Visibility is a highly powerful tool in being able to see and perceive what’s ahead. The better we can see, the better our chances of success. This also applies to the world of contract management where a lack of visibility can seriously impair the negotiation process, squeeze profits and raise the risk of non-compliance.

Nektar's primary goal was to find a system that would provide a single, common repository to house all contract information. The system had to be easily accessible to staff at each of our sites and allow for cross-company access and sharing of contract information. It also had to adhere to Sarbanes-Oxley compliance mandates.

Whether your company is the size of a town or a sprawling urban metropolis, you need the right infrastructure to effectively move your contracts along the most efficient routes at the lowest costs. Businesses also need rules to categorize requests and determine the best route for their transactional traffic. Corporations with automated contract lifecycle management systems are the ones that will be the most efficient, competitive and profitable.

Deploying a contract lifecycle management solution is a project that for many companies has a return on-investment measured in weeks versus years. As the old adage says, “anything worth doing, is worth doing well” – the first time. So why not give yourself the benefit of learning from what others have done well and avoid the traps and pitfalls that plague unsuccessful projects.

This paper shows how two products, Microsoft® Office and Microsoft SharePoint®, contribute to the powerful architectural design of the Microsoft Business Productivity Infrastructure (BPI). The scenarios outlined in this paper show examples of how the power of SharePoint 2010 and related servers can be combined with capabilities of one or more Microsoft Office 2010 applications to deliver rich, intuitive, and easy-to-use capabilities directly into the hands of information workers.

Back in the day, the sandbox was a place where you could play and have fun. But we can all remember occasions when not everyone played nicely together. After all, there were no rules and as such our encounters may have included a little sand throwing, toy taking or territorial shoving. No great harm done. But in the business world, sandbox skirmishes can result in damage to an otherwise productive environment, be immensely costly in terms of profitability and leave you exposed to risk.

The desire for a full-bodied contract lifecycle management (CLM) system is usually triggered by an unpleasant (often recurring) event in the life of a company’s contracts: discovering (in after-action documents) that you left significant money on the table through overlooked incentives; or incurring a sizeable penalty for late delivery or non-compliance. Pain is often a driving factor in the search for a better way.

Workflow-driven contract lifecycle management systems can provide what is typically missing in most public and private hospitals – an accurate view of the big picture in end-to-end processes involving contractual dealings. That is essential in preserving and strengthening fragile operating margins. Managing contracts on a daily basis can mean everything in controlling expenses in all working relationships.

Six months since an explosion ripped apart the Transocean Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico, and it seems the US and the world are still dealing with the repercussions – financial, legislatory, environmental, economic. Pipeline Magazine asked a random selection of commentators for their opinion of the current situation.

Healthy organizations are not that different from healthy bodies. To become a top performer, you have to stay in physical form, and doing so requires work. You don’t become a marathon runner by sitting on the couch and thinking about getting in shape. Is your company operating at peak performance? Or are you falling behind deadlines and missing obligations with your vendors and customers?

In this paper, we look at how Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies can help you to reduce TCO and maximize ROI for your enterprise solutions. SharePoint Products and Technologies provide a comprehensive suite of features in all areas of information management, and can enable you to consolidate all your enterprise solutions into a single, manageable platform.

Most businesses today view contracts and contract management as a file storage of paper documents - from file cabinets to expensive document management systems. Their contracts and their contractual obligations are not necessarily integrated into business operations. At best, most have manual procedures and document stores to track expirations dates with maybe some technology-assisted alert mechanisms. But, expiration dates or renewal dates are only a small fraction of the complete set of ob

Contract management is a lot like a rainstorm. When it’s just a sprinkle, it’s easy enough to keep track of each individual contract. But what happens when the drizzle becomes a deluge, and contracts begin falling into different departments and different locations simultaneously? Information would be splattered everywhere. Critical data would be so spread out that it would be virtually inaccessible.

This paper shows how two products, Microsoft® Office and Microsoft SharePoint®, contribute to the powerful architectural design of the Microsoft Business Productivity Infrastructure (BPI). The paper highlights examples of how the power of SharePoint 2010 and related servers can be combined with capabilities of one or more Microsoft Office 2010 applications to deliver rich, intuitive, and easy-to-use capabilities directly into the hands of desktop users.

With the size and complexity of business today, the risks go much further than natural disasters. Contracts typically contain multiple terms and conditions that trigger cost penalties and potential liabilities, while Sarbanes-Oxley and other compliance initiatives have all but inserted government rules into contractual promises.

Developing a SharePoint Roadmap will ensure that your organization will be able to align the business goals with the capabilities provided by SharePoint. Engaging the business to define the desired functionality of the SharePoint solution is the one key activity to a successful implementation.

SharePoint® is one of the hottest products in the enterprise content management (ECM) and collaboration spaces. Why are organizations implementing SharePoint? Is it because Microsoft™ has done a great job at describing the benefits of using SharePoint or is it all about a technology looking for a problem to solve?

Standardization, streamlining, and automation are no longer enough. Contract life-cycle buyers are now embracing the desire for technology to help them manage and enforce their business policies and have become more policy-centric.