This post is based on a recent Spend Matters Perspective: Sourcing, Contract Management, and Supplier Management Cloud -- Business Users Benefit From Savings Enablement. You can download the full research report for free via the previous link (registration required).

Contract management technology can bring significant benefit to procurement, legal and sales organizations. Not only can effective contract management technologies help organizations implement savings programs more quickly by closely linking the sourcing and contracting process -- including having T&Cs from within an RFx cascade into a contract after an award decision is made -- but they can also allow companies to monitor compliance and re-source contracts before expiration. More advanced use cases of contract management drive further value by linking buyer compliance to supplier terms and invoices, including proactive compliance tools in both eProcurement and direct purchasing systems that flag/reject PO issuance and/or invoices if certain contract conditions are not met.

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Our new Spend Matters consulting arm (more on this in the New Year) had a very telling encounter this past week with a large company that started the process to hire our firm to do a small, expert engagement around a particular type of procurement technology system deployment. It was a situation where both sides knew that we were among the most capable and affordable knowledge sources to deliver the goods (or insight, in this case). Certainly in this situation, being a small business, and one that refuses to register for women or disadvantaged ownership status on principle (though we would qualify for both), gave us the nimble advantage that having a small overall mass and core nucleus can provide. Yet when it comes to a small business contracting with bigger companies, sometimes winning a contract is the easy part -- and the contract process is far more time consuming and costly.

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Frequent readers of Spend Matters are aware of many historic (and ongoing) patent challenges in the broader source-to-pay world (from features of features for the closing/lot extensions of reverse auction events to general process patents for catalog searches and requisitions). In the case of Rpost and EchoSign, two providers of digital signature capability, their individual solutions are often embedded in either third-party solutions (e.g., contract management modules) that OEM them or highly customized/configured internal solution processes to support various aspects of contracting, approvals, service/maintenance support, etc. Because of this, some customers might be concerned with the ability of Adobe/EchoSign to continuing supporting their OEM partners' solutions given the patent litigation and Rpost's process patents claims that target the core of their offering (see this post from earlier today for additional insight on the Adobe, Rpost and Echosign patent litigation and acquisition details).

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Earlier this week, the signature -- digital signature, to be more specific -- world saw the greatest excitement seen since John Hancock put his infamous pen and ink to the Declaration of Independence. In a matter of days, Adobe announced it acquired EchoSign, a digital signature provider, for an undisclosed sum. Just a day later, RPost, an EchoSign competitor, turned around and filed a patent infringement suit against Adobe based on their alleged infringement of RPost's patents through their EchoSign buy-out. As most in the procurement sector know, contract management is not supposed to be this interesting. And digital signatures, an embedded component within many contract management capabilities, is an even more sleepy -- yet important -- area.

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This is a post of within a broader series looking at supplier enablement and P2P roadblocks. The material is based in part on our recent research paper: A Foundational Look at P2P Technologies. The paper can be downloaded for free via the above link.

Are you a good candidate for a separate catalog and content management solution for eProcurement and P2P implementations? Find out by reading Part 1 of this post. If it turns out you need a supplemental solution in this area, there are numerous vendors to consider for catalog and content management support. Our research suggests that from a catalog standpoint, jCatalog has been among the most innovative in recent years and continues to invest heavily in its solution, plus they possess a strong list of reference clients in SAP environments. Vinimaya takes a highly differentiated approach that has solid penetration in the Oracle user base and is increasingly gaining traction in the SAP and Ariba bases. Vinimaya (see our recent post series: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4), has also expanded its offering into compliance and analysis, broadening the value proposition for catalog and content management toolsets.

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I caught the end of a useful talk at an IACCM session last week led by Brad L. Peterson, Partner, Mayer Brown LLP and David Chameli, Associate General Counsel, Commercial Transactions/Supply Chain Logistics, Sears Holdings Management Corporation (BTW, if ever have the chance to hear David speak, he's an absolute hoot -- wish more lawyers were like him). The discussion topic was aimed toward both lawyers and contract managers who have to deal with procurement people like us: Articulating the Value of Contract Terms: How to Communicate the Value You Create in Negotiating Contract Terms. Translation? How to justify your existence when your so-called internal customers (i.e., us) really don't see the value brought to table, plus what the additional time required to bring in the lawyers means in hashing out and negotiating non-boilerplate T&Cs. More candid translation: what the &*!@ do you really do to justify your existence in the buy-side contracting process?

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Late last week Upside Software unveiled a new, inexpensive SaaS contract management solution designed to provide basic capabilities to procurement, legal and commercial organizations. According to the announcement, "UpsideLive LITE is a new SaaS offering that focuses on simplicity and offers contract management functionality that was built for everyday users. Users can start creating and managing contracts almost immediately and be able to search, report and get reminders for under $20 per month. For a company with 30 users, it's only $220 per month." Potential customers of this platform should be aware that once it's deployed, that they can easily migrate their data and upgrade to Upside's enterprise contract management offerings. Given this, what this new offering really feels like, in my view, is a gateway drug designed to get organizations hooked on what a contract management system could do for them, paving the path to upgrading into a new class of solution. It's a smart strategy, in Spend Matters' view.

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In the first post in this series, I provided a general commercial update on Upside, one of the top independent contract management providers in the market. In the column, I also offered up some insights into when companies are most likely to prioritize Upside-like capability over a more run-of-the-mill (and less expensive and configurable) contract management offering of the type Upside can also deliver through its UpsideLive product, a lower cost SaaS solution that competes more directly with solutions like Ariba's cloud-based Contract Management product. In today's post, we'll turn our attention to what's coming down the pike for Upside.

At Upside's annual user conference this fall in Chicago, the company shared that it is looking to drive enhancements in a number of key areas which focus on collaboration (internal and external), configurability and an enhanced user experience. As far as the general company strategy goes, Upside appears to continue to want to pattern its go-to-market and R&D approach on historical successful software companies, rather than embracing how the SaaS/cloud structure and model (even though Upside does have SaaS offerings of its own).

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Unlike P2P and strategic sourcing, contract management is a market segment that I don't hear too much about on a daily basis. Yet every few weeks, I hear some story about an implementation that's played a central role in better procurement and supplier management programs or another one that hasn't ended up as planned (over the years, the number of contract management implementations that end up not meeting expectations is higher than I would have thought at first). Yet some vendors, like Upside, one of the undisputed leaders in the market, keeps chugging along (with, in general, solid customer support and backing). Earlier this winter, before the deep freeze hit Chicago, I had the chance to catch up with Upside's Ashif Mawji, the firm's founder and CEO. Ashif shared some general updates and observations regarding trends in the contract management market and his firm's recent experience in general.

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