[Originally published on the TeraThink blog]

It starts simply enough. Your company needs a system for managing its contracts process. The finance department goes out and purchases a contracts system. Being forward thinking, they pick one that is cloud-based so they don’t have to maintain the infrastructure. Things are going well until…

• The ability to track supporting documents from within the system is identified shortly after launch
• After finance loads supporting documents, those documents are now stored in multiple locations
• Nobody knows which version is the current version any longer
• Groups outside of finance need access to the contracts but licenses are limited
• Contracts need to be linked to their CRM and ERP records but nobody can figure out how

The contracts process may be working well but information is trapped in a system that is closed-off from the rest of the organization. The only way to have information everywhere it is needed is to duplicate it which leads to complications in managing information.

Continue reading →