SAP Ariba Contracts is an application that offers customers tools for the management of contracts. It leverages workspace functionality and templates designed by administrators to ensure contract creators respect legal and business requirements.
A contract workspace (CW) is an SAP Ariba project that stores contracts online and includes information about the contract, contract documents, project team members, and tasks. Essentially, a contract workspace is a container for your agreements and the workflow behind them.
SAP Ariba Contracts supports the following contract workspace types:
- Contract Workspace (Procurement) - used for contracts with a supplier
- Contract Workspace (Sales) - used for contracts with a customer or buyer
- Contract Workspace (Internal) - used for contracts within companies or organizations
In SAP Ariba, contract workspaces serve as containers for all aspects of contract lifecycle management, from drafting the written legal documents to engaging the right stakeholders. Different components inside a workspace facilitate the smooth management of a contract.
| Workspace Component | Definition |
|---|---|
| Overview | Contains information about the contract, including workspace ID, owner, status, version, commodity, regions, departments, term attributes, and other searchable and reportable data. |
| Contract Attributes | Attributes such as supplier or customer name, contract value, and hierarchical type. These can be out-of-the-box or custom fields. |
| Contract Term Attributes | Attributes such as term type, effective and expiration dates, and other terms that relate to the notification of the expiration date. You can search for contracts using the Contract Terms option in the Search menu. |
| Documents | Place to manage all contract-related documents, such as the main agreement, addenda, or contract terms. They are files that can be shared by users working together to create the contract. Documents can be linked to tasks and have version control to track the document's change history. |
| Tasks | Maps out an organization's standardized process for contract creation and provides auditable and repeatable processes that can be delegated to other team members and tracked through reporting. |
| Team | Allows users to assign others to specific roles that map to different tasks in the creation process, providing for efficient collaboration and letting multiple stakeholders (such as legal, tax, and risk management) participate in the process. |
| Message Board | A collection of messages for a workspace. Users can create messages, reply to messages, label messages for filtering, and message external recipients via e-mail through the message board. |
| History | A detailed record of changes to information in the workspace, such as the creation date and field changes. |
A contract workspace can be displayed in full view, as illustrated above, or in compact view. To change the project view, choose Actions in the Overview section, then select Full View or Compact View. The compact view turns the full view's tabs into sections, as illustrated below.
