Managing government contracts with disparate processes such as shared drives, email, disorganised documents, and disorderly spreadsheets can prove challenging and leave your organisation vulnerable to undue risk.  Public contract managers implementing such disparate contract management methods can transform their processes and maximise their budget by fiscal year-end by investing in a robust contract management software system that can seamlessly evolve with their organisations’ needs. Contract management professionals can streamline their processes with the help of an end-to-end government contract management software suite that centralises government contract administration services from requests to renewals.  Read on to learn how leveraging a centralised government contract management system with integrated eSourcing and eProcurement features can empower government contract management professionals to successfully administrate the many moving parts of their contracting processes.

Leverage a centralised government contracts database

Government contract managers hold a tremendous responsibility in upholding strict standards with stakeholders both domestically and internationally.  Considering the high level of responsibility public contract managers carry, relying on antiquated government contract management methods can cause contract management inefficiencies.

Fortunately, a leading contract management software can electronically centralise government contract information into a cohesive government contracts database – containing highly configurable reporting features, graphical dashboards, and milestone notifications for unparalleled contract visibility.  Additionally, a centralised contract lifecycle management (CLM) software can seamlessly integrate with MS Outlook and MS Word for streamlined contract processes – especially when managing various sub-contracts within ranging contract records.

Managing contracts can be a breeze with the help of a web-enabled contract management suite that grants necessary stakeholders fast access from virtually anywhere in the world with suitable internet access – making it easy to view government contracts online.  This can be especially beneficial when coordinating contracts with international counterparties.  Government source-to-contract management software offers a user-friendly interface with robust features such as:

• contract data tracking and contract analytics
• key date alerts and notifications
• risk assessment tools to analyse, manage, and mitigate risk
• automated contract writing with a pre-approved contract language library
• a centralised contract negotiation and approvals portal
• robust contract tracking tools.
• graphical search to track employee and vendor compliance.

Such robust features work together symbiotically to encourage low-friction public contract lifecycle automation along each stage of the contracting process – including initial requests, government contract awards, and renewals.

Integrate government eSourcing and bid management

Public contract managers should leverage a future-minded enterprise CLM software solution for holistic sourcing and vendor management.  Such integrations can streamline the bidding process from bid creation to award.

Leveraging integrated eSourcing software within a government contract management software suite can seamlessly streamline government sourcing processes with integrated, user-friendly bid management.  Public contract managers and procurement professionals can streamline sourcing processes with the help of the following robust e-sourcing tools:

• purchase requisitions
• order management
• budget approvals
• RFx templates
• clause libraries
• bid advertisements
• online vendor Q&A
• electronic bid submissions
• bid evaluation tools
• line-item bidding
• vendor response ratings and vendor awards
• document version control.
• electronic signatures
• searching and reporting.
• notifications and alerts.

Embracing e-sourcing software tools – including electronic RFPs – enables contract management professionals to streamline vendor awards, granularly delineate bid awards of line-items and reverse line-items to multiple vendors, and centralise stakeholder communication within a user-friendly Q&A portal.

Streamline government purchase order and spend management

Government contract management professionals can leverage purchase order management software for holistic asset lifecycle management and more informed purchasing decisions.  Reliable asset management software can help cut administrative costs, promote accountability, enhance communication and scale effectively.

Government contract administrators and procurement professionals can expedite their purchasing process with the help of easily selectable templates from a pre-approved clause library – which can eliminate data entry and centralise purchase orders.  Public organisations can track purchase order assets, quantities received, key dates and more.

With the ability to create a pre-approved catalogue, where items can be added or deleted, public purchasing can be streamlined – reducing internal requests for unnecessary purchase order approvals.  Public purchasing professionals can simply transfer a line item to their configured catalogue.  Integrated government purchase order management software offers unparalleled oversight with leading-edge tools that can track asset quantity, shrinkage, requestors, vendors and line items – helping public purchasers save time and money.

Expedite government contract management with Artificial Intelligence

Government contracting can be automated and simplified with the help of contract management artificial intelligence.  AI-Based contract management can empower public organisations agencies with leading-edge tools to enhance contract oversight, proactively identify opportunities, and manage risk.  Robust contract intelligence with machine learning can help maximise public contracts. 

Contract data identification and extraction

Artificial Intelligence can help save your organisation time when importing new contracts into a government contract management software system.  Contract intelligence can identify crucial data – such as key dates, clauses, emails, phone numbers, addresses, PII, PCI and more – to help categorise and automate data entry.  Contract intelligence with machine learning can identify and extract clauses from documents and host them within a government contract management software’s database so they can be easily identified in the future, should they appear again in a new contract creation or review.  Government contract management artificial intelligence can help government entities identify risk variables by delineating between newly introduced “good and bad” contract language, based upon configured rules-based sentiment.

Contract risk mitigation and risk management

With the help of AI contract management tools, public contract administrators can reduce contract risk, which can help maximise contract value.  AI contract management tools can identify potentially sensitive data, perform statistical analysis, and offer useful risk prevention recommendations in record time – which can be highly useful in the post contract award stage.  Government contract managers can leverage AI with machine learning to help automate government source-to-contract management that reshapes ordinary contracts into valuable assets for long-term government contracting success.

Contract Insight® from Four – your government CLM software solution

To maximise public contract management processes, government contract administrators can use an integrated software solution for contract lifecycle management, purchasing, and sourcing. Contract Insight from Four – named a Leader in CLM Software by Forrester – provides government contract managers with a one-stop-shop solution that seamlessly integrates contract lifecycle management, eSourcing, eProcurement, vendor management and purchase order management in a centralised software platform. 

Our trusted, award-winning, fully integrated government contract management software streamlines the contract management process with optimal governance, reduced friction, and high flexibility from contract requests to renewals.  Contract Insight’s user-friendly, robust, and scalable solution seamlessly integrates with mission-critical applications – including MS Office 365 and Google Workspace – for unified and seamless contract lifecycle management.  

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.