Contract Insights

Understanding the contract lifecycle is essential for legal, procurement, and contract management teams aiming to streamline operations. This guide explores the eight key stages of the contract lifecycle and how contract lifecycle management (CLM) software can optimize each phase for better compliance, efficiency, and collaboration. 

DBE supplier tracking becomes easier when the right tools are in place.

Whether you’re a local municipality, city, state, or federal agency, chances are you have a goal defined for awarding contracts to disadvantaged business enterprises (DBE). Government agencies operate on “good faith” that they will make the conscious effort to consider these businesses when awarding new contracts. The problem, like managing any other contract, is the work involved to ensure that all criteria is being met and certifications are processed.

Why Communication can Make or Break a Successful Acquisition and Improve Contract Management

Improving Contract Management is not an easy process. There are numerous steps that are involved with the acquisition process. From identifying the initial needs, all the way down to monitoring performance once a contract has been awarded will require multiple people – sometimes from different departments – to get involved. If too many people are contributing to the acquisition process, but aren’t making the effort to communicate with one another internally then the process can be unsuccessful from the start. This creates a communication gap. Not only is effective communication imperative to a successful acquisition process and improving contract management, but an open dialogue with the industry and potential vendors is too.

 CobbleStone is proud to announce that the 2018 CobbleStone Conference is happening this November 7th-9th in Philadelphia! With contract AI, machine learning, risk migration, and more, this conference is set to be our best one yet.

The EU's new data protection laws took effect May 25, 2018. Make sure your organization is aware of the potential impact, including hefty fines, and ensures GDPR contract compliance.

If it seems there has been a flurry of privacy updates and more talk around GDPR contract compliance, it’s for good reason. GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) has actually been around since 2016, replacing the old data privacy laws that have found themselves outdated. Once it was recognized, it became mandatory that all companies ensure that they are fully compliant and meeting standards within two years. From May 25th of this year on, the rules and regulations set forth by the GDPR law are being followed accordingly.

There’s a lot of buzz when it comes to digital innovation in just about any part of an organization. When it comes down to it, what exactly does that entail?

It is very rare when an organization is so on point that others use them as a standard (we’re looking at you, Amazon). The ability to have most, or all, of your business processes fine-tuned and in sync is something that most organizations are often trying to accomplish. These types of changes could take years before they truly take effect. Unfortunately, business happens quick and organizations can’t afford to wait that long. Many areas of the organization including marketing, sales, and service departments have already eradicated outdated ways of operating.

The topic of digital innovation in the procurement process, however, seems to be the one area that tends to get overlooked. Why?

CobbleStone announces its newest release of our leading contract management software, Version 17.2. Building upon the success of Version 17, we have included new features throughout multiple modules in the system, along with improving overall capabilities and improving usability. Additionally, clients have the option to update select user accounts without compromising the settings of other user systems.

Effectively managing tail spend now can save your organization headaches in the long run.

What is Tail Spend?

In an organization where there are outlined procurement procedures, roughly 80% of that organization’s total spend will be strategically managed through those guidelines. Those purchases are usually lead by an experienced purchasing professional who will thoroughly vet the potential vendors. They will ensure that the purchase is in compliance with company and industry guidelines, and, once work is awarded, the purchasing professional will continue to audit that relationship. They will make sure that the terms are being met as agreed upon and will continue to rate the vendors work to justify renewing the contract.