An efficient contract management workflow is essential for any business to keep up with contracts with employees, partners, vendors, and customers. As a vital backbone to the customer lifecycle, it’s important to have a dedicated software for your contract management process to ensure all promises are being delivered on time, every time.
Interestingly, the stages of contract management leadership aren’t too different from the Six Sigma stages, which is primarily focused on improving business processes. While the number of stages present in a business’s contracting process flow chart may vary, the advancement of an individual responsible for contract lifecycle management at an organization can be summarized into six steps, similar to the Six Sigma belts.
Stages of Contract Management in Accordance with Six Sigma Belts
Contract lifecycle management best practices have been compiled below and organized to help you find out where you could be more efficient in your contact management process. Don’t fret if you’re not at the Master Black Belt Stage yet! There are contract management tools and processes you can use to improve your contract management process and save resources throughout your fiscal year.
White Stage: This is where it all starts. Begin by understanding the core of your business, what contracts need to be managed, and roughly what a high-level overview of the process looks like. Create a shared language internally to get on and stay on the same page with other stakeholders.
Yellow Stage: Now that you’re talking contract management principles as an organization, it’s time to spend some more quality time with negative issues. Uncover where the biggest inefficiencies are in the process and begin working toward implementing improvements.
Green Stage: You’re at the heart of the action now. You have the fundamentals of your contract management process defined as well as problems outlined and improvements underway. Now, create methods of tracking success for your contract administration process flow chart improvements.
Black Belt Stage: At this stage, you’ve been the primary leader for your company’s contract operations. Now, it’s time to become the contract management process guide you’ve always wanted to be. You’re now the go-to person when anyone has a question, but you should now also be helping others inside your organization become more efficient in their roles without your help as much as possible.
Master Black Belt Stage: Until this point, you’ve probably only been focusing on one set of contracts in your business, or maybe a few. There are many document flows running throughout your business that you have the opportunity to improve as well using the skills you’ve developed. Serve the full contract management lifecycle process needs of every project in your organization at this stage.
Champion Stage: You’ve optimized the core contracts of your business, as well as many other document management processes. Now, it’s time to teach others beyond your organization about how they can grow as well. Contribute to related industry associations and share your knowledge and skills with many people so they can improve as well.
Utilizing contract lifecycle management software at any of these stages is sure to add value to your contract lifecycle management process diagram because you can identify the holes in each stage and find a way to maximize efficiency in keeping your customers, vendors, employees, and partners happy.
Best Contract Management Software for Your Business
When you need peace of mind with tracking your sales and contracts, look no further than Proposable. Our contract lifecycle management software helps you implement contract administration best practices. Better still, if you are new to contract risk management and questions like—“What is contract management in procurement?”—our experts can help guide you to the answer so you can implement contract management process best practices into your business as quickly as possible. We can even train you in contract administration tools, techniques, and best practices so you can quickly become a contract management process flow chart superstar!
Our software allows you to create the contract management process you need to provide tangible plans to the executives and CEO at your company. We also recommend that you create a contract management best practices matrix to train others at your organization to ensure everyone is doing all that they can to meet the new process improvement requirements.
Begin Implementing Contract Management Process Best Practices Today
If you’re ready to make all of your contract management process steps operate at the highest efficiency possible, sign up for a free trial of Proposable today!
