Terminology Guide
Terminology Guide
This guide contains collective terms and labels that are used across the Supplier & Contract Management solution.
User
A user is an individual who interacts with the system, in order to achieve a particular goal or to fulfil a need. Users can be categorised based on their role(s) such as end-users who directly utilise the functionality within the system or a system administrator who manages the system and focuses on configuration.
Role
A roles determines visibility of records in modules, as well as determining what a user will do as part of approval processes. Whilst they may be named similarly, roles within Supplier & Contract Management do not always mean the same thing that they do in your business. The various roles are described in greater detail within the General System & Permissions section, and it is important that you understand the roles to allow the correct assigning of users to roles.
Team
A Team consists of a group of people who may work in the same department or business unit and typically share responsibilities and collaborate on a task or document, for example a contract. The team can have as many members as required and there may be members who require different levels of access, dependant on their involvement.
Examples of different teams may be Operations, Finance, Sales and Marketing.
Team Type
A Team type represents what a team is and is assigned to a team. As part of team creation, a team type must be associated with the team.
Examples of team types are Department, Site and Business Unit.
Supplier
A Supplier is a person or business that provides a product or service to another entity.
Supplier details are captured as organisations in Supplier & Contract Management. Each of these Organisation records contains all key Organisation information as well as contact details and insurances. This Organisation information is associated in numerous places within the solution and is used for Procurements, Contracts and Master agreements.
Stakeholder
A stakeholder is an individual, group, or organisation that has an interest, concern, or influence in a particular project, initiative, or organisation. A stakeholder can play a vital role in shaping the outcome of a supplier relationship or contract/agreement through their interests, influence and engagement.
Status
Status relates to the current Supplier & Contract Management specified status of the record e.g. Underway, closed, completed. This field will be automatically updated by the system if Process Templates are in use.
This field will need to be changed by the user on a per record basis, utilising the dropdowns at the top of the supplier/contract record.
Example: A terminated contract will have its status read as ‘Terminated’
For Contracts only, the status will be automatically updated by the system if process templates are in use.
Account Codes
Account code categories are used to capture the allocation of spend against a contract or a procurement record. This breakdown is crucial in reporting so you can get more insight into how much you spend on each category and where money is most spent.
Supplier Categorisation
Supplier records must be categorised. This categorisation can be based on various criteria such as their importance to the business, level of risk they pose, their performance, and their strategic alignment with the company's goals. This process helps organisations manage their supplier relationships more effectively by prioritising resources, identifying areas for improvement, and fostering better collaboration with key suppliers.
Within Supplier & Contract Management, supplier categories represent the top-level alignment for developing structured management processes. Each Supplier category contains four risk-assessed segments (Unassessed, Low risk, Medium risk and High risk) and individual management plans can be attached based on risk categorisation.
Sourcing/Contract Categories
Sourcing/Contract categories is a taxonomy list such as UNSPSC, European Union's Common Procurement Vocabulary, ECLASS, GS1's Global Product Classification, or the list can be a customised taxonomy to suit your organisational needs.
When creating new sourcing activities and contracts, it is mandatory to associate the record with a category of purchase. Master Agreements can also be associated with categories.
Supplier Type
Supplier type represents the legal structure/type of company.
Examples of Supplier Types are Not for Profit, Public Limited Company, Private Limited Company, Registered Charity, Research Partner and Sole Trader.
Artefact
An Artefact is an item or a collection of items that can be attributed to suppliers, contracts, master agreements and sourcing activities. These artefacts can all be found within the configuration centre of the solution, some artefacts apply to all areas of the system (Suppliers, Contracts, Master Agreements and Sourcing) where other artefacts can only be setup for certain areas.
Artefacts aid users with the management of all records across the solution.
As an example, the list of Artefacts that can be assigned to a supplier record are: Classifications, Milestones, Assessments, Activities, Issues and Risks.
Artefact Group
An Artefact Group represents the ability to group Artefacts from multiple management plans (or individual artefacts) that share a common outcome.
An Artefact Group is a way of organising artefacts (Such as assessments or classifications) into groups that deliver a similar outcome/combine for a similar purpose - for example you could have assessments and classifications focussed around compliance in a Compliance artefact group.
Artefact Group Types
An Artefact Group Type distinguishes the purpose of the group you are creating.
For example, for supplier management, artefact group types are split into three categories - Supplier for general information, Supplier risk for information specifically relating to risks for that supplier and Supplier contract for information specifically relating to the contracts of that supplier
Risk
A supplier risk is the potential for harm or disruption to a company's operations, finances, or reputation due to issues with its suppliers, such as financial instability, quality problems, delivery delays, geopolitical factors, natural disasters, or ethical concerns in the supply chain.
Supplier & Contract Management allows for the creation of risks that can then be applied, thus creating a risk register against a supplier/organisation.
Issue
A supplier issue refers to any problem, challenge, or concern that arises in the relationship between a company and its suppliers. This could include issues related to quality control, delivery delays, cost fluctuations, communication breakdowns, contractual disputes, or any other difficulties that impact the supply chain's efficiency and effectiveness.
Issues within Supplier & Contract Management are normally created once a 'Risk' becomes an 'Issue' and perhaps needs to be managed by a different team.
Classifications
Classifications can be attached to suppliers in the same way tagging or hashtagging is used in other common systems. The difference is that not only are classifications a label, but they can also be used to trigger Management Plan items being assigned to a Supplier.
Relationships
A relationship within the Supplier Management module is a method of linking different suppliers together. An example of a Relationship could be a selection of Suppliers who are all working on a specific project. Another could be linking a parent company to its subsidiary.
Milestones
A supplier milestone is a significant event or achievement within the context of a business relationship with a supplier. It typically marks progress or completion of key stages in the procurement process, such as signing contracts, completing production phases, meeting delivery targets, or achieving quality standards. These milestones are important for tracking performance, ensuring accountability, and maintaining alignment between the company and its suppliers.
The definition of a milestone in Supplier & Contract Management is broad and incorporates many milestones from reviews for suppliers/organisations and deliverables against contracts. Milestones are intended to be managed over time and can be updated at any point throughout the life of the contract, including indicating that the milestone has been completed and when it was completed.
Example: You can specify all the payment milestones for a contract and its due date which in return sends notifications to the contract owner or the milestone owner when it’s due.
Document Category
A Document Category is a way to manage and organise documents that are to be uploaded into a record. The creation of these categories provides users with the option to group similar types of documents together.
There are different types of document categories within Supplier & Contract Management:
Key Document - Any document category can be assigned as a ‘Key document’. A key document can only hold one document (in comparison to a general document for example).
When a document category is assigned as a key document it will be given a prioritised section at the top of the document view within a record. The ‘Key documents’ section displays documents from the selected category in an expanded view, and cannot be minimised, unlike document categories that are not ‘key documents’.
A key document can be a physical document or a link to the document can be populated.
General Document - The general documents section allows users to upload a physical document to a record. Users do not have the option to point to a document location with general documents.
External Document - External documents that may be sitting in a location (e.g. supplier website or on an intranet page) can be assigned to a record, without the need to upload a physical document.
Artefact Document - This is a document that is displayed in a record, if it has been uploaded against an artefact (e.g. Insurance document, Certification document or Activity).
Activities
Activities represent a set of specific tasks that guide users to managing a supplier/organisation in a proper manner.
Example activities could be to send out an assessment or assign a classification to the record.
The main benefit of using an activity is that it includes an instructions section to allow you to be specific in your requirements, and an owner section to assign tasks to members of your team.
Management Plan
A supplier management plan aims to optimize supplier relationships to meet organisational objectives efficiently and effectively. Within Supplier & Contract Management, a plan represents a collection of Artefacts that can be curated to address a focused outcome.
All Artefacts are available to be applied through use of a Management Plan. Applying them in this way means they will be held in the Management Plan tab of a Supplier record, instead of the tab for the respective Artefact.
Contract
A Contract is a legally enforceable agreement that defines the rights and obligations between its parties. A Contract typically involves the requirement to transfer goods, services and/or money. Supplier & Contract Management focuses on capturing Supplier Contracts but can also handle other types of contracts that do not necessarily have a financial element e.g. NDA, marketing agreement.
A contract record within the Supplier & Contract Management is used for capturing of contract information and ongoing contract management for a single contract. A Contract Record contains a large set of information for record keeping and ongoing management. This information is broken down in several different tabs, each tab containing a relevant grouping of similar data.
The contract held within the system is not a physical document, the physical document should be uploaded into the record.
Health
Contract and Sourcing records are driven by a 'health' status. The Health status is determined by a set list of contract/sourcing health drivers. Health drivers are mandatory items that should be completed, in order to ensure a consistent level of detail is provided on a record. A Health status has two potential statuses; Needs attention or OK.
Contract Type
Contract types can be defined to allow users to categorise contracts and group them together e.g. by the type of work a contract is for.
Contract types can also be used to trigger the addition of Contract checklists and Contract reviews to a record.
Contract Review
A contract review is an assessment, with an aim of evaluating a contract in terms of contract effectiveness, cost, benefits, end-user satisfaction, clarity, accuracy, and alignment with the parties' intentions and legal requirements. Regular contract reviews help mitigate risks, clarify expectations, and protect the interests of all parties involved in the agreement, ultimately identifying areas for contract improvement.
Contract reviews within Supplier & Contract Management use simple rating questions that can be quickly and easily completed as many times as required.
Contract Template
A Contract template provides a framework for drafting customised agreements tailored to the needs of individual transactions, helping parties save time and ensure consistency in their contractual relationships. A template can outline terms and conditions of a standard agreement.
As you would expect, Contract templates allows the user to define an outline of a document that can be used to base new Contracts on, dictating the terms and conditions a contract should follow.
Renewal Option Type
A renewal option is a provision in a contract that grants one or both parties the right to extend the term of the agreement for an additional period after its initial expiration. Renewal Options offer flexibility and continuity for business relationships.
Example Renewal Option Types are Automatic Renewal, Break Clause and Step-Up Renewal.
Variation
A variation is a modification/change to an existing contract.
Within Supplier & Contract Management, variations can only be carried out on contracts that have a status of executed and should only be applied to the contract once approval has been granted.
Income Types
Income types are set up to allow users to determine what type of contract has been created. The system comes pre-loaded with the standard Income types, Revenue and Expense, by default.
Assessment
An Assessment is used to create performance reviews, questionnaires or other types of evaluations which are either completed by the internal owner/manager or can be sent to the supplier via the Supplier & Contracts Management portal. Assessments consist of questions with several differing answer types.
Example: You can create an evaluation questionnaire using the assessment functionality, which can then be populated for each procurement applicant.
Master Agreement
Master Agreements are used to represent a variety of overarching types of items – Head Agreements, Programs, Prequalification Panels and the like. Procurements and Contracts can be associated with Master Agreements, which will also specify which Contract Types and Funding Sources can be associated with the Procurements or Contracts.
Example: Your business has a head agreement arrangement for IT Hardware from the supplier Computers Tops. This Head Agreement is created as a Master Agreement record and when contracts are created within the system, they can be associated with the Computers Tops Purchasing Agreement.
Master Agreements can also represent a list of approved suppliers for use within Sourcing.
Master Agreement Types
When users create Master Agreements, panels, or schemes via the Master Agreement module, they must choose a Type for the record. It is also optional to choose a Sub-type of that type.
Master Agreement Status
There are five master agreement statuses available to transition the Master Agreement record; Planning, Live, On Hold, Cancelled and Completed.
Sourcing
Sourcing is the process of finding and assessing potential suppliers and selecting the preferred candidate for goods/services the business requires.
Quotes
Using Quick Quotes is known as a Closed tendering process whereby users know which suppliers to approach. Quick Quotes functionality allows users to send request forms directly to suppliers via a secure connection.
Suppliers who receive a request, will be required to set a price and delivery date for the required goods and/or services. They can also provide certification/ insurance/supporting documentation.
Opportunities
This tool prepares the Sourcing Activity to be published to the Opportunities Gateway. This is a public-facing website where suppliers register their details to respond to opportunities and is also known as eTendering.
Using the Opportunities Gateway is classed as an Open Tendering Process.
Evaluations
Sourcing evaluation involves a structured approach (via an assessment) to assessing and selecting suppliers that can best meet an organisation's procurement needs, ensuring quality, value, and reliability in the supply chain.
Market Approach Method
A Market approach method allows for specific approach configurations to be created. The purpose of a Market approach method is to define how engagement will be made with the market.
There are three Market engagement tools available to choose from; Quick Quotes, Opportunities Hub and None. Depending on the method, they will determine how automated or manual the process will be for both your suppliers and your team.
Conditions of Tendering
Conditions of tendering are the terms and requirements that govern the process by which suppliers or contractors submit bids or proposals in response to a solicitation for goods or services.
Conditions of Tendering can include the following:
Submission rules
Prequalification requirements (including disqualification items)
Further bid evaluation detail
Specifications (technical or non technical)
Evaluation criteria
Confidentiality terms
Acceptance of terms
Payment model
A Payment Model refers to the structure in how payments to the supplier should be made. Which payment model is selected will depend on different factors such as the nature of goods/services provided, risk and the relationship between both parties.
Example payment models could be Time & Materials, Incentive based, Subscription or Retainer or Fixed Price.
Process Template
A Process template is a standardised framework or document that outlines the steps a procurement team should follow when acquiring goods or services for the organisation. The template ensures consistency, efficiency and compliance where relevant in terms of regulations or policies that should be adhered to as part of the procurement process.
A process template is made up of a market approach, business rules which include minimum suppliers required to bid prior to evaluation and minimum days at market. Checklists can be introduced to each stage of the procurement process as well as approval actions.
