The staff at Ardent Partners has written extensively about innovation in the supply management technology sphere over the last five years. During this time, we’ve seen the evolution of mobile platforms, mobile applications, and cloud-based software platforms that have enabled supply management personnel from sourcing to procurement to contracts to accounts payable to transform their day-to-day operations and move from the back office to the front office. Today, thanks to these technologies, supply management personnel can take contract management out-of-office, too.
Mobile Platforms – From Crawling to Walking
Mobile platforms have been the one of the most significant advances to hit the modern business world, and they have fueled the modern contract manager. The Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) of the nineties and early 2000s gave way to the Blackberry, which in 2007, gave way to the iPhone and Android smartphones. Small, sleek, and WiFi-enabled, users could access the internet, check and respond to emails, and deal with sudden out-of-office emergencies all from their phones. If these weren’t enough, iPhones and ‘droids were joined by iPads, notebooks, and tablets – part laptop computer and part mobile phone that allowed much of the same touch-screen/swipe functionality as a smartphone but with the display of a small laptop computer.
Mobile applications – From Walking to Running
To turn the page with mobility, applications needed to be developed that were purpose-built for mobility. In hindsight, the demand for mobile-enabled/mobile-friendly applications exploded with the popularity of mobile/smart devices. With small, user-friendly, wireless devices, end users could perform several crucial daily functions from wherever they could find a Wi-Fi signal, but they were limited by applications optimized for traditional desktop computing – particularly contract management tools, like contract creation, authoring, and editing.
Eventually, mobile-enabled contract management applications and suites of applications would be developed that would allow the modern contract manager to perform more of their work away from their desk. Dashboards, workbenches, and central repositories allowed end users to access, download, and edit contractual documents from these devices rather than remain tethered to their desktops or even their laptops. Something else was missing, though, that needed to elevate the modern, mobile contract manager to truly virtual capability.
SaaS – From Running to Maneuvering
When the cloud appeared on the horizon in 2010, few people knew that it would revolutionize the modern business world. Moving data, files, processing, software, and other elements to the cloud – a virtual computing network that has created on-demand software solutions – has become one of the best things since buttered bread. Whereas before, enterprises had to house these things on premise and on the workstations where their people worked, they can now move these things to the cloud to create a virtual, shared computing environment that is on-demand at virtually any time for anyone with the right credentials.
Contract managers, with the right solutions, can now manage virtually any part of the contract lifecycle in real time. By leveraging the trifecta of mobile platforms, mobile applications, and cloud-based Software-as-a-Solution (SaaS), contract managers can perform these and other functions from virtually anywhere:
- Access standard contract templates from a virtual workstation to create customizable contracts that can be authored and edited in real time – rather than downloaded to the platform, edited, and then emailed or resubmitted, necessitating tight version control;
- Collaborate with multiple parties to execute contracts and mitigate last minute issues;
- Submit contracts for approval through automated workflows, and receive electronically-signed documents that can be stored in central, digital repositories;
- Monitor contract process, execution, and completion to ensure compliance, and assign action items to all relevant parties;
- Set automatic alerts for when critical steps or events are approaching or have passed.
Mobile platforms, mobile applications, and cloud-based SaaS used together can enable virtual workforces or simply enable contract managers to break through contractual bottlenecks to facilitate faster transactions. And since SaaS is an outsourced technology solution, users and managers don’t need onsite maintenance, upgrades, and support – it’s all handled offsite by a third-party whose job it is to keep the service up and running 24/7, freeing in-house IT departments to perform other tasks and end-users to get highly-spec’d service.
Few people like to be called after business hours or on vacation with a business problem that only they can solve. But with mobile, cloud-based contract management solutions, end users and decision makers can be inconvenienced less, get the job done sooner, and go on their merry way.
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