Optimizing and securing the contract process

Optimizing and Securing the Contract Process

This past year has highlighted to the world what our members already know – organizations live and die based on their ability to win and deliver contracts. Within our teams, it has also highlighted for many the cost and consequence of failing to invest in the right technology to support the management of those contracts. Now that we have caught the world’s attention, can we leverage it to make the critical changes that are needed to optimize the contracting process and extract the additional value that has yet to be realized. In this final TASK topic for 2020, World Commerce & Contracting provides the tools, resources and insights to realize these changes in the new year.

Simplifying Contracts and the Contract Process

Simpler Contracts by Design

Contracts are critical business instruments, and legal is but one stakeholder in the contracting process. And yet most contracts are written by lawyers for lawyers, in anticipation of litigation. The wheels of change are turning. Business is increasingly understanding that contracts can be different. They can be written and designed to be easily read and understood by key stakeholders, other than lawyers – and still control risk!

Ask the Expert: Optimizing Your Contract Management Processes – Playbooks, Triage, and Analytics

This webinar is designed for legal operations professionals, in-house counsel, and contract management professionals who manage and negotiate contracts and want to demonstrate the value of an efficient contract management process. The program will examine: (i) how to maximize the performance efficiency of your contract management function through using best-in-class playbooks and templates, process mapping and triaging; and (ii) adding value through leveraging business intelligence from contract data analytics.

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Contract Design and Simplification

Clearer and simpler contracts can improve your business relationships, reduce risks, and deliver outcomes more efficiently. Our Ten Pitfalls To Avoid in Contracting report reveals that almost 90% of business people find contracts ‘hard or impossible’ to understand. We want to challenge the ongoing perception that contracts are purely ‘legal’ documents. Contracts are core business-critical economic instruments with a range of diverse purposes.

Why Are Agreements So Hard to Understand?

A survey conducted by the International Association of Contract and Commercial Management (IACCM) shows that only 1 of 10 agreed that contracts are "easy to understand". And only 17% were satisfied with the agreement process. These numbers are miserable. Why is it so, what are the consequences, and what can we do about it?

Ten ways to make the interpretation of images more predictable

This article introduces ten ways to embed images into contracts to reach greater clarity and avoid confusion. It demonstrates a first step toward reducing worries around the legal interpretation of contract visualization - an emerging field of research and practice. It builds on and expands the authors’ recent work on using and interpreting images in contracts.

The Contract Process and Organizational Goals

Webinar: Aligning Contracts and Organizational Goals – Why Organizations Cannot Afford to Get it Wrong

A company’s mission and vision set the context for organizational goals and objectives. To realize these goals, contracts need to be aligned and should form a core part of executing this strategy. Learn about an innovative contract management methodology that enables organizations to continuously assess the alignment of contracts with company goals.

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Are Your Contracts Undermining Your Business Model?

Business models must be adaptive and often need to change fast. Business models dictate required operational capabilities, commercial policies and practices and market relationships. All of these elements combine to determine the types of contractual relationships and terms that will be needed to support organizational goals and strategies.

Ask the Expert: The Contract Management Operating Model – Improving Organizational Capabilities

With a Contract Management Operating Model, you can systematize your work with contracts and commercial relationships. It enables you to achieve the full potential of your contracts and at the same time helps you secure compliance. This webinar will introduce you to an example of a model that can successfully be used in practice.

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Utilizing Technology to Enhance the Contract Process

Software Automation Tool

We work with our vendor community to present information on the latest advancements and technology tools for contracting and our Content Hub is filled with resources for our members to leverage. For specific inquiries and needs for your organization, be sure to also check out our Software Automation Tool

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Go to Software Automation Tool

Optimizing Your Sell-Side Contracting Process with Next-Generation Technologies

This webinar, Optimizing Your Sell-Side Contracting Process with Next-Generation Technologies, provides information about technology trends for sell-side contracting, and how they apply to you, whether starting from scratch or seeking to modernize a legacy system.

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Can Smart Contracts Be Legally Binding Contracts?

There is much excitement globally about smart contracts and distributed ledger technologies that support them. What do we mean by a smart contract? Is it smart? Is it a contract? Do lawyers and technologists understand each other when they use these terms? Recognizing the imperative for clarity on these issues, R3 and Norton Rose Fulbright offer this White Paper, "Can smart contracts be legally binding contracts?" as a step forward in forging a consensus of understanding between industry stakeholders, lawyers and technologists in relation to smart contracts.

Smart Contracts in a Paper World

Smart contracts are defined as programming code that can verify, execute and enforce a set of instructions. This code relies on a predetermined set of input triggers. When the input triggers are met, then the transaction of the smart contract is fully executed (Nissen, Haller Grønbæk, 2017). Smart contracts and blockchain technology are both immutable and decentralized. All users of the blockchain validate the outcome of the smart contract.

Contract Management Technology – Why Value is the Biggest Prize

Contract management’s technological revolution: today’s biggest, most important news. Everyone’s looking for answers – but are they looking in the right place, for the right things? And could those answers be closer to hand than we think? In this special edition we introduce you to some of contract management’s greatest innovators and visionaries, who describe a new world where contracts are designed as instruments of communication, where hand-crafting is a thing of the past and where the value generated through contract management can be objectively measured.

The Hidden Value of Smart Contracts: Measurability

Most common flaws existing in natural language contracts are remnants of either older contracts that have since evolved or as contrary clauses in contracts that cover interrelated activities. When it comes to smart contracts, coding language requires events, rules and other business logic to be absolutely clear — and this requirement forces many companies to revisit their current contracts with fresh eyes for simplification and clarification.

Insights

Optimizing and securing the contracting process

It is said that ‘contracts are the lifeblood of any business’ – and it is certainly true that without contracts, many businesses would be seen as having no value and with poorly managed contracts – well, there would soon be no business.

Yet while winning and performing contracts is so critical, the contracting process frequently fails to support the steady flow of blood that is essential to its health. Consider for a moment the many blockages that occur – pain points, friction points, delay points – call them what you will, the process rarely runs like a well-oiled machine.

Sally Guyer, Executive, board director, mother and entrepreneur

More training opportunities and further resources

World Commerce & Contracting Training and Certification

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