The Contract Management System: A Systematic Approach to Recording Performance Failures

Did you know that you can record performance failures on your Contract Management System? Utilising this feature allows you to keep track of contract staff and suppliers who display learning behaviour and take action when they don’t.

We Don’t Live in a Perfect World

In a perfect world, everything would be, well – perfect. Our contracted products and supplies would always arrive in a timely fashion with the right parts included. They would always live up to expectations; undamaged and in good working order. In a perfect world, our contracted cleaners would finish up in the evenings and we’d always arrive in the morning to find our space sparkling clean.

Of course, we do not live in a perfect world…

People, events and products often fail to live up to their side of the agreement. Failures occur and if those failures go unchecked there is a danger they’ll be normalised. Standards will drop, shortcuts will be taken, office rubbish bins will overflow and the wrong items with the right parts missing, will keep arriving on your desk.

To encourage improvement and avoid the downward spiral brought on by performance failures, record them in your Contract Management System. That way, you’ll be able to see exactly where procedures, staff and suppliers need closer attention.

Your System

Logging the failures is usually the part of the process that gets complicated. This is because the right system might not be in place to keep track of them.

Consider your own system and how you currently deal with failures. ‘Who’ records these failures and how are they are dealt with? Do you rely on certain people to manage these systems, perhaps solely with paper, pens, files, emails and phones? If so, you’ll know it’s all too easy for the failures to be lost in the pile as more ‘pressing’ tasks take precedence or if the person in charge is on leave.
With a SaaS (Service as a Software) Contract Management System, there’s less chance failures will go unlogged or be swept under the carpet. Your software supports you in setting up a process that allows any staff member to log a service failure, at any time, from any device – even from home if needed.

Contract Relationships

Logging a failure against a contract notifies all parties within that relationship. When this happens, a wonderful opportunity arises for one or all parties to learn how to avoid such failures again in future.

I can already hear you thinking – “but, what if they don’t lift their game and improve; what if there are just more failures?”

Here, the beauty of a SaaS Contract Management System lies in its ability to attribute failures to the relevant contract. When that contract comes up for renewal, you’ll have a complete record of all failures.

Every failure occurring over the full contract term will be listed for you to see, and you’ll be able to assess if your staff, contractor or supplier has demonstrated learning behaviours or is simply repeating their offences. You can then take this information and use it to determine whether or not you’ll renew or re-tender the contract.

Growth

In many ways, we strive for a perfect world, and a SaaS Contract Management System that allows you to log and keep track of failures, can absolutely help you work towards that, at least in the world of business.

And, if we can’t quite achieve perfection, at least we’ll achieve growth as we pursue it! After all, isn’t growth a worthy and fruitful goal?

At WebCM our Contract Management System is designed to help you organise your contracts so you can grow as a business. We tailor your system according to your needs and our Australian support team is always looking for new ways to help you move forward. Get in touch with us here to book a demo or free 90-day trial.