Does your contracting process take forever? Can it take weeks, even months to bring a contract from creation, through negotiation and finally to execution? What causes the bottlenecks and how can they be fixed?
First, let’s identify some common hurdles within the contracting process. Once identified, we can implement a contracting management solution to address those issues and reduce contracting turnaround times from months and weeks to days and hours.
Hurdle 1 – Long and manual contract cycle times
A manual process can become long and tedious. Most of the time you will find yourself working on low priority tasks that take up too much time. This leaves minimal time for strategic or high value work. When there is no formal request or approval process workloads can pile up and get lost, making it difficult to track, manage and prioritize work. This results in those high valued contracts getting delayed and ultimately becoming costly for a healthcare payer who’s trying to ensure an adequate network.
Having a contracting solution in place allows for the automation of tasks and freeing up time for individuals to prioritize and focus on their high value tasks. If tasks require action, notifications will keep the process moving and alerts users of actionable items. Requests are automatically routed to the right people, facilitating a more efficient review and approval process.
Hurdle 2 – Fragmented view of contract information
How often are contracts stored in multiple systems or related information to contracts are in a separate file share, cabinet or email inbox? Is there an easy way to use language from one contract in the new contract you are drafting? If contract terminology, related documents and rate sheets aren’t in the same system, the amount of time and effort to track it all down will not only delay the contracting process but create a collaboration obstacle for the entire organization.
One solution that manages your contracting process provides a complete view across all contracts, associated items and amendments. Stop spending hours searching for the content you need and free up time for users to improve negotiation and make better business decisions.
Hurdle 3 – Limited visibility throughout the contract lifecycle
How often have you assumed that the contract was already in Legal’s hands only to find out that redlines were still taking place? Or maybe a stack of contracts has piled up on Dan’s desk because he’s on vacation, but nobody said anything? Or, an expiration or auto-renewal crept up without you knowing, leaving you and your organization vulnerable or creating a missed opportunity for renegotiation? When there is no insight into the process, steps are missed, due dates pass, and no one knows what step in the process the contract lives.
When you automate your contracting process, you enable your team with a 360-degree view into that process. Not only do you always know where a contract sits, but you also have the capabilities to report on entire process. With an automation solution you can quickly see how many contracts have been created in a certain time frame, who was assigned to those contracts and how long it took the contract to process. This data provides you and your organization with a much better understanding of what isn’t working and better yet – what is working.
I’ve only touched on 3 hurdles that you might run into, but if you can relate to any of them then ask yourself these questions:
Are we still processing our contracts manually?
How long does it take to process a contract?
Once executed, how are we managing those contracts?
How easy was it to answer those questions? If you don’t have a good answer then it’s time for a contracting solution that can empower you with the platform to automate your process, reduce your cycle time and truly manage the contracts from creation to renewal.
