We're undertaking a process to centralize the contract workspace creation process. Today it is reasonably decentralized where ~60 Strategic Sourcing users create their own contract workspaces. We face a number of challenges in the current environment because of it being centralized. Since workspace management isn't their primary function, the number of workspaces in draft and draft amendment climb into the hundreds. Managing this count to a lower number is very challenging. When workspaces are created and submitted into an approval flow, 'Contract Admin' (our team) are the first approvers on the flow to check for data integrity. We have to send a lot of workspaces back because they are filled out inaccurately. Often times people accidentally amend the wrong workspace.
As we start to think about centralizing the process, there are a number of things we have to consider. I'm really interested in understanding your process and how your system is configured to accomplish the centralized function.
1. How do you receive inbound requests for a contract? Via email to a group mailbox? Through a ticketing system? Through Contract Request? Is it in excel? Word?
2. When you receive the inbound request, how much information are you collecting? Too much and you may as well have them create it themselves!
3. What is your SLA upon receipt to then create the workspace?
4. Who owns the contract workspace on the overview tab? Is it a member of the centralized team? Or is it the author of the contract?
5. If the central creator stays as the workspace owner, how is the expiring notification process handled?
6. Did you make modifications to the team tab to accommodate this? Is the Sourcing owner there? Can you report on it?
7. What advice would you give us as we plan to roll out contract compliance?
8. Did you go back in history and load contracts to apply contract compliance to them? Or did you pick a point in time and only apply to that moving forward?
9. What other processes should we consider putting in place?