So, based on our earlier tips, in this six-part series, you’ve got all your contracts in one place, organized. You’ve focused on the right ROI areas. And, for many people, you’ve worked hard to get executive buy-in up-front.
But to get support through the project’s life and drive business-wide value, make sure you also get cross-functional executive buy-in. A group of cross-functional executives can help you prioritize and react to changes. They can help filter out the noise and keep the project on track when things pop up like, “Hey, there’s this thing that happened last week. We need to stop everything and go solve this problem.”
Executive partnerships will make the contract management project more likely to succeed. They create a group of people looking at the same thing with an agreed-upon impact and plan—a recipe for success.
Now that you’ve got access and visibility solved. You’ve got the world’s best plan. You’ve met with users. And have executive buy-in. What’s the right cadence for communications? How do you keep things moving? How will you stay organized and prioritize?
At Pramata, we have a simple template for all of our customers. While there are more sophisticated ways to do this, this has been a proven way to organize the executive conversation. We strongly recommend engaging with executives at least every two weeks during the deployment. We also meet weekly or bi-weekly with our primary users. If there’s a secondary user group, it’s also important to include them.
What are the objectives we need to hit? Examples could include cleansing and centralizing all contractual documents or integrating the solution into CRM. What is the timeline for each goal? What are the sub-points to that? There’s always a detailed project plan, but it’s vital to align it to the objectives and work your way down.
We’ve been taking this approach with our customers for years and it has been a successful way to zero in on the highest impact, keep the project within budget, in scope, and provide value fast. This best practice perspective is an excellent example of keeping executives engaged, simply and effectively.
I hope this tip is handy as you consider your contract management challenges and leverage execs to set strategic focus, update weekly, and relentlessly prioritize. In my next post, we’ll explore our fifth and final tip: Dig Deeper on Contract AI, but if you’re ready to dig into all of our tips to fast value, check out this webinar, Quick Wins in Contract Management.
