Your dishwasher is not working. You’re having to wash the dishes in the sink. It’s so slow! You phone the repair company. A week!? They can send someone round to look at it in a week? You visualize yourself washing dishes all week. And wonder, why the wait? Can’t they bring in some more people and reduce the long wait?

Is this how you feel when trying to close a deal? The contract for an implementation project has been negotiated and everything has been agreed. But, of course, you need to get the final version reviewed and approved by Legal. And they will take… a week? … Likely 2-3 weeks based on past experience. It’s a small legal team and all contracts need to be reviewed by them. It can take some time to get an answer. Still you put an ‘urgent’ on this one. If you can get it reviewed and approved in time, it will be signed and the first payment made in time for your team to meet its monthly target…

Why contract reviews often mean bottlenecks (and cause delays in first contract payments)

The trouble with processes that require all contracts to be centrally reviewed (whether by internal or external lawyers or others) is that all power and authority is with a small number of people (often just one person). This inevitably slows things up as work is being requested from various parts of the business. A queue or ‘bottleneck’ forms. And so there are delays…

The delay can be frustrating. But more importantly for a business, it is costly. The customer may not make the first project payment until the contract is signed. That’s a delay in getting money into your bank account. The team you’ve nominated for the project can’t wait. They may be re-assigned onto other work. The project loses momentum. These are all costs connected with all power on contract reviews being with a small number of people.

What if we could delegate this contract review task - and ensure consistency?

The problem described above is so common that we want to provide a solution for it.

We appreciate that consistency is a big issue. In the very simple example above, the dishwasher repair company wants consistency too. They cannot send someone out who does not have the right experience and knowledge to fix dishwashers. If they could they would have happier customers and be paid for that job sooner. And they could move onto other work.

But we’re not focused on helping dishwasher repair companies with consistency to minimize bottlenecks and delays. We’re focused on doing that for tech sector, for contracts used by the tech sector (and in this article - for professional service providers - although the same approach can be used for managed service providers, resellers, independent software vendors and any other suppliers that are negotiating contracts with customers or partners).

Delegating and Ensuring Consistency in Contract Reviews

Message us NOW to discuss how we can help you, or email me at anne@itagree.com.