Speaker(s) : Maria Tzagournis, Michael Beckstead, Kirk Samson, Marc Lessem
The webinar addresses how to encourage the balance between the respective contracting wants and needs, of both, legal and business stakeholders. It talks about how cross-functional gaps result in revenue leakage, and ambiguity in contracting language, along with how cross-functional alignment can empower the business.
The panelists talk about the growth journeys of their respective organizations and how good contracting systems have played a role in the overall success, even when dealing with diverse industries.
Michael Beckstead - North America Regional Director, Supplier Contracting Services - Johnson & Johnson shared some insight into how their company manages its legal and business needs. Here, Michael states how important it is to understand the primary reason for a contract being introduced, and even though it sounds rudimentary and obvious, having this core understanding is what drives procurement efficiency.
Next, Kirk Samson - Senior Director, Contract Management Services, Nexdigm gives insights from his experiences on the key drivers of cross-functional collaboration. He emphasizes the importance of leadership commitment being present and how people start to fall back into their previous silos and old habits of information hoarding. Maria Tzagournis - Vice President, Commercial Contract Management (CCM) Global Processes & CCM, Americas, DHL then talks about some of the most critical areas that DHL closely inspects when reviewing any contract. She mentions that liabilities are one of the most important to take into consideration when reviewing a contract, followed by pricing and rate reviews.
The panelists gave their views on how business terms drive the contracting terms, the steps to remediate a poorly executed contract management process, the benefits of having contracts in a centralized system, negotiation tactics to make the other party think that they've won something, ensuring that all the appropriate parties are engaged, and preventing potential stakeholders from sharing too much while negotiating.
Interestingly, Kirk speaks of how the negotiation processes with known parties eat up a lot of time when they shouldn't need to and how businesses are shifting to a master agreement template with success. He also points out the role of technology in enabling low-level negotiations handled by artificial intelligence.
Before concluding, the panelists spoke about how they deal with competing priorities from different functions. Maria talks about how the solution for such a scenario can be as simplistic as letting go of emotions and just understanding everyone's perspective logically.
In conclusion, companies must not be afraid to embrace change in this area as the return on investment with improved cross-functionality is extremely high and the customers and stakeholders will appreciate improved processes as well. Going forward, in case of any uncertainty, one can take the help of outside consultants as having an objective response can overcome inertia and inspire change.
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