Project Management and Finance E & Tc, Sem-VII

Unit IV Project Implementation

Project Monitoring and Control with PERT/Cost, Computers applications in Project

Management, Contract Management, Project Procurement Management.

Five Popular Project Management Applications

• Microsoft Project. Microsoft Project is one of the more popular packages and it now offers
a web interface and deep Office, Outlook and Sharepoint integration.
• Matchware MindView. ...
• Project Kickstart. ...
• RationalPlan Multi Project. ...
• Basecamp.

What is Contract Management?

Contract management or Contract Lifecycle Management is the Management of contracts from

vendors, partners, customers, or employees – and at its most basic, contract management software
can be defined as an electronic version of a filling cabinet. It supports the entire customer and
contract lifecycle which covers any process that contributes, creates or utilizes contract data.
Effective Contract Management requires an understanding of every step in the contract process,
including any step that contributes, creates, or utilizes contract data

The business world is changing. New ways of driving revenue are forcing companies to reimagine
the way they manage the customer lifecycle — making contract management more important than
ever before.

For many companies, “contract management” means, “ stuffing executed contracts into the
overflowing filing cabinet, never to be referenced again.” On the other side of the spectrum, when
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contract management is handled correctly, contract management includes self-service portals,

Legal pre-approved templates, Legal playbooks, and electronic signature (e-signature.) In this
world, Legal resources are free to manage by exception, and can focus attention on the critical, or
non-standard, contracts that typically introduce risk into the organization. Before diving in, be sure
to download a complementary copy of the Ultimate Guide to Contract Management for a detailed
look at how Contract Management is important to every business.

The Stages of Contract Management (For Non-Users)

1) Request

After the quoting process, business users express need to Legal for a contract (ex. NDA, service
agreement, standard licensing agreement). Contract “repository” – often a filing cabinet, computer
desktop or shared server – is often disorganized, with no templates to create consistent contracts
so outdated contracts are used as ad-hoc templates leading to potential financial and compliance
risks.

2) Generate

Legal needs to get involved to create every single contract, whether it’s standard or specific; this
is the stage where the bottleneck typically occurs.

3) Negotiate

Negotiations begin to occur to determine what terms and conditions are in the final contract.

4) Approval

Sales is pushing for contract terms to be approved, but depending on the size of the contract, it will
need to be approved and signed by Legal, executives, stakeholders, all of the internal teams and
the customer.

5) Execute

Contracts are set into effect and often stored in filing cabinets where they are difficult to find and
amend.

6) Search/Report

Contracts can’t be searched and reports can’t be run because contracts aren’t easily located in the
filing cabinet. If you do find it, all contract analysis is done manually with a potential for human
error.

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7) Comply

Are both parties holding up their ends of the agreement? It takes you some time and effort to figure
this out because members of your staff need to review transactions manually against contracts to
look for signs of noncompliance.

8) Amend/Review

Most contracts have end dates when parties need to decide to let the contract lapse, renew, or
renegotiate. Often, these end dates will pass unnoticed, meaning countless dollars in revenue
passed up.

What Are the Challenges of Contract Management?

1. Manual contract management introduces bottlenecks into the sales cycle.

Legal is often the department responsible for creating, managing and maintaining contracts within
the enterprise. Unfortunately, when Legal has to manage contracts manually, the contract
management process gets bottlenecked. This leads other departments, particularly Sales, to see
Legal as “the department of no.”

2. Manual contract management introduces (manual) errors.

And a lot is riding on the Legal team if they don’t catch mistakes, such as:

• Non-compliance
• Revenue leakage
• Extended sales cycle times
• Jeopardized customer relationships

How Contract Management Drives the Sales Cycle

Contract management is no longer just about contracts – it’s also relevant to everything and
everybody that touches contracts. Companies are now connecting the business cycle – quoting,
contracting and revenue – into a seamless process where data and information can automatically
and seamlessly feed into each other, so the appropriate parties have the most up-to-date and
relevant information they need.

It is critical for your enterprise to establish a connected cycle – beginning with the quoting process
all the way to revenue recognition – in order to enhance customer relationships and accurately
identify and develop business best practices. When each step feeds directly and automatically into
the next, the company can achieve the maximum amount of efficiency, accuracy, revenue velocity,
and customer satisfaction.

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Contract Management is becoming more and more intertwined with the Sales (quoting)
process. For Sales, contract management is used to automate and enable faster, more accurate
production and delivery of legal-approved contracts to a company’s prospects or customers. This
way, Sales can focus on customer relationship management, communications, and revenue
production.

The Aberdeen Group found that sales teams using contract management solutions tended to
outperform non-users:

• 39% higher team attainment of sales quota (64% vs. 46%)

• 35% more reps achieving sales quota (62% vs. 46%)
• 24% shorter sales cycle (3.5 months vs. 4.6 months)
• 20% higher lead conversion rate (36% vs. 30%)
• 12% higher proposal volume (18.6 vs. 16.6 per rep, per month)

Cloud-based sales contracts are growing in acceptance. A growing trust in cloud-based

applications and software provides the right context for enterprises to easily access and manage
their contracts with contract management. Customer relationships are flourishing and companies
are getting a better handle on their compliance and risk management as well.

The Stages of Contract Management (For Users)

1) Request

With an automated contract request process with a guided self-service tool, individual business
groups can request contract types as needed. A single online repository collects all contracts, which
can be accessed by anyone with the right permissions to review them. Contracts can be searched
and analyzed against each other.

2) Generate

Legal can create easy-to-find, easy-to-use templates for every day contracts and common clauses
as well as an explicit set of rules which can be used by business users to create contracts.

Sales can create the right contract using a wizard or guide that pulls appropriate terms and
conditions, with controls on which langauge or terms can or cannot be changed, and identifying
who in legal or business would have to approve alterations.

High-value resources (lawyers) can focus on the exceptions (complex or one-off strategic
agreements that require significant negotiations, time, etc.). The legal department can establish

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exception management, which will notify them anytime a sales rep tries to submit a contract to a
customer with outdated legal language or non-standard terms.

3) Negotiate

Shrink the amount of time lawyers spend preparing and reviewing negotiations with the ‘Track
Changes’ feature, identifying who made which modification at what date and time, so you can
view, modify and change drafts without fear.

4) Approval

Users can tailor approval workflows (both parallel and serial approvals) to decrease the time of the
contract lifecycle.

5) Execute

Terms become a set of instructions for the different parties who need to deliver against them.
Revenue recognition begins. Contracts are stored on a centralized online server for easy access
and searchability in case of disputes or amendments.

6) Search/Report

All different departments (sales, legal, finance, fulfillment and operations) need contract
information at different times for different reasons, so contracts can be, accessed electronically.
Terms and metadata are searched and reported on with ease.

7) Comply

An automated system bridges the gap between the CRM and ERP systems, and makes sure the
right requirements are applied for specific situations.

Organize contracts by groups, identify common components and store contracts in a searchable
electronic repository so commitments are monitored in real-time.

With organized contracts, building a Contract Template Library and Standard Legal Playbooks are
easy next steps.

Each change to a contract is delivered to sales, customer success, fulfillment and operations team
to fully integrate the front- and back-end systems.

8) Amend/Review

Alerts help companies renew contracts they want to keep, end contracts that are no longer useful,
and start the process of renegotiation early enough before the end date to allow time to reach
agreement on new terms for these contracts.
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The Benefits of Automating the Contract Management Process

The benefits of automating contract management are real. If your contracts are done faster, you’re
going to be able to collect on them sooner. If they’re accurate, you’re going to have far fewer
disputes. General Counsels and C-level executives can finally sleep at night because they are
confident that the contract management process is working.

Contracts exist at the heart of B2B commerce, as they are the physical representation of the
customer relationship. When you manage that relationship properly, you reap a variety of benefits.

Benefits of Automating Contract Management Include:

• Decreased contract cycle times

• Close more deals
• Stop revenue leakage
• Increased visibility
• Increased compliance
• Increased security
• Increase control

• Diminish risk
• Increased user adoption rates
• More face-time with customers
• Reduced admin costs
• Greater contract flexibility
• Improve contract renewal rates by 25%
• Increase revenue by 1 – 2%

4 Steps To Automating Your Contract Management Process

Contracts are essential to your business, and so is an effective contract management system. If
you’ve taken on an initiative to streamline and optimize your quote-to-cash process, but you ignore
contracts, you are seriously stifling any impending success. You may not reach perfection
overnight, but by following the steps of the contract maturity model, you can turn contract
management into a strategic process that is intuitive and transparent for your business in a
tempered, processed way.

1. Consolidation

Templates | Clause libraries | Search functionality | Import utilities | Single contract type support

Eliminate information silos and connect your front- and back-end systems to create one central
repository for all aspects of your contracts, including templates, clauses and exceptions. With a

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single source of truth, you and approved business users, partners and customers can view, manage,
update and search your contracts for necessary and accurate information.

2. Task automation

Office automation | Authoring tools | Drag and drop clauses | Redlining | Versioning | Approval
workflow | Back-office integration

Automate manual processes to free up valuable legal time and energy so your lawyers can focus
on critical or special-case contracts relevant to their expertise. Task automation increases process
control, reduces the number of errors and speeds up the contract cycle time.

3. Process efficiencies

Multiple contract-type support | Contract assembly | Single sign-on security | Multi-national

support | Alerts and notifications | Collaboration | Mobile access | E-signature

Process efficiencies create a well-organized contract process so all stakeholders – Legal, Finance,
Sales and departments managing obligations and deliverables – can spend time on critical tasks
that correlate with their expertise and job role. Your enterprise will experience faster contract cycle
times, reduce admin costs and off-site capabilities with e-signature.

4. Contract performance

Analytics | Reporting | Role-based dashboards | Terms compliance tracking | Milestone analysis |

Spend analysis | Profitability | Renewal management | Invoicing

As a company, you’re always encouraged, or even expected, to improve, and contract management
should be held to that same standard. Gain visibility into your contracts and contract process to
identify and remedy pain points or gaps in order to provide the best service to your customers.

How to Become a Master of Contract Management with Apttus

Apttus Contract Management provides total visibility into agreements, bringing control and
governance to your contract management processes. By automating the entire contract lifecycle in
Salesforce, the world’s most secure and reliable cloud platform, Apttus helps Legal teams be more
responsive, reduce costs and minimize risks.

How Apttus Helps:

• Legal playbooks, clause libraries, and templates ensure terms are accurate
• Redline with or without ‘Tracked Changes’ on to capture each and every change made to
a contract
• Automate reviews and approvals to reduce contract cycle times while ensuring the
appropriate pricing to handle large, last minute deals easily
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• Contract manager receives real-time feedback whenever non-standard language or

approvals are created
• A single source of truth – the contract repository – provides all relevant parties with the
most up-to-date and necessary information
• With an integrated front- and back-end system and a connected business cycle – from
quoting to contracting to revenue management – the errors and associated risk from manual
data entry become minimal
• Salesforce security establishes compliance and control with Salesforce’s proven data
security credentials and built-in standards
• Maximize the familiarity and capability of Microsoft Word with the collaboration, usability
and controls of Salesforce

What is Project Procurement Management?

The purpose of project procurement management is to establish and maintain relationships with
vendors of goods and services during the project life cycle. This unique function is an essential
part of project management, which is concerned with overseeing designated sets of temporary
operations. Project management for procurement purposes is an essential part of supply chain
management.

The Planning Process

Project management for procurement is usually divided into four major processes: planning,
selection, administering and closing procurements. The first part, planning, involves the creation
of the official procurement management plan. The decisions made involve which items will be
internally procured and which items will be externally outsourced. This information, in turn, will
heavily impact the project’s budget and financial scope. Sample procurement documents will be
prepared and criteria frameworks will be developed to create a selection of potential vendors.
This selection matrix is based on the project’s scope, schedule, and requirements. Risk factors
and budgetary constraints are also considered.

The Selection Process

The selection process involves comparing and contrasting vendors’ advantages, disadvantages,
and contractual offerings. Standard tools and techniques are used to select procurements, such as
video conferences with bidders that allow them to understand the project requirements and ask
questions. Procurement contracts are decided and awarded through collaborations between
various managers. Resource calendars are then created that detail when, where and how
resources will be used and managed. The corresponding project management plan is adjusted
according to resource calendar updates. Proposals are carefully evaluated and if no satisfactory
bids are available, the project management team may utilize online ads to solicit new bidders.

The Administration Process

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The third major step is administration, which refers to the tools and processes used to manage
relationships with vendors. The administration phase results in the continual creation of
procurement documents and spreadsheets that may drive project changes. A centralized system
of contract change monitoring and control will be used to evaluate and determine whether
potential changes to contracts are needed. There are formal physical inspections, internal audits
and reviews of procurement operations in order to generate synthesized performance reports that
provide real-time feedback. The administration process is extremely important, so it’s usually
managed through supply chain or project management software.

The Closing Process

The closing process isn’t just about ending procurement contracts; it’s about noting weaknesses,
documenting successful processes and summarizing the project for future needs. Some
companies prefer to conduct simple audits using performance matrices in order to grade the
overall project. Documentation is important for future projects, which may involve entirely
different teams in new locations. During the closing process, negotiations may be necessary to
resolve contract disputes. Ideally, potential issues will be noted during the administration process
in order to begin the mediation process early.

When it comes to project procurement management, there are standard features and functions.
For example, most companies prefer to use a smaller number of suppliers with long-term
relationships instead of using a group of suppliers to outbid each other for the lowest price.
Establishing and nurturing relationships with suppliers is important because this enables various
supply chain partners and shareholders to work closely together on improvement and
coordination activities.

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