Exploring Contract Workspace
Objective
After completing this lesson, you will be able to describe how to create a Contract Workspace from an awarded sourcing event.
Source-to-Order with Contract Compliance Process Flow
Contract Lifecycle
SAP Ariba Contracts allows you to manage the entire contract lifecycle in a centralized location.
Contract Header Fields
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Hierarchical Type | Allows you to create hierarchical relationships between contract workspaces using master and sub agreements |
| Stand Alone Agreement | An independent contract workspace |
| Master Agreement | Specifies that the contract workspace is related to one or more sub agreement contracts workspaces |
| Sub Agreement | Specifies that the contract workspace belongs to a master agreement |
| Agreement Date | The date for the agreement. You can use this field as defined by your organization |
| Effective Date | The date on which the contract becomes effective |
| Expiration Date | The date on which the contract expires. Only used in contract workspaces with Fixed or Auto Renew term types |
| Notice Period | Specifies the number of days before the expiration date when the project enters the notice period and the system sends a reminder email |
| Term Type | Refers to the Contract Time Frame (Effective and End Dates) |
| Fixed | The contract is for a fixed time period. The contract expires permanently when it reaches its expiration date. After the expiration date has passed, you can extend a fixed contract workspace by amending it and changing the expiration date |
| Perpetual | Also known as an evergreen contract. A perpetual contract never expires. Even though a perpetual contract never expires, you can still set an expiration date and use that date with the system’s notification functionality to send automatically send email notifications to users to make sure the contract is examined periodically |
| Auto Renewal | If you select Auto Renew, you must also specify the values for the Renewal Interval in months, and the Maximum number of Intervals. The first renewal occurs on the original expiration date. The system updates the expiration date for each renewal until it reaches the maximum number of renewals |
Contract Workspace Components
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Overview | Contains information about the contract, including: owner, its status and version, commodity, regions, departments and term attributes |
| Contract Attributes | Attributes such as supplier/customer name, contract value and other information |
| Contract Term Attributes | Attributes such as term type, effective and expiration dates and other terms that relate to notification of the expiration date |
| Documents | Place to manage all contract related documents such as main agreement, addenda, contract terms, etc |
| Tasks | Maps out an organizations standardized process for contract creation |
| Team | Allows users to assign others to specific roles that map different tasks in the creation process, providing for efficient collaboration |
| Message Board | A collection of messages for a workspace. Users can create messages and reply to messages, label messages for filtering and message external recipients via email through the message board |
| History | A detailed record of changes to information in the project, such as the creation date and field changes |
Contract Workspace Tabs
- Documents
- Documents inherited from the project templates will appear automatically in the documents tab of the project
- Documents or Folders can be associated with tasks
- Documents can be any file type and often will include:
- Assembled documents (Main Agreement / Addenda)
- Internal Document Templates
- Contract Line Items Document
- Reference Documents
- Documents can be up to 100MB in size
- Tasks
- Task are actions that can be assigned to team members to move the contract through its lifecycle
- Tasks are things which need to be done:
- By a specific person
- By a specific time
- As a part of phases (which organize tasks into groups)
- Can be optional or required
- Can have a predecessor
- Task/Phase cannot be started until all predecessor tasks have been completed
- Team
- Project team consists of Project Groups. Each project group has different roles, which specify the permissions for the users in that group such as:
- Ownership
- Visibility
- Editing Capabilities
- Review and Approval
- Other users may be assigned tasks within a contract workspace
- May not have visibility to any project information outside of the assigned task
- Could include users who don’t even have system access
- Project team consists of Project Groups. Each project group has different roles, which specify the permissions for the users in that group such as:
Final Approval
- In a typical contract workspace, there is a final approval task associated with all the documents of the contract workspace. This final approval usually dictates whether or not the owner can publish a contract
- Approvals are intended to model organization’s business processes
- Often dependent upon values of the header fields of the Contract Workspace including:
- Contract’s monetary amount
- Region
- Commodity
- Approvals can include actual users or project groups
- Project owners cannot delete approvers that are generated from the template, they can only add to the flow
Creating a Contract from a Sourcing Event
Step 1: Create a New Contract from the Award Tab of the Event
- Link Your Projects
- By creating a contract from the Award tab, you create a link between the contract and sourcing event, and allow for the pricing to be easily passed between the two.
- It’s Never Too Late
- If you previously created the contract, you can use the Contract button to add the pricing information from your event to an existing contract.
Step 2: Enter Header Data
- Customizable Fields
- The fields on the contract creation screen are customizable. Add additional fields to capture necessary data for search or reporting purposes.
- Choose a Template
- Contract Workspaces use templates to control the documents, tasks, and team members that appear when you create the contract. Templates can have questions for contract creators to answer to aid the process.
Step 3: Draft Necessary Documents and Obtain Internal Reviews
- Microsoft Word Integration
- View the contract language within the contract workspace and open in Word to make changes. Once you’re done, drag the document back in to incorporate changes.
- Internal Reviews
- Review tasks can be set to allow reviewers to suggest changes only or to allow reviewers to directly edit the document.
Step 4: Negotiate and Finalize the Document with your Supplier
- A Negotiable Process
- Suppliers can use their Ariba Network account to access the task or the system can generate an email with attachment
- Full Audit Trail
- The task saves each round of negotiations with the file, comments, and additional attachments