What a difference, like night and day… A 500-person manufacturer of tactical lighting and firearm accessory equipment moved its entire Federal and Commercial contract management operations from paper and manual into a streamlined, collaborative digital workplace based upon R3 Contract Management.
It was a big move. It was a great success. But, it was probably easier and more straight forward to do then you would imagine.
The Challenge
This manufacturer of tactical lighting and firearm accessory equipment wanted to ramp up their Federal contracting business. At the center of the Federal business workstream is the management of the Federal contracts themselves. These contracts are more involved than most commercial contracts. They tend to be living, breathing, changing contracts and they have special needs to support Federal contracting. They wanted a system to help them handle the Federal contract work.
In addition, the company also wanted to take the opportunity to upgrade all of their commercial and general legal contract work. They were in the dark ages. The vast majority of their contracts were still on paper. Most of them were stored in off-site storage facilities. They had thousands of commercial and legal contracts and many thousands of contract documents.
With the contracts being paper based, they had a host of issues. Some of them were:
- Their processes were also all manual paper-based. They physically routed documents for review and approval.
- There was no way to automatically search through contracts. Imagine asking to find all contracts with “abc clause”.
- The core contract data was separated from the documents which was separate from the tasks and activity. It was impossible to get a view of the full contract in real-time.
- People that needed to use contract information did not have access to reliable, real-time information. So, they would ask contract people. It was estimated that 1/3rd of the contract teams time was spent finding, retrieving and providing information to others.
They simply wanted to jump from the “dark ages” of paper and manual into a digital world of contract management. They wanted to make contracts an asset of the organization with greater transparency for people that need the information. But, they had more than 1,000 contracts to bring under management and more than 7,000 documents – most of them on paper. The migration was a concern. In addition, to make this work, they needed contract management software that would be able to address the unique needs of Federal government contracts while also supporting the more standard commercial contract needs.
The Solution
They found what they wanted with R3 Contract Management. R3 provides a suite of software solutions specially designed for the work of Federal Government Contractors. So, their Contract Management solution supported the unique needs of Federal Government Contracting out of the box.
In addition, the R3 solution also supports commercial contracts and other types of contracts. In fact, it allows organizations to optimize different types of contract work. It does this by providing separate “Pillars” for key types of contract work. Each Pillar can have its own information, different processes and workflows, and different user actions and permissions based upon the role of the user. So, the work can be optimized. Yet, they are all part of one system that can be searched, used and managed as one.
This capability was important because this company had three major types of contracts. One were customer facing Federal Government Contracts with their unique set of requirements. Another was commercial buy and sell contracts with a much simpler process and set of data. The third were Legal contracts primarily for Dealer NDA’s and contracts and international agreements.
The key step was to get the contract data and documents into the R3 contract repository. Then, they would have:
- the ability for people across the organization to have direct, real-time, controlled access to contracts
- the ability to drive contract work processes digitally
- the ability for the system to drive process, alerts, and notifications
- an auditable history of who did what to what in contract work
- the ability to search across the repository for contracts and documents including full text search
Another fundamental reason for selecting the R3 system was its configuration flexibility. The system is designed with built in configuration wizards that enable customers to change and modify the system to meet specific needs. This flexibility was going to be needed to meet their initial needs and support ongoing changes as their needs evolved.
The Result
The conversion happened quickly. The organization had more than 1,000 contracts to migrate. The majority of the documents were on paper. The contract data was added to the R3 system. Then, over the course of a couple of weeks, the organization scanned more than 5,000 paper documents, using inexpensive printer/scanners, into searchable, digital documents. These were programmatically added to the system in less than a day. This whole process took less than 1 month.
At the same time the R3 system was configured to support the different Federal, Legal and Commercial types of contract work. The business teams were involved in the process. They learned how to get work done, working together, in real time, while the system was configured to adapt to their way of working.
Within 2 months the organization had transitioned from a paper/manual situation into a digital workplace for contract management. They had gone from the “dark ages” to a modern, enlightened system. The new system made it very easy to access information because it brought all of the contract information together into a single digital view. And, it made it easy to participate in any and all processes across contract types via its standard process user experience.
The productivity of the contracts department team soared because other people across the organization now had direct access to information that they needed. They no longer had to go through them. This freed up a great deal of their time. They also now had a system to help them manage the work. The organizations’ productivity also soared because of the direct access to useful contract information and the fact that their review and approval processes were now digital, streamlined and automated.
They now have a modern, digital contract management system. It provides everyone across the organization with contract information based upon their needs. It has made contracts and contract work transparent and manageable. And, it has allowed this company to optimize the contract work for their particular needs.
Takeaway
Going from paper and manual to a digital workplace is a huge change, with big benefits. The productivity gains, lower costs, and reduction in risk are immediate. It is a much better way to work. Yet, as shown in this customer’s story it can be relatively easy to make the change.
Click here for more information on R3’s Contract Management solution.
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