Dashboard

Upon initial login, users are taken to their personal, highly functional, configurable dashboard. The dashboard provides the ability for users to create widgets with visual data and statistics for easy viewing and management. Users can also quickly navigate to Contract information, Company information, monitor Events and manage Tasks from the Dashboard.

MyPlace

Available from the main navigation, MyPlace is a User space designed to provide immediate access to the User’s system information including, Dashboard, MyEvents, MyPeople, MyTasks and Global Documents.

Obtain a Global View

Enable your enterprise of diverse Buy and Sell-Side users to co-exist in a single system and manage their contracts through filtered views and secure groups while providing executive level views into every contract enterprise-wide.

Manage YOUR Contracts

The Novatus Contracts User Centric interface provides customizable profiles, and includes browse screens that are definable for every user, providing an outstanding user experience and more efficient management of information.

Manage Your Information

Maintaining accurate central records can be difficult. Capture, collect and maintain master records for suppliers and/or customers. Easily create customized profiles and dynamic forms to manage and report on specific supplier and customer data. Integrate to your CRM or Financial system to automatically maintain Master Supplier and Customer Profile records ensuring the highest accuracy of data, and elimination of duplicate data entry.

Mergers, Acquisitions & Company Name Changes

Keeping track of the constantly changing environment resulting from mergers and acquisitions can be time consuming and complex. To make this process effortless, Novatus Contracts provides a number of helpful Wizards. One of your suppliers acquires another? Novatus Contracts provides an easy to navigate, Acquisition Wizard which automatically moves all records from the current company to the acquiring company, storing a history of the acquisition on the company profiles that is available for searches and reports.

Supplier Compliance and Performance Documentation

Track and report on the diversity status for suppliers and maintain all certification documentation. Create automated system Event Notices distributed to internal and/or external recipients to manage certification expiration and distribute supplier performance evaluations/ scorecards via automated system notices.

Checklists and Task Management

Provide a controlled yet easy to use method to create and monitor compliance related action times. Create custom compliance checklists with data fields and pre-defined values, dates, and responsible parties. Users can be required to complete compliance items during any stage of the contracting process. Users can also select and create ad-hoc or pre-defined Tasks for any other task or compliance related process. System views and reports provide verification of compliance and tracks Tasks by status.

Manage Contacts with Your People Book

Manage every internal and external contact in a single integrated address book. Link all your contacts (“People”) to Companies, Contracts, Events and Messaging for easy access, reporting and management. Link internal and external People to specific roles and functions related to Companies, Contracts and Events.

Additional Company Names

A company changes its name? The Name Change Wizard allows the user to easily update the new name and place the old name in the Additional Names Section as a "Formally Known As" (F.K.A), and stores the history of the name change on the Company Profile. Need to keep track of multiple company names? List and track "Also Known As" (AKA), and "Doing Business As" (DBA), entries to allow your users to easily find the correct Company Profile, eliminating duplicate entries.

Manage the "Contract Family"

Contracts are often complex and constructed of many documents (Masters, Schedules, SOWs, Amendments, Exhibits, etc.) and include the addition of new contract documents over the term of the relationship. Novatus Contracts provides easy to navigate functions which organize your contract agreement types, creating a clear "hierarchical tree" view of the Contract Family. Contract Profiles and related Documents are linked together providing easy navigation to all contracts in the family. With Novatus Contracts, users will always understand the relationship between contract components, eliminating confusing and time consuming reviews of related contractual terms that impact your organization.

Multi-Party, Multi-Entity Contracts

Do you deal with Multi-Party Contracts? Need to track all the relationships between the parties? Novatus Contracts provides a superior methodology to managing these complex contracts with an intuitive, easy to use selection capability, as well as easy reporting. Do you manage agreements with your internal entities? Novatus Contracts provides the capability to seamlessly track all of your Intra-Company contracts along with your other Counter-Party agreements.

Event Management

Contracts have many term types (i.e. perpetual, fixed, auto-renewing, annual) which typically have very specific provisions for termination or renewals. There are also endless examples of date driven “action items” that must be managed. Multiply that by thousands of contracts and it’s virtually impossible to manage contract rights and obligations and company events manually. Novatus Contracts provides a sophisticated events engine. Event email notices are informative and provide a visually intuitive summary for event owners and other users to quickly view, understand and respond. Scheduled system notifications generate automated recurring and escalating email and mobile device notices. Events can go to any internal or external recipient and users can also elect to “Subscribe” to Events.

Contract Assignment Wizard

Have a contract that has been assigned? Users can check the Contract Profile and Document to review the Assignment Terms to ensure Assignments are permitted. The system also provides an easy to navigate Assignment Wizard that moves the Contract Profile and all associated data and documents to the new company, keeping all the information and documents intact. The Contract History section automatically stores a record of the Assignment with a date/time stamp and user information for audit, historical search, and reporting processes.

Unlimited Flexibility with Novatus Dynamic Forms

Novatus Contracts provides unlimited flexibility to create, capture, store and report on your Counter Party and Contract data. Dynamic Forms can be linked to specific contract types for capture of specific data and/or report and compare contractual terms and data across the enterprise. Known as one of the key differentiators of the Novatus system, Dynamic Forms strike the perfect balance between flexibility and structure. Your System Administrators can create forms in just minutes - it requires no programming or follow up services to maintain. The Novatus Contracts relational database organizes Dynamic Forms as a one-to-one relationship so that reporting on the new forms becomes available immediately and simply. The power is truly in the user community with this highly intuitive user interface.

Mobile Contracting

You’re on the golf course or in a cab, you need to see a contract, no problem, you have Mobile Contracting. Novatus Contracts is Mobile - providing users with the ability to view and perform functions via their smart phones. Instantly get Events, Messages, Tasks, Documents and review Companies and Contracts wherever you are. Mobile Contracting provides a whole new way to look at your contracts, giving users the ability to immediately obtain critical Information from any location worldwide.

System Efficiency / Administration

Role based user administration provides very efficient user creation and management. Create User Roles that contain specific privileges and Group security access rights. Each time a new User or Security Group is added, system administrators are able to update the User Role automatically providing permissions to every user as required, quickly and accurately. Managing hundreds of users with Novatus Contracts takes minutes, streamlining internal system administration.

Speed Up Data Entry

Quick Tips "fly over" system fields and picklists and are designed to provide definitions and user instructions. Utilization of Quick Tips speeds up data entry and increases accuracy of data. Power Users can easily add Quick Tips to all system fields and drop down values.

Document Management

Most corporations have thousands of contract related documents scattered across the enterprise. Access to these critical documents is arguably the most important aspect in getting control of your contracts. Regulatory requirements also reinforce the reality that electronic data management ranks as a top priority for corporate leadership, legal, accounting and audit. Your contracts system is an essential component of the corporate data-retention policy providing an automated system to house and report on corporate trading relationships and transactions. Novatus takes our clients from shared drives and hard copy files to a proven and documented contract document control process. Upload, import, store, retrieve, download, print and manage versions for every document, enterprise wide. Novatus also provides the option to store documents in our system or easily integrate to your in-house document management system.

Financial Management via Payments

Capture, store and display payment totals in the easy to use Payment Stream section. Automated Reporting compares negotiated terms to actual payments preventing the loss of negotiated savings. Provide management with clear, concise reports that outline financial commitments and revenues. The Novatus Contracts Payments section is also a target touch point for integration to your financial system enabling full automation of financial payment and revenue tracking.

Eliminate Islands of Data with Integration

Thousands of records containing supplier and customer information, contractual risks and obligations, and financial commitments are contained in your contracts system. This valuable information impacts all aspects of the organization. Integrate Novatus Contracts to your other enterprise applications (i.e. ERP, Financial, CRM) to gain even better insight into your trading relationships.. Utilizing web services technology, Novatus Contracts is platform independent and can integrate to any other application regardless of the type and/or platform. Novatus Contracts uses Web Services as the core method of communication between the application and the database. This process allows the system to have one single consistent method of communication from the database to the application and to any other type of system. Using the same logic, rules and language to communicate to other systems as our application uses to talk to our database, makes integration a dramatically simpler process.

Business Intelligence / Streamlined Reporting

Getting your contracts in the system is half the battle; it’s getting the data out that provides the real win. Designed to provide usable Business Intelligence to a broader section of the business, the Novatus report engine is comprehensive, yet very easy to use. The report creator provides wizard driven step-by-step instruction allowing users to easily run system standard and/or ad-hoc reports. Reports can be generated in HTML or quickly exported into Excel and PDF formats. The Novatus report engine is built on modern Java and Web frameworks providing sophistication and intuitive reporting capabilities. Novatus Contracts reporting delivers simple and sophisticated reports providing all levels of management with clear and concise information regarding all of your trading relationships.

Messaging / Communications

Send email Messages from the Novatus Contracts system to any email recipient. Create message threads to generate and store a series of linked communications. Users can also elect to attach documents to the Message. System users receive an email with a link to the system Message where they can quickly reply. Messaging provides a secure system to create and store critical communications.

Projects

Manage projects through every stage of the procure-to-pay process and sales contracting process. Create, store and manage all aspects of your Projects in a central location. Projects can be linked to an unlimited number of Companies, Contracts and Documents.

Auto Import Feature

System administrators have the ability to auto-import data to Companies, Contracts, and Dynamic Profiles. The Auto Import feature can dramatically reduce time consuming and error prone data entry for ongoing data migration projects.

Milestones

Monitor, complete and enforce Milestones across your Contracts and Projects by utilizing Milestone management. Electronic notices can be generated from Milestone “trigger fields” such as threshold driven values, dates, and performance-based deliverables. Manage and monitor Milestones via browse screens, Reports and Widgets.

Deliverables (Products/Services)

Whether your contracts are buy side or sell side (or both), you can manage and report on every single Product and Service with Deliverables. Sort and view Deliverables in your Novatus Browse Screens. Link Deliverables to volume, value and date-based “triggers” that provide automatic notices to users and/or other systems (i.e. Financial Systems) to ensure compliance with delivery, payments, and terms across the enterprise. Sell side users can auto-import and link Deliverables to corporate product and services data to create and manage contracts in an automated, efficient and structured method.

Workflow

Improve operational efficiencies and control with the easy to use workflow engine. Workflows are generated from Companies, Contracts, and Projects with the ability to attach documents. Users are presented with intuitive workflow steps based on your user defined workflow processes. Administrators use the flexible and highly configurable workflow creation tool to build and manage workflows.

Payment Forecast Enhancements

Track payments and revenues with the Novatus Contracts payment forecasting. Users can select the payment frequency (annually, quarterly, monthly) and enter the payment amount and Novatus Contracts will create your financial payment stream which includes the payment dates and amounts. Enforce compliance with capped percent increases by entering payment forecasts based on not to exceed capped fees. Ensure payments and revenues are in compliance with contractual terms through integration to your financial system and the Novatus Contracts reporting tool by comparing your contractual payment amounts to actual payments. These features will be available in the July, 2009 release of Novatus Contracts. December, 2009 enhancements will include the ability to generate automated system notices based on date and value driven triggers (i.e. send a notice to contracts, finance or accounts payable recipients if the total value exceeds x).

Contract Creation

The Novatus Template based Contract Creation functionality enables your users to Request, Create and Manage your company’s Standard Contracts. The Contract Creation Wizard provides a user definable, rules driven question and answer session based on your terms and process for Creation of your Contracts in MSWord and/or Adobe PDF formats. System administrators import your MSWord based contract templates for configuration in Novatus Contracts. Utilize the Novatus Approval Workflow Engine to route contracts for internal approvals and to your external counter-parties, automatically storing and managing all versions of the agreement.

Approvals

Create, manage and track Approvals through all phases of your contracting and business processes using the Novatus Approval Workflow Engine. Create and launch pre-defined and ad-hoc Approval Gateways. Approval Workflows are system definable and provide highly structured and controlled approval processes. Power Users can override the Approval Workflows as needed with proper security permissions. Approvals can be sent to one or many individuals simultaneously and/or in a sequence. System Dashboards and Reporting provide immediate tracking of all Approvals by Status.

Dashboard Enhancements

Dashboard enhancements include additional options to create charts, graphs and lists. Create "Widgets" that include statistical contract data. Dashboard enhancements and new Widgets will be provided as ongoing enhancements to the Novatus Contracts system.

Mobile Contracting Enhancements

Mobile Contracting enhancements include the ability to receive, view and perform Workflow Approval functions and respond to and/or close Events and Tasks. Novatus also plans to release a full Mobile Edition in 2010.

Advanced Reporting Enhancements

An advanced report writer provides user based creation of charts and tables via a streamlined user interface. Create sub-reports for sophisticated data requirements. The Novatus Contracts automated Report Scheduler provides the ability for users to schedule system reports for distribution to any email recipient on a single and/or recurring basis.

MyCalendar

MyCalendar is a user based calendar that provides clickable views of the user’s Event Notices, Tasks and Approval /Workflow items. Calendar entries are color-coded allowing users to easily view and manage their calendar items.

Clause Library

Store and manage your approved standard and alternate Contract Clauses used during contract creation and negotiation. The Novatus Clause Library provides access to view and efficiently update contract clauses with a single point of maintenance.