State governments, local governments, and special districts manage extensive systems for housing, transportation, sanitation, utilities, land use, and communication to facilitate interactions between people, governments, and businesses. Contracts are public records, and managing them with inefficient and insecure methods is less than ideal. Additionally, vendor registration and management with outdated procedures is difficult and time-consuming. Contract management software can help, and this is why state and local governments love it so much. Let's explore further.
Why Contract Management Software for State & Local Governments?
Does your organization respond to FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) or public record requests related to your bids or contracts? Would your organization prefer to purchase software solutions off of the GSA Schedule 70? Do you want to centrally manage contracts and vendors while tracking key data? You can do this and more with contract management software.
Full Contract Lifecycle Management for Relevant Contract Types
State and local governments can manage many different types of contracts with vendors, service providers, and others with contract lifecycle management software. These contracts include (but are not limited to):
- Vendor Agreements
- Service Agreements
- Consulting Agreements
- Funding Agreements
- Maintenance Agreements
You can take key contract data and merge it with pre-approved templates and clauses specifically for state and local government contracts. For example, a service agreement may include a scope of services section, while a funding agreement should contain specifics around funding amounts. The language of a newly introduced draft can be quickly replaced with pre-approved language for these sections with contract intelligence. This functionality makes it so that state and local government contract professionals like you can rest assured that their contracts contain tried and true contract language for success!
For contracts written on vendor paper, automated data extraction allows you to extract key data from a contract and populate a tidy contract metadata page. You can quickly identify clauses, dates, counterparty information, monetary values, and much more and organize it for simple navigation and management. Moreover, you can choose to include whichever data you want via field configuration – whether it can be extracted or added, when necessary, on one neat and organized record screen. This configurability extends to different fields and areas for different contract types – including for the types listed above for state and local governments.
Contract Metadata Fields for State & Local Government Contracts
State and local government contract managers like you can leverage myriad types of fields, such as drop downs, text boxes, multi-line text boxes, currencies, dates, data tables, and many others in contract management software. You can use out-of-the-box fields and data tables or create your own!
Common sector-specific fields and tables that state and local governments can easily start using are:
- Sole Source
- DBE/DMBE Goal vs. Actual
- Negotiated Savings
- Tax ID
- Custom Contract ID
- Vendor Insurance Data Table
Reports for State & Local Government Contract Management
Ad-hoc reports support “and/or” logic filtering, sorting, naming, and saving to spreadsheet format. These reports can be configured to automatically email on a scheduled basis for maximum oversight. They may also be displayed on personalized dashboard views.
The custom report builder takes it a step further by offering heightened control over appearance, design, layout, and information on each report. This user-friendly drag-and-drop report designer functionality is very similar to leading third-party reporting tools. Text, images, graphics, variables, conditions, cross-tables, and more can be included – providing state and local government contract managers like you with oversight of the entire contract database. These reports can be saved to MS Word, spreadsheet, PDF, CSV, image, and many other formats.
State and local governments can use ad-hoc reports or a custom report designer to run both out-of-the-box and configured reports. Especially helpful for state and local governments are those for:
- Vendor Insurance Expiration (Within X Days)
- Service Contracts
- DBE Vendors
Workflows for State & Local Governments
Another reason state and local government contract managers like you love contract management software is workflows and task approvals. Workflow automation engages the right people at the right time with virtually unlimited contract notifications, real-time auto-alerts, and steps. You can manage collaboration, contract creation, and negotiation by using workflows to track the process. Intelligent workflow automation reduces risk and contract approval process cycle time by eliminating bottlenecks and ensuring accountability.
Key state and local government approval processes include:
- Vendor Approvals
- Vendor Insurance Approval
- Vendor Annual Review
- Request Approvals
- Bid Approvals
- Contract Approvals
Extras That State & Local Governments Love
In addition to the features mentioned above, here are some extras that state and local governments love.
A public-facing portal allows state and local government contract managers like you to provide the general public with access to selected contract data, files, and documents with easy searching, querying, reporting, exporting, and downloading access to automate and simplify FOIA and Open Records request processing. FOIA solutions provide adherence to legislated and internal requirements through flexible business process automation and tracking.
Additionally, fair competition can be achieved by leveraging a solicitation management module and inviting suppliers to compete via a fair bidding process (including rating and scoring bids fairly). You can retain accountability by utilizing workflow features to ensure all vendors, bids, and contracts are approved according to county, state, and regulatory procedures set forth by their respective agencies and as configured in the system.
Additional features that state and local governments love include:
- a Vendor Collaboration Gateway
- Purchase Order/Spend Management
- Electronic Signatures & Document Collaboration
If you represent state and/or local government and want to get started with contract management software features above and more, book a free demo of CobbleStone Contract Insight® today!
