44 ■ Contract Management / September 2003
It is amazing how a single contract
can affect multiple departments
within an organization. For example,
depending on the type of contract,
business operations, procurement,
sales and marketing, legal, finance
and administration, risk management,
information technology, manufacturing,
and service delivery are just some
of the areas impacted. With this kind
of diversity, interaction among the
areas must be managed effectively.
For the contract manager to know
how the contract is performing,
he must have access to the continual
results of all elements pertaining
to the contract—performance, risk
management, deliverables, compliance,
financial, budgets and forecasting,
quality, and so forth.
The instant connectivity and seam-
less integration that has been intro-
duced by the Internet, Web services,
technologies like .NET, and other
e-business innovations has allowed
for multiple areas to be notified when
a portion of the contract pertaining
to their function needs attention.
ASHIF MAWJI is president and chief
executive officer of Upside Software, Inc.,
an enterprise contract management
software provider based in Edmonton,
Alberta, Canada. He is also the 2002
Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year
recipient (Prairies Region—Young
Entrepreneur), and was recently awarded
the Queen’s Golden Jubilee Medal. Mawji
is a member of the Financial Executives
International. Send comments on this
article to cm@ncmahq.org.
A b o u t t h e A u t h o r
Sit back, relax, and let your contract management software do the work.
BY ASHIF MAWJI
Business Management
Autopilot
September 2003 / Contract Management ■ 45
Thus, the contract manager’s job is
made easier with a tool such as con-
tract management (CM) software.
CM software today can be easily con-
figured to automatically “ping” the
various stakeholders based on rules
and processes established by the
company. The systems can govern
when to get human involvement based
on commodity codes being sold or
purchased, dollar values