How to Accelerate contracting and enable supplier diversity

Did you know, most businesses have their own version of a Master Services Agreement, yet around 90% of the content of executed MSAs is substantively the same (though expressed in different words)? Why are we spending months negotiating positions when we already know where we’ll likely land? It’s expensive and it’s getting in the way of closing deals quickly. It’s not good business.

Then there is the fundamental problem with contracting – larger suppliers are often better-placed to assess and mitigate the risks of (pro)customer terms appended to RfPs, which effectively locks-out smaller suppliers. In a world where there is such a focus on diversity and equality, who is looking out for smaller businesses? What about supplier diversity?

How could we make contracting fair, balanced and easy? 

At Clausify we do this by levelling the playing field, enabling supplier diversity; and reducing the complexity in contracting, driving down cost and increasing efficiency.

How we do this…

1) Industry standard contracts that are balanced, enabling supplier diversity

The GSA shares our vision and values, especially around supplier diversity. We’re proud to be teaming with the GSA and some of the leading law firms and industry experts to develop a suite of professional services agreements based on principles that are balanced and fair. These terms are developed based on research around the “settlement zone” – they are neither pro-customer nor pro-supplier, but simply based on fair industry norms. 

2) Contracts crafted with the settlement zone in mind, helping you close deals faster

Going digital is NOT about taking a Microsoft Word contracting process onto an online platform. That’s just moving the exact same challenges from an “on premise” environment to an “off premise” one. What’s going to move the needle is the industry adoption of standardised contracts. As Chris Bates, Partner at Ashurst said at the GSA Festival of Sourcing, “…you immediately do away with 60 or 70 pages of unnecessary review if you’re working with a document that everyone is familiar with”. 

We are fully behind standardisation. In fact, Clausify is custom built to execute standard documents, locking standard language and making business critical language editable. This means deal teams can crack on with inputting key information such as scope, pricing, delivery details and frees up the time of legal teams. 

3) Platform experience developed with business outcomes in mind, taking pressure off legal teams and empowering deal teams

We’ve re-designed the contracting process, making it simple, so deal teams can work on contracts with as much or as little guidance from legal teams as needed. Our platform experience makes it clear what you need to do; who needs to do it; and where and how it needs to be done. You can contract on any device (even your tablet); and the whole end to end process is convenient and quick.

If your organisation is ready to make the pledge to be a fair and inclusive organisation and if you want to contract more efficiently, then hit us up at www.clausify.co   

Watch David’s full presentation at the Festival of Sourcing here. Watch the launch of the GSA Standard Terms here.