3. Getting Started

What have I signed up for?

You have signed up for our out-of-the-box Supplier and Contract Management system.

You will receive our standard package of services with a pre-defined configuration for Supplier Management, Contract Management and Analytics. This service does not support customisation.

Your Onboarding Journey

I have signed up, my environment has been provisioned and my team have access, what's next?

Over the next 6 months, through this project and beyond, you will transition from where you are now to having full and complete records across your Supplier and Contract base, allowing you to manage your Suppliers and Contracts much more effectively.

This article will showcase what you can expect from your implementation project with us, what will happen during your project and what milestones will be met during the implementation.

By focussing on the outcomes covered in this article, and using the methods demonstrated to you both during your initiation project and through the accompanying HelpDocs, you will progress from a place where:

• You don’t have a single, easily accessible view of your supplier base
• You don’t have complete profiles and data for your suppliers and you still may have critical gaps in your supplier base data, which may impact decision making and efficiency
• You don’t have a single, easily accessible view of your contracts
• You don’t have a clear view of the impact contracts may have on organisation and you can’t easily identify critical contracts

to a place where:

• You will have a single view of all of your suppliers and an indication of your next steps to understanding and categorising them
• You will have collaborated with your suppliers to ensure that you now have rich data in your supplier profiles enabling smarter, more empowered decision making when it comes to your supplier base
• You can start to build out your contract register. Through a combination of data migrations and crowd sourced contract creation, you’ll quickly build up a comprehensive register of contracts for all your suppliers
• You’ll be able to identify strategic contracts briefly, track key dates, plan for extensions and expiries as well as identify potential financial levers to ensure that your contracts are providing the best value to the business

Reaching the four outcomes

In order to gain an accessible view of your records and have complete data profiles for your supplier and contract records there are four steps we need to take. So what are these steps? And what do we need to do?

Step 1 - Centralising Suppliers in one location

You will provide us with a full, uncleansed supplier list from your finance system with account codes and if possible, VAT numbers, company numbers and email addresses.

We will format this data, de-duplicate it and upload into your environment.

We will handover the supplier standard configuration in the system and talk you through how the Data Governance dashboard works and how this should be used.

The practical application of what will be covered in the supplier configuration handover is also explained in the Supplier Admin & Information Management section of these HelpDocs.

You will use the Data Governance dashboard to focus on areas that provide you with the most value, in order to export supplier data, complete and reupload.

At this point, you have reached your first milestone and have populated your supplier data, you will have a single view of all of your suppliers and an indication of your next steps to understanding and categorising them.

Where am I when I reach milestone 1?

All of your suppliers now sit in a central location and your data is accessible but incomplete. From here you can begin work over a number of months, to build up your supplier data in order to reduce exposure to any risks that may come as a result of incomplete data.

To facilitate this data building sprint, your users will have access to the following dashboards for data review in an easy-to-read format:

• Data Governance
• Supplier Onboarding
• Suppliers

Step 2 - Capturing further Supplier details

We will outline key data capture points for you on a Data Governance Dashboard.

You will use the Data Governance dashboard to focus on areas that provide you with the most value, in order to export supplier data, complete and reupload.

Walkthroughs of how you can add data to your records to build them out, as well as information on the Data Governance Dashboard, are provided in the Supplier Admin & Information Management and Supplier Compliance Management sections of these HelpDocs.

We will show you where to enable notifications for Insurances and Certifications.

Once this work has been completed, you have reached your second milestone and have increased the richness of your supplier data. You will have collaborated with your suppliers to ensure that you now have accurate, up to date and rich data in your supplier profiles enabling smarter, more empowered decision making when it comes to your supplier base.

Where am I when I reach milestone 2?

All of your suppliers are now centralised and have accessible and more complete data. From here you must apply these methods across your supplier base and continue through your 6-month sprint to reduce exposure to a risks which stem from incomplete data.

At this stage in your journey, the following dashboards will be useful for your users to facilitate your data building:

• Data Governance
• Insurances and Certifications
• Team Governance

Step 3 - Centralising Contracts in one location

Now that you have your suppliers in the system, you can start to build out your contract register. Through a combination of data migrations and crowd sourced contract creation, you’ll quickly build up a comprehensive register of contracts for all your suppliers.

You will populate contracts template with all contract data (if this is available) and provide the template to Advanced so the data can be uploaded.

If contract data cannot be captured during implementation, you will distribute the template to the wider team to populate.

You will allow users access to the solution so contracts can be created manually. Refer to HelpDocs articles to support users in being able to complete this task.

We will provide you with two methods to help your team in collecting contract data:

• Walk through of contracts upload template, guiding you through the basic mandatory data points that will be captured and recorded on the template
• Walk through of the contract creation wizard that sits within the solution and will allow users to log in and directly enter contracts into the register 

We will handover contract standard configuration.

The practical application of what our implementation team will cover in the contract configuration handover is also explained in the Contract Admin & Information Management section of these HelpDocs.

After these things have happened, you have reached your third milestone and you have a base from which you can build out your contract register. Through a combination of data migrations and crowd sourced contract creation, you’ll quickly build up a comprehensive register of contracts for all your suppliers.

Where am I when I reach milestone 3?

All of your contracts now sit in a central location and your data is accessible but incomplete. From here you can begin work over a 6-month sprint, focussing on ensuring contracts are being created with all required fields.

To facilitate this data building sprint, your users will have access to the following dashboards for data review in an easy-to-read format:

• Data Governance
• Contract Setup
• Contracts

Step 4 - Capturing further Contract details

We will outline key data capture points for you on a Data Governance Dashboard which allow you to view where the gaps are in your contract data.

We will show you where to enable notifications for contracts.

You will use the Data Governance dashboard as an aid tool, work through contract data and assign relevant contract classifications to be able to report on key details to aid in management decisions.

You will utilise the variation register against contracts where applicable.

Actioning the gaps in your data as well as utilising variations within the system are covered in the Contract Admin & Information Management and Contract Renewals Management sections of these HelpDocs.

When you have completed this work, you will have reached the final milestone in your onboarding journey with us. Using our out of the box configuration, you’ll be able to identify strategic contracts, track key dates, plan for extensions and expiries as well as identify potential financial levers to ensure that your contracts are providing the best value to the business.

Where am I when I reach milestone 4?

All of your contracts are now centralised and have accessible and more complete data allowing you to work on capturing key financial detail against contracts:

• Terms and financial clause classifications can be assigned to contracts to ensure contract owners have a way of triggering actions.
• Contract notifications should have been enabled which will trigger email notifications to contract owners, alerting them on when contracts are due for expiry.
• A Variation Register can be utilised against contracts to bring in workflows on change management.

Users will also have access to the following dashboards to assist in these efforts:

• Data Governance
• Contract Renewals Management

Post Implementation

You're live! At this stage in your journey, all your data is in and your training handovers are complete. All of your supplier and contract data is now centralised in our system and your users have accessible and more complete data.

Now that you are here, your focus should be on reviewing the records in the system and ensuring they are as data-rich as they can be. Building out the data held against your records will allow for the most effective supplier and contract management and will also reduce exposure to any risks that may come as a result of incomplete data.

The features and concepts demonstrated to you during your training handovers will allow you to have fully complete data. Review the how-to-guides we have created for Supplier and Contract management to see how you can use our dashbaords, document categories, assessments and other features to achieve data-richness.

Once you have achieved data-richness and are using all these aspects of the system, you will be at a point where our Customer Experience team can come and discuss how we can help you get more out of the system.