White Paper. Contract Document Management with SharePoint. Conceive. Build. Succeed.

Transcription

1 White Paper Contract Document Management with SharePoint Nobody wants to be kept awake at night by a contract management nightmare. Contracts can be complex with multiple draft versions, signed copies, variations and supporting documents. Contracts can have long lifecycles and outlast the people involved directly in the contract negotiation, leaving you wondering if you have the right version of a contract document or who approved a variation. This White Paper outlines many of the issues associated with managing contract documentation and how SharePoint can be used to standardise processes, reduce risk and improve contract visibility. Conceive. Build. Succeed.

2 Contract Management Challenges Managing contract documentation can be difficult and complex for many reasons. The consequences of having the incorrect contract documentation can be in the best case embarrassing and in the worst case costly. It is often only when a dispute arises that the contract documents are needed and in these cases it is essential to have the correct version. Common contract document management issues include: Locating the correct version of a contract. Is it the copy saved on the file server common drive, does a copy exist on someone s desktop or has it been updated and ed without being saved back to the network? Managing variations to existing contracts. Is this the master version of the contract document or has a variation been issued since this version was created? Does compliance documentation link back to a particular variation? Knowing when a contract is due for renewal or is about to expire. Which contracts should we start negotiating and when should we start doing this? Ensuing the correct terms of business have been used. Has this contract been created using the latest version of the template, or has someone cut and pasted from an obsolete document or template? Ensuring the correct person approve the contract before it was signed? Did the legal team review the contract? Did the person who signed off have permission to do so? Is there an audit trial to show who signed the contract document off before it was presented to a customer? Ensuring consistency when large numbers of contracts are involved and/or multiple contract managers. Is everyone following the correct procedure? Faulkner Information Services research estimates that 10% of signed copies of all executed contracts are lost. The legal or financial consequences of lost contracts or using the incorrect version of a contract can be substantial.

3 SharePoint Document Management Features SharePoint is a platform with functionality to build document and content centric solutions. Out of the box functionality is flexible and customizable, given users the ability to extend the capabilities themselves. SharePoint is tightly integrated with Microsoft Office, making it the number one choice for document management solutions globally. SharePoint document management features include: Document Libraries containers for holding documents. Meta data data about individual documents contained in a library. Information about the document can be recorded, driving the ability to search, sort and collate documents. Views custom views of documents within a library. Meta data can be used to create filtered views of documents relevant to a defined criteria e.g. documents modified by the current user, for a specific meta data field, date ranges etc Version control the ability to store multiple versions of the same document e.g. version 1 (full contract), version 1.1 (draft for circulation), version 1.2 (draft for approval) and version 2.0 (final version). Approval Workflows auditable workflows for document approval. This can be linked to version control e.g. when a major version is checked in, initiate an approval workflow before making the document visible to other users. Alerts users can subscribe to alerts on documents or document libraries ensure they know when documents of interest are updated or new items are added etc. Security documents and document libraries can be secured ensuring only those people authorised to view or contribute to a document can do so. Collaboration Microsoft Word 2010 or later features co- authoring, allowing multi- user editing of documents stored in SharePoint. Up to 16 people can simultaneously edit the same document. Search Full text searching of any content stored in SharePoint. Microsoft Dynamics CRM can use SharePoint as a document repository, allowing seamless linking of contract documents to associated CRM entities. CRM data can also be surfaced within SharePoint, allowing users to view data and documents from both systems in a single view. In this scenario SharePoint becomes the single source of truth for contract documents. SQL Server Reporting Services also supports integration with SharePoint, providing a method for viewing reports containing financial or other KPI data related to a contract in a one place.

4 Contract Management with SharePoint Many of Canterbury Business Solutions clients use SharePoint to manage contract documentation. Tailoring a solution to meet the needs and budget of individual clients is a key advantage of SharePoint. Small Business clients often use SharePoint Foundation to build simple but functional solutions with out licensing costs. Standard and Enterprise editions of SharePoint provide more advanced document management features as well as an extensive range of other capabilities including Business Intelligence, document automation, advanced search and collaboration features. How do our clients uses SharePoint for managing contracts? Document Classification with meta data and content types. Each contract must have a unique identifier that is stored as meta data against each document related to the contract, including drafts, signed off contracts, variations and compliance documentation etc. Improving visibility by creating custom document library views. The contract manager often wants to see a list of contracts due for renewal in the next 90 days and whether work has started on the renewal process. Meta data is used to record the relevant details. Managing versions via SharePoints version control. Draft documents can be edited without making them visible to end- users. Document owners can see old versions. Creating auditable processes using workflow. SharePoint document approval workflows are used to ensure final documents are signed- off by the correct person and that an audit trail is for approvals of documents and versions exists. Making SharePoint the authoritative source of contract documents, reducing the number of uncontrolled documents in circulation. This also allows the centralised management of contract document templates.

5 Conclusion Contract document management solutions standardise processes, reduce legal risks, improves compliance, lowers administration overheads and provides great visibility through out the contract life cycle. SharePoint can address many of the common issues associated with managing contract documentation using out of the box functionality. Key features including version control, meta data, approval workflows and alerting can be combined to build a solution that is flexible, extendable and works seamlessly with Microsoft Office. SharePoint s document management capabilities aren t limited to contract management. It is widely used for managing documents of all kinds from meeting agendas and minutes to policies and RFP s. Successful SharePoint document management implementations focus on specific document centric business functions. Trying to replace the file server with SharePoint is a mammoth task and rarely succeeds. We recommend starting with a discrete document management problem such as contract documentation before implementing document management more widely. Having said that, it is also important to take global requirements into account when designing the underlying information architecture. SharePoint comes in several flavours. Organisations with small budgets can get started with SharePoint Foundation. Those with more complex requirements or who want to use other advanced functionality can choose either the Standard or Enterprise editions on premise or cloud and hosted options. To find out more about SharePoint and managing documents and to learn more about our practical implementation recommendations, please contact the Canterbury Business Solutions team.

6 Building the System To implement a simple Contract Management Solution in SharePoint Standard or Enterprise Edition use the following steps: 1. Create a new SharePoint Site (the Team Site template is a good starting point) 2. Enable the Document Sets Site Collection Feature 3. Create a Document Library a. Under Library Settings, Advanced enable Content Types b. Add the Document Set Content Type to the library c. Create Content Types for each of the types of documents you would like to manage. Each content type can have a unique set of metadata fields a document template. Use the Document Set as the parent Content Type: i. Contracts ii. Variations iii. Tender/RFP/RFQ documents iv. Etc d. Make sure your meta data includes things like Contract Start Date, Review Date etc. This will be useful when creating views. 4. Make sure the Document Set content type has been added to the library (from Library Settings, under Content Types) a. Edit the Document Set Content Type and add any global metadata (applies to all items that might be stored e.g. ContractID) this will be inherited by each Content Type in the library. 5. Create Views on the document library. Try some of the following View settings: a. Filter By: use the review date to show items under review in the next 90 days b. Group By: group contracts together by supplier 6. Well done, you now have a basic solution to demo concepts. Advanced features To make the solution more scalable try implementing some additional SharePoint features: 1. Content Type Hub allows the same content types to be shared across multiple document libraries and to be managed from a central point. 2. Managed Metadata create a Term Store and build a taxomy that extends the solution to other types of documents. 3. Enable version control on the library. 4. Use Workflow to add approval functionality. 5. Turn on alerting to keep stakeholders informed of new or changed items. 6. Enabled the Document ID Site Collection Feature to add unique document ID s.