Delegation of Authority - Process

Peter Campbell Updated by Peter Campbell

Delegation of Authority (DoA) is an important aspect of managing contracts and sourcing activities, ensuring that the right individuals are empowered to make decisions and take actions at the right time.

This process involves assigning specific responsibilities to users with the necessary roles, enabling them to approve or reject requests for actions within contracts and sourcing activities.

Actions can be required within contracts (And also Sourcing Activities) in different areas of the record, for different reasons, for example:

  • Stage Approval
  • Variation Approval
  • Option Approval

These types of approval follow a consistent process, where a user requests an action to be completed by a user with the necessary role. The approver reviews the request and either approves or rejects it, ensuring that progression can occur. The key difference between these approval requests lies in the location within the system where approval is requested and the determination of the contract's value, which determines who should be assigned the approval task.

Requesting Actions with DoA

Stage approval is one example of an action necessary to move a contract from one stage to the next.

For example, a standard process template may require a procurement team member to approve the transition of a contract from the draft stage to the executed stage.

In this scenario, the In-progress dropdown of the contract's Process Template reveals that a Delegate Action is required to progress.

To complete this step, the user must first navigate to the Delegations tab of the contract / sourcing activity record:

Where the Delegations tab appears blank with no data fields available to populate. 

There are no fields available on arrival in this tab because Delegation of Authority is being utilised in this process template in place of the traditional Delegate Action template.

This is because the required action is dynamic, meaning the assignee will be determined by the contract record's value at the time the process is started, and is therefore subject to change.

When the user initiates the process by clicking "Start Process", the necessary fields to complete the request become available. At this point, the user can select the relevant approval level required for the specific contract/sourcing activity value.

The approver for this progression is dynamically determined by the contract's current value. In this example, approval is currently required from a Level 2 Manager.

However, if the contract value were to change and fall within a different range, the required approval role would also change. For instance, if the contract value were to shift into a different level within the configured matrix, the approval could then be required from a Level 1 Line Manager.

This approach ensures that the approval process is determined by the value of the contract/sourcing activity, guaranteeing that the correct level of authority is involved in the decision-making process.

Once the role assignment is complete, the next step is to select the individual user who holds the required role. Once this has been chosen, the user can click the "Request" button to submit the approval request to the specified approver.

The approval process will then proceed as normal.

For a comprehensive understanding of the full process, including requesting and approving actions, please refer to the dedicated articles on Requesting Stage Approval and Approving Stage Approval Requests articles.

It is important to note that Delegation of Authority currently uses the ex-Tax value of a record. This means that the approval process is based on the value of the record before any tax is applied, rather than the final, tax-inclusive value.

Additional Information

When applying the Delegation of Authority process to variations, including both standard variations and Options/Rights of Renewal, the current ex-tax value of the contract is combined with the proposed additional value to find the total value of the contract after the variation or extension has been applied. This combined value is then used to determine the necessary approval level.

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Delegation of Authority - Configuration

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