Version 4 updates user interface, offers new supplier and customer relationship management features
Edmonton, Alberta — November 5, 2003 — Solution provider Upside Software has released version 4 of its flagship enterprise contract management application, offering improvements in functionality and usability over previous versions.
The provider said that UpsideContract 4.0 is an enterprise-class contract management solution based on a pure Microsoft .NET architecture that simplifies interoperability and integration with other systems.
The solution provides full lifecycle contract management functionality, including collaborative contract creation and negotiation, performance, compliance and risk management, event management, and amendment and renewal processing, Upside said.
Version 4 includes enhancements to the functions available in previous releases, plus adds a couple dozen new improvements, including a new look and feel, with a configurable user interface, as well as a configurable dashboard with embedded OLAP reporting allowing for a procurement/sales office snapshot and helping to enable proactive spend and revenue management.
New vendor/supplier and customer relationship management features are intended to help companies maintain and manage organization-specific information on compliance, performance, risks, documents and events. An improved contract configurator allows users to manage templates by various parameters and embed governance, including allowing for confidentiality to be appended to notes and attached documents, and for attached business rules and workflow, enabling automated processing.
A new performance and compliance manager allows organizations to track various metrics and associate specific workflow to each item, allowing for dynamic management and real-time reporting, Upside says. The compliance assurance functionality is designed to ensure adherence to contractual and corporate governance controls.
New e-forms — customer defined forms that are handled like attached documents and allow processing by workflow and business rules — can be used to manage evaluations, gather data and ratings, and perform similar activities.
Enhanced search capabilities allow for searching within attached documents (including scanned OCR images), the solution now offers multiple database support, with full support for Oracle as well as the original Microsoft SQL Server.
MS Office 2003 integration allows users to import, create, share, edit and negotiate contracts natively in MS Word with full functionality.
For more information on contract management automation, see the article "Digging Out from the Contract Clutter" in the January 2002 issue of iSource Business.
For additional information on contract management best practices, see the SDCExec.com articles "Five Myths of Contract Management" (July 9, 2003), "Contract Management: Improving Corporate Governance" (July 21, 2003) and "Contract Management for Procurement Best Practices" (August 4, 2003).
