Contract Management – Preparing for Contract Negotiation

Know Where to Start and What needs to be Done.

When preparing to negotiate a new contract or a contract renewal, organization will be your strongest asset. Having access to all key information in a contract, understanding of the requesting department’s needs and notes, and in the event of a renewal, historical evidence of compliance with the agreement terms. Understanding the timeline, key deliverable dates, responsibilities, and other metrics are all critical to ensuring that both parties are satisfied, and the negotiation will be successful for everyone.

Some of the key elements you will need to have readily available will be:

• Copies of all of the previous contracts with this client;
• Changes in the clients business circumstances (growth into new markets, industries, territories; or downsizing, closing locations, discontinuing product lines);
• Changes in laws, regulations, and local ordinances since the last negotiation;
• Key terms, prickly issues, or pain points in the past negotiations; and
• Important individuals in the organization and in the negotiation.

All of this business intelligence is vital to your organization and preparation for an upcoming contract negotiation. ConvergePoint’s Contract Management Software solves the problem of harnessing this important information by allowing each contract to have a separate set of custom data for storage and reference.

Your contract management portal will provide you with a dynamic and customizable dashboard detailing task assignments, upcoming deadlines, and the contract project’s status. In addition, Contract Management Software stores all of the contract team’s comments and discussions related to this client’s contract, supporting documents, contract drafts and revisions, reports and more.

ConvergePoint’s Contract Management Software uses the power of Microsoft SharePoint, which allows an organization to use one central repository as a secure location to store, organize, share, collaborate, and access information from almost any device. An organization has easy access from any web browser, such as Internet Explorer, Chrome, or Firefox. Because it is natively integrated with Active Directory, contract team members can come to one location, and easily find what they are looking for based on their role in the contract, and the organization. Contract team members will be able to easily find and retrieve information on past practices and contract history such as performance measurements, performance dates and deadlines, mandatory versus optional specifications, deliverable components, record keeping requirements, security issues, and mandatory reporting requirements. The extensive search functionality lets contract team members find the information they need with targeted searching and produces real-time ad hoc reports.

Another part of being organized is knowing where you are in the process and what comes next. ConvergePoint’s Contract Management Software has dashboards arranged logically and intuitively to give you real-time status of your projects. This applies to both contract negotiation preparation and the process of creating, approving, and implementing a contract once the parties agree to the terms. With a quick look at the dashboard, you will be able to tell where help is needed and the type of information and resources that are required to move the process forward.

Preparing for contract negotiation can become less time-consuming, less chaotic, and—most importantly—much more organized with ConvergePoint’s Contract Management Software.