Contract Management as a Strategic Asset
On the surface, your company is thriving - with business partners worldwide, clients in every corner of the globe, and plans to build warehousing facilities in Asia and South America. Although things are getting more complex and dynamic, business is booming. You have a great feeling about how things are going until you enter the conference room to see your Chief Procurement Officer (CPO) and legal professionals staring at you to discuss an urgent issue. They have lost track of the end date for your logistics contracts, and some of those contracts expired. Your primary shipping partner wants to change the contract terms substantially, and it will cost tens of thousands of dollars to get back on track. Your thriving company has hit an unexpected hurdle. Your first response is to review the changes and develop a plan to get this relationship back on track. But you also wonder whether this might be the tip of the iceberg; if we lost sight of this agreement, are there more surprises lurking under the surface? So, you commission a thorough review of your contracting and contract obligation tracking process.
