Contract management

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Contract management or contract administration is the management of contracts made with customers, vendors or employees. Contract management includes negotiating the terms and conditions in contracts and ensuring compliance with the terms and conditions. Common commercial contracts include employment letters, sales invoices, purchase orders, and utility contracts. Complex contracts are often necessary for construction projects, goods or services that are highly regulated, goods or services with detailed technical specifications, and international trade.

1 Areas of Contract Management
2 What is a contract?
3 See also
4 External links

[edit] Areas of Contract Management

The business-standard contract management model, as employed by many organizations in the United States, typically exercises purview over four key business disciplines:

Document Management
Baseline Management
Issue Management
Transaction Compliance

Transactional systems provide a baseline necessary to allow companies to measure and monitor contract performance, project management performance, and provide a method for appraising a legal team's efficiency against the cost of the contract and possible areas of exposure and risk. Effective transactional controls reduce administrative and material costs, shorten contract cycle times, enhance procurement decisions, and diminish operational and regulatory risk. With these metrics in place, organizations that integrate Contract Management solutions with transactional systems experience much better contract compliance than those that don't.

[edit] What is a contract?

A contract is a legally binding agreement between the parties identified in the agreement to fulfill all the terms and conditions outlined in the agreement. A contract is typically enforceable only when all the parties to the contract have signed and agreed to the obligations and entitlements.

Contracts can be of many types sales contracts (including leases), purchasing contracts, partnership agreements, trade agreements, and intellectual property agreements.

A Sales Contract is a contract between your company (the Seller) and a Customer that you are promising to sell products and/or services. The customer in return is obligated to pay for the product/services bought.

A Purchasing Contract is a contract between your company (the Buyer) and a Supplier who is promising to sell you products and/or services.