Contract Management

Novatus Contract Management – Efficiency. Flexibility. Performance. Control

Regardless of industry or size, contracts are among the most important documents managed across the enterprise.  Contractual documents are created, negotiated and managed for all mission critical business purposes including procurement, sales, intellectual property, real estate property and information technology.   Analysts estimate 60-80% of all business to business transactions are governed by a contractual agreement. The average Fortune 500 corporation maintains 20,000 to 40,000 active contracts.  Contract documents dictate the financial, business and legal terms and define the relationships between suppliers and customers.  Proper visibility, control and analysis are critical components in effective corporate governance and overall management best practices.  

Enterprise Contract Management Solution with High User Adoption

The Novatus solution strikes the perfect balance between structure and flexibility.  As an enterprise contract management system, Novatus is architected for enterprise use across all divisions while also providing each department and their group of users with tailored views and system configuration based on their unique contract types.  For example; IT Procurement users have access to create, view and manage IT related contractual agreements while Sales users have access to create view, and manage sell-side agreements for their specific region or territory.

Enterprise Control with User Centric Flexibility

Enable your enterprise of diverse buy and sell side users to co-exist in a single system and manage their contracts through system configurable filtered views and security groups.  Provide designated management executives with visibility into every contract enterprise-wide.  The Novatus Contracts user centric interface provides configurable browse screens that are configurable for every user, providing an outstanding user experience and more efficient management of information.  Available from the main navigation, MyPlace is a is available from the main navigation menu and provides each user with immediate access to; MyContracts, MyEvents, MyPeople, MyTasks and Global Documents. MyPlace is another key feature that provides an organized and efficient management tool for the user community.

Dashboard

Upon initial login, users are taken to their personal, highly functional, configurable dashboard. The Dashboard provides the ability for users to create widgets with visual data and statistics for easy viewing and management.  Users can also quickly navigate to Contract information, Company information, monitor Events and manage Tasks from the Dashboard.

Event Management

Contracts have many term types (i.e. perpetual, fixed, auto-renewing, annual) which typically have very specific provisions for termination or renewals. There are also endless examples of date driven “action items” that must be managed. Multiply that by thousands of contracts and it’s virtually impossible to manage contract rights and obligations and company events manually or in excel based formats. Novatus Contracts provides a sophisticated events engine. Event email notices are informative and provide a visually intuitive summary for event owners and other users to quickly view, understand and respond. Scheduled system notifications generate automated recurring and escalating email and mobile device notices.  Users can also elect to “Subscribe” to Events for Companies and Contracts they are involved in monitoring.

Event Notices are in use by Novatus clients who automate notifications to internal and external recipients.   Procurement users create automated Events to distribute annual notices for expiration of Supplier Insurance Certificates or Diversity Certifications.  Sending the automated Event to the internal business user and external supplier streamlines the business process.  Users can elect to auto attach Documents (the current insurance certificate or contractual agreement) to any Event Notice.  Sales users create automated Events to distribute to internal contracts users and field sales representatives.  By providing 90-120 days notice prior to client renewals, the sales and contracting professionals are able to pro-actively negotiate better client renewal terms and sell additional products and services. 

Event Calendar

Novatus Contracts provides a User based Event Calendar to manage every Company and Contract date “Event”.   The Event Calendar provides multiple views (i.e. daily, monthly, and annual) with color coded entries that designate Event Expirations, Tasks or Approval Workflows the User has due on a specific date.  The Event Calendar allows each User to click on and drill down into the date based Event and each Company and Contract and Document Image providing sophisticated yet easy to perform Event Management.

Contract Creation

Providing control over how your contracts are created across the enterprise is a key advantage in implementing a contract management system.   The Novatus system balances control with ease of use in providing a highly configurable and easy to use Contract Creation system.

The Novatus Template based Contract Creation functionality enables your users to Request, Create and Manage your company’s Standard Contracts from your MSWORD templates.   By tagging simple mail merge fields in MSWORD your contracting and legal users can setup Contract Templates for use in Novatus.  Simply upload the MSWORD document and Novatus auto-recognizes your tagged fields and allows the User to match those to Novatus database field (i.e. Company Name, Contract Type, and Effective Date).    Once your templates are uploaded, your System Administrators can then use the Novatus system to design the question and answer session for use in creating the contract.   The Novatus “Contract Creation Wizard” provides a user definable, rules driven question and answer session based on your terms and process for creation of your contracts in MSWord and/or Adobe PDF formats.  Your Administrators can decide how simple or complex the Contract Creation Wizard is, based on the type of contract being generated.   For example, the Wizard may ask the User “Does this Contract Include Termination for Convenience” and based on the User Answer, the system automatically adds or removes the “Termination for Convenience” contract language.   With the Novatus Contract Creation system there are unlimited possibilities in the management and creation of your contracts across the globe.

Clause Library

Novatus also provide a central location to store and manage your approved standard and alternate Contract Clauses.  The Novatus Clause Library provides access to efficiently find and use approved contract terms.  Users no longer have to rely on searching on their PC and network drives for previous contracts to utilize the correct contract terms during negotiation.  Your Legal and Contracts users can easily search, find and replace Clauses in the Novatus Clause Library to ensure control over the terms negotiated in your organization.

Workflows and Approvals

Create, manage and track Approvals through all phases of your contracting and business processes using the Novatus Approval Workflow Engine. Create and launch pre-defined and ad-hoc Approval Gateways. Approval Workflows are system definable and provide highly structured and controlled approval processes. Power Users can override the Approval Workflows as needed with proper security permissions. Approvals can be sent to one or many individuals simultaneously and/or in a sequence. System Dashboards and Reporting provide immediate tracking of all Approvals by Status.   Improve operational efficiencies and control with the easy to use workflow engine. Workflows are generated from Companies, Contracts, and Projects with the ability to attach documents. . Users are presented with intuitive workflow steps based on your user defined workflow processes. Administrators use the flexible and highly configurable workflow creation tool to build and manage workflows.

Analyze/Report

Gaining Intelligence from your Companies and Contracts is the strategic value of implementing a contract management solution.  Following are several key areas of analysis and intelligence the Novatus Contracts system provides. 

Business Intelligence/Streamlined Reporting

Getting your contracts in the system is half the battle; it’s getting the data out that provides the real win. Designed to provide usable Business Intelligence to a broader section of the business, the Novatus report engine is comprehensive, yet very easy to use. The report creator provides wizard driven step-by-step instruction allowing users to easily run system standard and/or ad-hoc reports. Reports can be generated in HTML or quickly exported into Excel and PDF formats. The Novatus report engine is built on modern Java and Web frameworks providing sophistication and intuitive reporting capabilities. Novatus Contracts reporting delivers simple and sophisticated reports providing all levels of management with clear and concise information regarding all of your trading relationships.  

Manage the “Contract Family”

Contracts are often complex and constructed of many documents (Masters, Schedules, SOWs, Amendments, Exhibits, etc.) and include the addition of new contract documents over the term of the relationship. . Novatus Contracts provides easy to navigate functions which organize your contract agreement types, creating a clear “hierarchical tree” view of the Contract Family. Contract Profiles and related Documents are linked together providing easy navigation to all contracts in the family. With Novatus Contracts, users will always understand the relationship between contract components, eliminating confusing and time consuming reviews of related contractual terms that impact your organization.  

Track Financials and Forecast Payments

Capture, store and display payment totals in the easy to use Payment Stream section. Automated Reporting compares negotiated terms to actual payments preventing the loss of negotiated savings. Provide management with clear, concise reports that outline financial commitments and revenues. The Novatus Contracts Payments section is also a target touch point for integration to your financial system enabling full automation of financial payment and revenue tracking. 

Track payments and revenues with the Novatus Contracts payment forecasting. Users can select the payment frequency (annually, quarterly, monthly) and enter the payment amount and Novatus Contracts will create your financial payment stream which includes the payment dates and amounts. Enforce compliance with capped percent increases by entering payment forecasts based on not to exceed capped fees. Ensure payments and revenues are in compliance with contractual terms through integration to your financial system and the Novatus Contracts reporting tool by comparing your contractual payment amounts to actual payments.

Document Management

Most corporations have thousands of contract related documents scattered across the enterprise. Access to these critical documents is arguably the most important aspect in getting control of your contracts. Regulatory requirements also reinforce the reality that electronic data management ranks as a top priority for corporate leadership, legal, accounting and audit. Your contracts system is an essential component of the corporate data-retention policy providing an automated system to house and report on corporate trading relationships and transactions. Novatus takes our clients from shared drives and hard copy files to a proven and documented contract document control process. Upload, import, store, retrieve, download, print and manage versions for every document, enterprise wide. Novatus also provides the option to store documents in our system or easily integrate to your in-house document management system.

Novatus Contracts users upload, store and manage all pertinent business documents related to the relationship with your trading partners.  For example, Procurement representatives store Company Financials or Certifications, RFx Responses and Proposals.   Sell side users store and manage their client pricing proposals, demographic and marketing information using Novatus Companies similar to a CRM tool.    Novatus allows users to upload and store ANY document type (except executable files) for comprehensive Document storage and management.  Novatus provides "Document Shortcuts" throughout the system enabling users to quickly select and open and view ocuments in just seconds.

Document Retention

Novatus Contracts provides a centralized document management repository to support your corporate document retention policies. Novatus is in use by major corporations who are utilzing the Novatus Contracts, contract management system to support document retention policies, expanded beyond just the contract documents. Depending on the type of document, corporate polices dictate the length of time required for retention.  The Novatus system provides storage, retrieval and archival functions which are configurable based on your company's document retention policies.

Novatus Contract Management Software.  Our Experience Is the Difference.

Novatus provides a highly sophisticated yet easy-to-use web-based contract management software system that in use across the globe by some of the world’s most well respected companies.  

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