Before embarking on a Contract Management program, organizations should understand the value that transformation brings. Discover the importance of contract management and how to build the business case.
Only a little over 20 percent of organizations attempt to monitor or calculate the cost or benefits of contract management, according to When Technology Meets Humanity: The Future of Contract Management, a report Deloitte collaborated on with World Commerce & Contracting. That could be one reason why it’s hard for organizations to justify the cost of implementing a contract life cycle management (CLM) program.
It typically takes something more concrete than a leap of faith and some form of qualitative argument to convince the powers that be that CLM solutions are a wise investment. To ensure that your CLM program is capable of reducing costs and addressing the challenges of contract management in compelling ways, you will likely need to build a persuasive business case—or calculate the return on investment (ROI)—for that program.
Here are five keys to building your business case.
As with many things, greater investment can lead to greater reward with contract management transformation projects. Considering your organization’s tolerance for risk and potential savings in terms of time and resources is essential to enhancing benefits. This is why the scoping phase of a project and a detailed cost-benefit analysis are so critical. While there is a proclivity to build a business case that reduces the cost in order to get within budget more easily, an unintended consequence of this may be a reduction in long-term gains. Deloitte specialists can guide this process based on decades of experience with some of the world’s largest, most complex organizations and help you define and analyze a contract management transformation project that can drive both immediate and long-term value.