5 Contract Management Tips to your Pot of Gold

Cost management begins and ends with effective contract management

Here are 5 simple tips for contract management at your financial institution to help you find that pot of gold: 

1. Never let a contract auto-renew

• Auto-renewals eliminate the due diligence process, denying you the exposure to technological advances in competing products and the opportunity to potentially save money with negotiations and other providers
• Leverage is on your side when renegotiating a vendor contract, as it is cheaper for your vendor to keep you rather than finding a new client

2. Don't rely on calendar alerts

• Long-term contracts and staff turnover creates risk in your financial institution's contract management process if you rely on calendar alerts, since they can be lost when reassigning responsibilities
• Calendar alerts make it difficult to to ensure you are staying up to date with your contracts as they are easily deleted or overlooked

3. Reconsider outdated processes

• Spreadsheets are great for many things, but just like calendar alerts they can be overlooked, deleted and rely solely on the employees that are using them to ensure the data is accurate
• Having too many staff members involved in the contract management process increases the risk for errors due to communication issues and loose procedures.

4. Find a platform with escalated notifications

• Since errors can occur with calendar with calendar alerts, spreadsheets and too many employees involved in the process, a contract management process or platform will catch and track what tasks have been missed
• Escalated notifications can be triggered to alert senior management when no activity has occured on critical items and is a feature on some vendor management platforms. 

5. Store contracts somewhere other than in-house

• Storing contracts in-house might make you feel secure, but unexpected events such as computer and server crashes, fires and other damage from natural disasters challenges that security
• Cloud storage, available with some vendor management platforms, allows you to store your contact information online without risk, providing you with the security you have been hoping for