replace the functionality of the others. All share some of the attributes of the others, but each possess unique capabilities that cannot be easily accomplished by any one solution.

If you are a construction company, a general contractor, a sub-contractor, an HVAC or other specialized construction company or an engineering firm, Part 1 discussed some of the bigger challenges that result from flawed construction company contract management. In Part 2 we’ll dig deeper into other issues and look how comprehensive contract lifecycle management (CLM) solutions can keep you on the straight and narrow and help you to avoid missed opportunities, lost business and onerous penalties.