Blog – Contract Management Benchmarking Survey 2012

There are many surveys undertaken and reports produced around the topic of Contract Management, and in a recently published (and free) eBook, “Contract Lifecycle Management” by Professor Douglas K Macbeth of Southampton University¹, the author references a “Contract Management Benchmarking Model²” (copyright of RBS Group).

The survey, which has been undertaken by a number of organizations in both the public and private sector, was first launched in 2011. In 2012 they built on the existing survey success by inviting a wider range of businesses to participate and become more involved in benchmarking their performance and sharing of contract management best practice.

The benchmarking model is made up of three categories: Manage, Performance and Relationships.  Examples of the findings include:

• 75% of participants have a Contract Management process in place
• 28% have organised Contract Management as a separate function
• Contract Management is represented at Board level in 42% of participating businesses

Source: RBS (www.cmb2012.com)  

The high level of engagement highlighted in the survey is probably allied to the types of organizations taking part, which include major financial services firms, infrastructure services companies, local and central government, manufacturing, telecoms and others.

In Macbeth’s eBook, he discusses the importance of utilizing technology to support the location and analysis of contracts, to manage obligations, renewals and also in the performing of comparisons across contracts, to benefit from the rationalization such an exercise can bring. All of these disciplines then support the Best Practices as highlighted in the benchmarking model.

Seal Software is the leader in the discovery and analysis of contractual documents, providing the foundation for any Contract Lifecycle Management project. To read more on how Seal can help your CLM project, visit www.seal-software.com/solutions

Notes:

1. Free eBook available from http://bookboon.com/en/business-ebooks/strategy/contract-lifecycle-management
2. The RBS Contract Management Benchmarking 2012 research survey can be accessed at http://www.cmb2012.com