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perspective of the Audit/Risk Executive

Upside Software offers significant value for organizations of all sizes and in all industries. UpsideContract enables effective contract management with a solution that supports regulatory compliance while entrenching effective business processes that provide immediate and lasting value. Our other products compliment UpsideContract extending its value into other functional areas further driving a fast ROI and continual value. The user configurable user interface in version 6, along with the deep Office 2003® or higher (including Office 2007®) integration remove user adoption issues to ensure a fast ROI. 

Sarbanes-Oxley Act 

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX) is a hot topic for companies and their executives. To help become and stay compliant with SOX requirements, organizations are leveraging contract management systems to effectively manage and report on their business relationships and activities. Click here to learn more about SOX and how Upside Software can help.

Features for the Audit/Risk Executive 

• Single source for management of business relationships - enables assessment and review of activities. 
• Enables audit tracking of business relationships, transactions and activities. 
• Risk identification and management.
• Compliance tracking and management – ensure compliance to SOA, SAB 101, HIPAA, etc. 
• Extensive document control to ensure the proper terms and conditions are included in each agreement. 
• Extensive flexibility to ensure appropriate legal involvement in all activities.
• Advanced business rules engine and dynamic workflow determination and management to involve the right person/people at the right time.
• Automated notification. 
• Very strong security based on role, organization and financial authority.
• Full and easy integration with any other system including legal, financials, ERP, SRM, CRM, legacy, etc. 
• Web based for quick deployment and improved accessibility. 
• Fast ROI – often less than 90 days. 

Audit/Risk Executive's Business Needs 

• A snapshot of all contracts and their status – active, in litigation, in negotiation, etc. 
• Ensure tracking and compliance for regulations such as SOX, SAB 101, HIPAA, etc. 
• Adherence to corporate policies and procedures. 
• Audit tracking of business processes, transactions and activities. 
• Enforce required use of approved templates, language, terms and conditions, and performance and compliance measures. 
• Enable automated selection of contract and RFX sections and/or clauses based on criteria such as jurisdiction, contract value, etc. 
• Ability to lock down specific document content so it can’t be changed. 
• Automatic routing for legal approval of any changes to standard terms and conditions.
• Ability to mandate legal review of contracts by type, vendor, or other criteria. 
• A full audit trail of collaborative changes and negotiations, including the ability to compare any two versions with redlined differences.
• A view of contractual commitments to customers, along with associated risk and compliance issues, and how we are measuring up. 
• Streamlined operations and elimination of unnecessary administrative costs. 

Business Benefits for the Audit/Risk Executive 

• Ensures adherence to business policies and processes - tracks activities to ensure compliance. 
• Increases visibility, accessibility and management of contracts, commitments and activities across the enterprise. 
• Provides extensive document control. 
• Ensures company policies and procedures are followed. 
• Enables proactive contract and financial governance, and management of risk. 
• Helps ensure compliance with regulations (e.g. SAB 101, SOX, etc.). 
• Involves the right people at the right time – better management of critical activities. 
• Deploys quickly, is simple to use and provides a fast return on investment. 

Business Solutions to Support the Audit/Risk Executive 

Upside Software offers a fully integrated product suite that includes:

UpsideContract is an enterprise-class contract management solution that provides full life-cycle contract management functionality including collaborative contract creation and negotiation, performance, compliance and risk management, event management, and amendment and renewal processing. 

UpsideContract-LITE is the solution of choice for organizations wishing to start with a simple solution and grow it as their needs require, or for smaller organizations where an enterprise-class system is not required.

UpsideForms provides organizations the ability to capture very detailed information on custom, definable forms and utilize this information to make solid business decisions and calculations, as well as to perform analysis to ensure compliance and enforce accuracy.

UpsideRFX manages sourcing and procurement activities, facilitating collaborative creation and management of complex RFX (RFP, RFQ, RFI, etc.) documents and related processes with functionality that supports both the purchaser and vendor communities.

UpsideBilling automates QA and processing of invoices and bills, incoming and outgoing by applying business rules to identify errors and exceptions and to dynamically determine the workflow required to address them.

Additional Information - key points about Contract Management 

Goldman Sachs' report, "Time To Manage Those Contracts!" states, "agreement terms have become more sophisticated to include items such as rebates and chargebacks, as well as conditional agreements. It has become increasingly common for contracts to encompass thousands of products, prices, incentives, compliance levels and other variables." 

Goldman Sachs estimates that companies incur between $25 billion and $30 billion in hard costs every year from managing their contracts 

National Association of Purchasing Management (NAPM) has reported that the average Fortune 1000 company actually has between 20,000 and 40,000 suppliers 

Estimates are that about 80 percent of B2B purchases involve some sort of contract, and that makes for a great deal of "paper" floating back and forth between buyers and suppliers 

"Contract management is the proverbial area where the buy side meets the sell side," says Pierre Mitchell, analyst AMR Research. "That's where the relationship comes together and gets instantiated. It's not just legal terms and conditions that show up in a written contract. It's really all the performance measures surrounding the relationship that you have with the supplier or the customer." 

Goldman Sachs cautions that the ROI likely will vary by industry, but suggests that contract automation could accelerate negotiation cycles by 50 percent, reduce erroneous payments by 75 to 90 percent, cut operating and processing costs associated with managing contracts by 10 to 30 percent, and result in a 10 to 20 percent headcount reduction. 

PricewaterhouseCoopers suggest that companies could realize savings that equate to 2% of total annual costs by eliminating inaccuracies and non-compliance through contract automation (therefore, a company spending $1B can save $20M annually). 

Gartner Group estimates that the market for Contract Management Software and related implementation services will top $20B US by 2007. 

Upside Software Can Deliver 

Let Upside Software prove to you how the above challenges are solved with our Enterprise Business Solutions suite of products

Review the value proposition of contract management solutions 

Find a wealth of information, including white papers, case studies, customer citations and more in our Resource Center 

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