Contract Insights

 CobbleStone is proud to announce that the 2018 CobbleStone Conference is happening this November 7th-9th in Philadelphia! With contract AI, machine learning, risk migration, and more, this conference is set to be our best one yet.

What is Sarbanes-Oxley?

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) was an act that was passed in 2002 by the United States Congress to help protect investors from the likelihood of fraudulent accounting activities that were being done by different corporations. News had spread that corporate officials were filing misleading information about their financial statements and handing them over to their accounting firms after the well-known scandals. The firms that they were handing them over to were firms that they had a tight-knit relationship with and knew they would do them some favors. SOX was implemented to help standardize the accounting and contract management professions and turn bad back into good.

(This post was originally published April 24, 2017. Updated May 29, 2018)

Managing contract compliance can be tough.  It becomes even more difficult when important terms and clauses are buried deep within a contract.  Times that by the thousands of contracts a company will manage and you can find yourself more frustrated than ever.  Missing compliance can cost an organization much more than hefty fees and fines.  Reputations could tarnish and deals could go down the drain.  Your organization could be playing catch up for a while.  Being able to meet compliance becomes a top priority.  It becomes easier with the right contract management software in place.

There’s a lot of buzz when it comes to digital innovation in just about any part of an organization. When it comes down to it, what exactly does that entail?

It is very rare when an organization is so on point that others use them as a standard (we’re looking at you, Amazon). The ability to have most, or all, of your business processes fine-tuned and in sync is something that most organizations are often trying to accomplish. These types of changes could take years before they truly take effect. Unfortunately, business happens quick and organizations can’t afford to wait that long. Many areas of the organization including marketing, sales, and service departments have already eradicated outdated ways of operating.

The topic of digital innovation in the procurement process, however, seems to be the one area that tends to get overlooked. Why?