Our cities, our councils and our public agencies can maximise ROI by investing in software tools for streamlined, robust and transparent contract management, purchasing, and sourcing for current and future needs. Here are four tools that can be used for simple, user-friendly and powerfully integrated government contract management, procurement and sourcing processes.
Comprehensive contract lifecycle management
Reduce costs, eliminate wasted time and ensure more efficient contract administration with a one-stop contract management solution for oversight of the entire contract lifecycle.
Advanced contract lifecycle management software supports government organisations with easy-to-use features for:
- enhanced contract data tracking and contract analytics
- key date notifications and alerts
- risk management and mitigation
- contract drafting and contract writing
- contract negotiation and review
- industry-specific contract-type tracking for government agencies.
Integrated sourcing and bid management
Government agencies can leverage the assistance of a scalable, enterprise solution for centralised sourcing and vendor management and faster bid creation and bid advertisement.
Electronic sourcing software used in tandem with an integrated contract management software solution supports comprehensive government sourcing and bid processes. Organisations can establish a winning sourcing, solicitation, and acquisition process with innovative features such as:
- purchase requisitions
- easy and fast document creation with bid templates and a dynamic clause library
- bid evaluations
- bid response ratings
- simplified contract awards
- comprehensive searching and reporting
- online vendor collaboration.
Say goodbye to paper-based RFP management with the help of an eSourcing software solution that simplifies supplier bid and RFP awards, provides greater control for awarding one or multiple vendors, and allows for better communication between suppliers and buyers with a Q&A portal.
AI-based contract management
Government contracting is transformed, automated and simplified with contract management AI. With AI-based contract management, agencies can systematically analyse contracts, and convert documents into building blocks for enhanced contract oversight, proactive opportunity identification and risk identification and mitigation. Powerful artificial intelligence backed by machine learning can make it easier to take advantage of smarter contracts.
Data entry automation helps reduce the time wasted on entering new contracts into software systems. Contract management software AI helps agencies identify key data such as dates, locations, phone numbers, emails, monetary values, counterparty information etc to eliminate the need for manual import of field data.
AI can help to pinpoint possible risk by analysing the text of a newly introduced contract document and identifying both good and bad language within a contract based on configured rules-based capability. An AI tool for contract management can also identify sensitive data, undergo statistical analysis and provide helpful risk prevention recommendations based upon real-time data.
Leverage AI tools to find key terms, conditions, legal phrases, clauses, and other legal text. Additionally, government organisations can use natural language processing tools, intelligent ranking of legal terms and phrases, fuzzy logic matching and structured data identification.
Integrated purchase order and spend management
Government organisations can use purchase order management software for full asset lifecycle management and better purchasing decisions. Leading asset management software can help cut administrative costs, improve accountability, enhance communication and scale efficiently and effectively.
Purchasing is streamlined when By requesting and creating purchase orders from templates from a clause library, organisations can easily streamline procurement and keep track of quantities, assets and dates. Less time is spent on tedious data entry, and purchase orders can be unified and consolidated.
Purchase order management is further enhanced with the ability to select items from leading suppliers by using online supplier catalogues. Time-wasting data entry is lessened with easy product catalogue creation – the easy transference of line items from a record into a catalogue.
Enjoy asset tracking and asset transparency with a solution that gives a view of orders, as well as where they are located. Tracking request details such as requestor, vendor, line items, and status, and asset quantity and shrinkage equips organisations with game-changing purchase order oversight.
Contract Insight from Four
Contract Insight is a cloud-hosted (SaaS) or deployed (on-premise) contract management solution. The acclaimed platform is trusted by thousands of professionals for their contract management, legal document management, procurement and sourcing needs. Used by many Fortune 500 companies, Contract Insight gives you real time visibility into your contracts. It doesn’t just shore up your security; it will help you meet contract compliance regulations, centralise your contract management and improve your overall contract administration process.
For more information, contact John O’Brien, CEO at Four Business Solutions, global business consultants and software integrators providing business processes improvements in Finance, Supply Chain and Operations, across a broad range of industries.
CobbleStone’s Contract Insight® has many user-friendly features that enable organizations to effectively manage contracts, purchase orders, bids, requisitions, and more. Easily leverage tools for managing requisitions, approvals, and awards, compliance management, key dates and budget alerts, calendar alerts, simplified vendor reporting, automated intelligent workflow, proper contract closeout, and online collaboration.
