Novatus For: Procurement/Sourcing

Time consuming and resource-intensive contracting cycles are costly and have a dramatic impact on the effectiveness of sourcing and procurement groups. The following factors often contribute to this challenge:

• Over dependency on ad hoc, recycled and counterparty contracts
• High-use of non-standard terms and conditions (lack of a terms library)
• Non-standard and manual workflows
• A lack of transparency, or limited visibility into the existing contract portfolio
• Difficulty implementing and enforcing sourcing policies

The Novatus solution provides a secure, on-demand platform that enables the optimization of resource allocation while streamlining contracting processes. Some key capabilities include:

• The ability to standardize and automate contracting workflows based on role, contract value and other key variables
• The automation of contract creation from your contract templates
• The automation and structuring of contracting policies and best practices, such as pre-approvals, compliance measures and communications

With limited resources and visibility into existing contracting activities, Sourcing and Procurement teams often find it difficult to implement and manage effective buying strategies across the enterprise. As a result, they are forced to limit scope, which not only impacts their effectiveness, but can lead to control gaps, missed savings opportunities and increased operational costs.

The Novatus solution provides a platform that enables your sourcing and procurement team(s) to structure and automate strategy, policy and process across your organization. The resulting transparency and control allow for dramatically improved oversight, while contracting activities are appropriately aligned to responsibility, role and expertise. As a highly scalable, on-demand contract management solution, Novatus Contracts can be deployed in a phased approach, minimizing the impact on your existing resources while allowing you to immediately gain benefits from the solution.

In order to maximize leverage during sourcing initiatives, it is essential to have access to comprehensive and accurate historical purchase data. However, in many organizations this capability is lacking, most often for the following reasons:

• Buy-side data is highly decentralized, located in multiple systems or in spreadsheets making it difficult and time-consuming to collect and analyze
• Purchasing efforts are not coordinated, with many departments independently buying from the same supplier or buying the same product from multiple suppliers
• Existing contract renewals and expirations are poorly managed due to high volumes, limited resources and insufficient advanced notification

The Novatus solution addresses the issue of under-leveraged buying with the following capabilities:

• A single, central repository for all contract-related data and documents with full search and report capabilities, allowing quick and effective access to historical contract and supplier data
• Functionality such as automated internal controls and workflows offer better control, improved oversight of existing activities and ultimately, better data for future sourcing activities
• Contract expiration and notice alerts provide advanced notification of upcoming contract expirations and renewals, allowing for ample time to plan for renewal or sourcing activity
• Integration with your financial systems allows contracts and contract data to be stored alongside real-time transactional data, improving analytical capabilities

Recycled, ad hoc and counterparty contracts not only add significant time to the contract drafting and review process, but also increase risk to the firm. In instances where firms have standard contract templates, they are difficult to manage without a structured platform containing the necessary functionality, such as version management, automated contract creation and integrated workflow capabilities.

With fully enabled contract creation capabilities, the Novatus solution provides functionality that will allow you to quickly automate your contract templates and will have your team generating contracts from standard templates in a matter of weeks. Designed to grow with you, this functionality can be activated when you need it. Some key features include:

• System controls that ensure each time a new contract is created, the correct contract template version is used
• Integration with workflow and versioning functionality, allowing for drafts and final versions to be automatically routed for review and approvals
• An intuitive wizard interface that guides the end-user through the process of creating new contracts from contract templates, based on specific scenarios

Without effective contract research and reporting capabilities, sourcing and procurement projects become difficult to complete, time consuming and costly. File cabinets, paper files, spreadsheets and antiquated or homegrown contract management systems simply do not provide the transparency required for effective research and reporting resulting in a lack of actionable business intelligence.

As the central repository for all contract-related data and documents with full search and report capabilities, the Novatus solution resolves this challenge. Some related feature include:

• An intuitive interface that empowers end-users of all levels to quickly locate key contract data and documents across the contract portfolio
• A robust reporting capability allows for libraries of reports to be created, shared and scheduled for automatic delivery in Adobe Acrobat or Excel formats
• An intuitive reporting wizard walks users through the process of creating new reports, enabling reporting capabilities to be pushed out to all departments that rely upon contract data

Contracting activities require effective communication, collaboration and coordination between the different functions and departments within an organization. Most organizations rely on corporate email to accomplish this, but often it falls short. Confusion over contract draft versions, responsibilities and miscommunications can lengthen contracting cycles, increase risk to the firm and cause frustration among contracting associates.

The Novatus Contracts solution provides functionality that improves the control of information between the different contracting groups, while facilitating communication, collaboration and coordination. Some key features include:

• Standardized, scenario-based workflows that ensure the different stakeholders are brought into the process at the appropriate stage
• A single, on-demand, central repository that allows all team members to collaborate on the same contract record, on-line and in real-time
• The ability to store notes and other key records for historical reference and discovery
• Embedded messaging and email records, which are searchable and reportable

If your firm is operating globally, why aren’t your sourcing departments? While there are clear legal reasons for operating regionally, a firm can reduce costs and leverage commodity/category knowledge if contracts and contract data is shared in a central, controlled and secure environment. Furthermore, it is essential that the home office understand its overseas contractual obligations and the regulatory environments in which they are governed; so associated risks can be effectively mitigated.

The highly secure, on-demand Novatus solution enables your organization to leverage sourcing and procurement resources globally, managing access regionally and on a “need to know” basis while providing the transparency necessary to mitigate risks. Some of the key features include:

• An on-demand central repository for all contract-related data and documents with full search and report capabilities, enabling global contract transparency
• The ability to perform contracting workflows with pre-defined and ad hoc global negotiation teams
• Configuration of regional requirements and internal controls, ensuring global and local compliance