Читать книгу Contract management with CATS CM® version 4 - Gert-Jan Vlasveld - Страница 9

Companies are entering into a rapidly increasing number of contracts, driven in part by specializations and niche players in the market, as well as acceleration caused by technological developments. For quite some time now, the make-or-buy decision clients have to make is not being made based on an individual need that must be fulfilled. Ever more frequently, companies are choosing to make a strategic choice to ‘buy’. Sometimes, this is even necessary because organizations no longer have in-house expertise in a broad range of areas.

It is not just the number of contracts that is increasing, but the form of collaboration is changing as well. Consequently, this increasingly results in the ecosystem described in the introduction to this book. That means that the relationship between client and supplier must be structured in a different way. As a result, this changed relationship requires contracts that are more flexible and more focused on value creation and the adjustment of contracts that do not yet offer that flexibility. Furthermore, contracts are increasingly contributing to the full implementation of processes. The effects of a possible discrepancy in the contract agreements increase and the response time to deal with them gets shorter. This is why contract management must become more proactive. Proactive contract management means: focused on activities linked to the execution and modification of a contract while concentrating on anticipating specific situations where possible or necessary.

Entrepreneurship is inextricably linked to having contracts. Contracting parties are increasingly aware that entering into contracts with due care is not sufficient to control the realization of the desired results, and it offers insufficient direction to the above-mentioned collaboration dynamics. This makes effective and efficient contract management crucial. The first chapter of this book explains what effective and efficient contract management entails and how CATS CM helps to achieve this. CATS stands for Contract Administration and Tracking Scenarios.

Our vision on proactive contract management is based on the idea of having effective and efficient contract management. Chapter 2 lists the most important definitions and explanations. Chapter 3 is a description of the determining factors for successful contract management and its implementation at a strategic, tactical and operational level. Last but not least, Chapter 4 describes the CATS contract life cycle, the role of contract management during those stages, and it delves deeper into the other processes that sustain this contract life cycle at an operational level.