Knowledge Services

1. There are multiple stakeholders involved - Procurement, Legal, Business and IT. The right stakeholders from each of these units need to be bought into the decision. Most of you will agree that this is not a trivial issue and needs to be given utmost importance if the initiative needs to succeed. However difficult this may be, its important to get this box ticked sooner rather than later. That way, either this gets nipped in the bud before too much time and effort is expended or has all round backing, improving the odds of success tremendously.
2. It is difficult to build a business case for it - The implementation of the CMS will, without doubt, need to be backed up by some sort of business case. This is a tricky issue cause, it means that one has to quantify the benefits of implementing the same, which means that one would have to have a record of the penalties incurred for not meeting certain obligations or losing out on discounts etc. Needless to say, that at this point, one enters a recursive loop cause inability to track such data is one of the reasons to implement the CMS in the first place. What has worked in many organisations is to combine intangible benefits with anecdotal/ representative costs and using external benchmarks from organisations like IACCM. A good idea is to involve the potential vendor as well since its likely that they would have helped other organisations facing the same issues.
3. Will it be an IT spend or will Business spend from its budgets - Another tricky one which will not just determine who will sign off on the final decision but also the fate of the solution. Business tends to concentrate more on the functionality and usability of the solution whereas IT is likely to take a systemic view and evaluate the solution from its fit to the overall IT architecture of the organisation. One of the situations where the journey will determine the outcome.
4. Should the scope be limited to buy/ sell side contracts or should it encompass both - While this is not a show stopper in most cases, this question tends to come up sooner or later. My belief is that, while its an important consideration, one must weigh the benefits of widening the scope to the impact it will have on increasing the complexity and time for implementation and consequently the risk of the project becoming a monstrosity.
5. There are internal systems that might do the job partially - One often hears the argument, especially in these times, whether it makes sense to evaluate some internal systems viz. existing ERPs or Procurement systems that might do the job partially and avoid spending additional dollars on a new solution. While it certainly would be prudent to check whether you have Contract management capability in any of your existing applications, it may also be worthwhile checking a) if your internal IT team recommends it and is willing to support it, b) if the vendor is open to customising it and c) how much time it will take and what it will really cost you. Most seasoned program managers would know that "just using additional functionality" can be deceptively expensive.

There are many organisations who have overcome some of these issues and are reaping the benefits of having gone through the pain. Suppliers of these solutions have also understood these pain points better and are not only able to work with the client to help resolve them but have also designed innovative solutions (Contract management as a Service etc) that can help alleviate some of the concerns.