Australian contract management company’s software keeps service contracts on track without spreadsheets

The two web-based products, Contract Manager and Contract Pulse, let operations managers see end of month and real-time supplier activity respectively, and highlight if contractors are providing services in line with contract requirements and budgets.

The applications are an important development because most operations managers, while responsible for budgets, aren’t necessarily experts in contract management and spreadsheet analysis — an unfamiliarity that increases the risk of expensive billing mistakes and not seeing troubling trends until it’s too late.

Simon Thompson, Acquire Procurement Services’ Asia Pacific Director, said “When you’re an operations manager overseeing services that are performed over a large geographical footprint or out-of-site (like underground at a remote mine) — you rarely get to see if the services you’re being billed for were actually performed, and to make sure the right rates have been applied. Our tools dramatically reduce the chance of costly errors in contract management and make it possible for the budget owner to check performance without even opening a spreadsheet.”

Guided by Acquire Procurement Services’ team of specialised contract managers, the tools take key contract elements like service costs and timeframes (which normally live in Word documents, invoices, timesheets, and messy Excel spreadsheets) and turn them into a digital contract.

After that, proprietary algorithms compare contractor behaviour against expected levels and highlights discrepancies and trends, either in real time (Contract Pulse) or monthly (Contract Manager). Using Contract Pulse, suppliers can record their activities directly into the system via a smartphone app.

The company is so confident in the benefits that it’s offering a refund if the tools haven’t added value within six months.

“If we can’t demonstrate within 6 months that we’ve saved you more than the cost of the service, we will refund the difference,” Mr Thompson said.

The release comes on the back of Acquire Procurement Services’ research into contract awarding issues, which found over 99% of multi-million-dollar tenders awarded in Australia could have been on the back of flawed analysis. They subsequently built Traaci.com, a tool which helps tender evaluation teams quickly collect and assess pricing and volume submissions from tenderers.

More information about the services is available at https://thecontractmanager.com/ and https://contractpulse.com/.