dContract

Contract Management

We would be telling you nothing if we said “the task of administering and tracking the many contracts of a business is a difficult one”. The pressures of compliance and the realities of cost effective operations require that your business or organisation has a firm handle on its contracts and other negotiated agreements. We believe we can help! Our product dContract is a simple to use, affordable and effective solution to support the management of contracts across the business. dContract is a highly configurable software application that organizes contract data and information and automates many of the processes associated with contract management.

The look and feel of dContract will be a familiar one for users in organisations that have Lotus Notes as the corporate email and calendaring system. For those new to Lotus Notes, you will find the organisation of data and functions in dContract both logical and simple to navigate.

In dContract, the Contract record is the parent record in the subset of records that will define a contract. The lifecycle of the contract in dContract is a simple one with each progressed through three states; “Tender”,” Contract” and “Terminated”. The Contract record includes data such as reference numbers, overviews, responsible persons and detail of the contracts tender process. The Contract form is also an access point to other contract related data including Contractors, Contract Documents and Contract Events.

Key documents associated with a contract can be registered in dContract. The Contract Document record can be associated with either a Contract or a Contractor. In addition to providing summary information about a document, the Contract Document record can also be used to store as an attachment a copy of the document/object. Once a document is registered there is also facility to track the location and movements of the associated physical document. Contract document management is further enhanced by Document Templates that can be set up to automate the production of Contract Documents. Documents produced in the process of preparing and managing a contract such as an "Unsuccessful Tender Notification", can be produced on mass via a Document Template. The Document Template feature directs contract data stored in dContract into Microsoft Word templates. The documents produced via the Document Template can in turn be stored in dContract as Contract Documents.

Contract Events are powerful component of dContract. Contract Events are date based and can be used by Contract Managers or Contract Support staff to flag actions, tasks or milestones in the lifecycle of a contract:- periodic reviews; performance reports; contract completion; contractor insurance expiries. Contract Events can be associated with either Contract or Contractor records. Each Contract Event record includes; a summary description of the event; scheduled date for the event; email alert settings; and, facility to include a report on event closure. Contract Events can also be designated as “repeat” events; in which case when an instance of the event is completed, a new Contract Event is automatically setup. Collectively the Contract Events in dContract give an overview of the contract management commitments for the organisation.

dContract provides facility to process Contract Variations. The Contract Variation record is used to detail a contract variation proposal and track it through to a final state of either “accepted” or “declined”. Each Contract Variation record includes; reference numbers; an overview of the variation proposal; records/file system references; and, key dates in relation to the handling of the variation proposal.