E BUSINESS BY NORA FEUERSTEIN AND LYNN CORNWELL Nextance Contract

E-BUSINESS BY NORA FEUERSTEIN AND LYNN CORNWELL Nextance Contract Insight™: A Shortcut to Contract Management WHAT CONTRACTS EXPIRE IN THE NEXT 90 DAYS? HOW WELL are your suppliers and partners performing against their service-level agreements? Are you taking advantage of all contractual discounts and incentives, and if not, what is that costing you? Which contracts expired or autorenewed without being renegotiated? How well are you performing against your own service-level agreements in contracts to your customers? You need real-time answers to these key questions and quickly! Like any other enterprise-class technology, many contract management solutions present a double-edged sword. To get the ambitious benefits we hear about—from risk management to contract language standardization and fully automated compliant processes—the implementation of the solution can be complex and lengthy, given how far-reaching contracts and their related processes are throughout the enterprise. This also means that return on investment can often be farther out on the time horizon, making companies hesitant to start on the contract management path in the first place. Businesses are demanding quicker results as well as easier implementations that integrate into more of their existing IT investments. The best marketing and proposal efforts are only as good as the resultant contract. Recognizing these market challenges, one company is offering an approachable, low-risk solution to introduce contract performance management (CPM) to the enterprise. Nextance, Inc., founded in 2000 and based in Silicon Valley, California, recently launched its Nextance Contract Insight software, bundled with QuickStart Deployment professional services, that puts you on the fast track to managing your contractual relationships and obligations. Creating Order and Intelligence Out of Chaos In most companies, contracts and associated documents are likely spread far and wide across a hodgepodge of locations, file cabinets, personal computers, network drives and servers, and beyond. Nextance Contract Insight consolidates all these dispersed documents into a single centralized repository, putting you on the path to visibility into and control over your contracts within 30 to 45 days—compared to months, if not a year or more, with other implementations typical to the industry. But more than merely a database, Nextance Contract Insight’s searching and reporting capabilities are first class, so you’re able to quickly pull up the business intelligence you need, and answer those key questions that can determine your company’s present and future success. Nextance Contract Insight lets you quickly locate terms, obligations, and high-risk language, and to save time, you can save searches you do regularly. For further analysis and manipulation, you can also easily export the results of your searches to a spreadsheet or PDF. Additionally, the Nextance Contract Insight solution is able to automatically set rules and notifications based on expiration dates, milestones, amendments, terminations, renewals, or other terms—allowing you to proactively make sure the right people know when an important contract event is soon to occur. With such deep data at your fingertips, Nextance Contract Insight enables you to proactively manage both supplier performance and your performance to your customers, which impacts the bottom line. You’re able to measure and benchmark performance directly against the actual contracts, rather than relying on information fed to you that may be incomplete or already outdated. And, critical for auditing and financial reporting, you’re able to monitor whether all parties are in compliance with contract terms as well as with applicable legal regulations, all throughout the entire life of the contract. Reviews are written under a byline and express the opinion of the authors. NCMA and CM do not necessarily endorse or support any vendor profiled/reviewed in the EB corner. Anyone interested in reviewing e-business vendors should contact the assistant editor at cm@ncmahq.org. Nextance QuickStart Deployment and a Faster Path to ROI Much of the new solution’s value also lies in Nextance’s QuickStart Deployment bundle of professional services. These services include software installation, customer- 60 ■ Contract Management / May 2006 E - B U S I N E S S specific agreement template configuration, deployment, system and application administrator training, as well as documentation and user guides. First-year software maintenance and other standard support services are also part of the package, designed to fully implement Nextance Contract Insight. As the only application in its industry built entirely on XML technology, this unique architecture creates a most flexible, extensible system for capturing, analyzing, and actively managing contracts. With Nextance Contract Insight as the first small step, enterprises can start with capabilities in a single department and then grow across the enterprise, at their own pace, to build out a complete CPM system. All this adds up to a smarter contract management strategy, faster return on investment and a faster time-tovalue. According to Nextance, its large customers typically see returns within a few months—again, in contrast to an industry average of a year or more. “Enterprises today are demanding quick wins, out-of-thebox capabilities, fast deployments, and predictable results from their software investments,” explained Kyle Bowker, president and chief executive officer at Nextance. “We are leading the way for companies to more easily prioritize and justify their investment in contract performance management by overcoming a key perception that enterprise technology deployments can be overwhelming, lengthy and quickly balloon in terms of time and money required.” A Web-based seminar, “Webinar,” presentation on Nextance Contract Insight, including a demonstration, can be viewed at www.nextance.com. CM About the Reviewers NORA FEUERSTEIN, FELLOW, is director of Omega, and LYNN CORNWELL is an SAIC project control specialist. Both are in the NCMA Aloha Chapter. Send comments about this article to cm@ncmahq.org. NCMA’s Educational Conference Calendar Attendance at NCMA’s conferences offers you: n n n n n ways to stay in touch with contemporary issues, exposure to best practice models, opportunities for networking with those in the same field, career growth programs, and points toward certification. July 27–28, 2006 44th Annual Aerospace and Defense Contract Management Conference Hyatt Regency Orange County (near Disneyland) Garden Grove, CA December 4 –5, 2006 25th Annual Government Contract Management Conference Sheraton Premiere at Tysons Corner Vienna, VA April 23–25, 2007 World Congress Hyatt Regency Dallas Dallas, TX For more information, please contact Michelle Bourke, CMP, at 571-382-1135, or visit our Web site at www.ncmahq.org. May 2006 / Contract Management ■ 61