Tim Cummins, President of IACCM, Professor, Leeds University School of Law; Chair, International Commercial & Contract Management
“The success of remote working has opened up previously unavailable talent pools, with 64% of hiring managers now more willing to consider remote workers.”
This finding, from a survey conducted by Cielo, represents both good and bad news for job candidates. Good, because it suggests greater opportunities to find work outside traditional limits of geography or personal circumstances. Bad, because it also indicates greater competition for whatever jobs are available. And in the post-COVID era, as business struggles to recover, the level of unemployment is set to rise and the volume of opening to fall.
Read More
Topics:
contract /commercial management,
IACCM,
organizaton,
JobOpportunitiesOnlineInterviewing
The speed and intensity of COVID-19 rapidly exposed weaknesses in communication and the consequences of poor collaboration.
Read More
Topics:
contract /commercial management,
technology,
IACCM,
organizaton,
Online Communication and Collaboration
It often takes a crisis to better understand the value of things or people that were previously seen as minor or peripheral.
Read More
Topics:
contract /commercial management,
technology,
IACCM,
organizaton,
contract automation,
supply chain,
gearbox
“It feels like there is no escape”.
This impassioned plea came from one of my regular contacts, struggling to balance the demands of managing global contracts with the duties of childcare, home schooling and a partner feeling irritated by lockdown. “He tries to help, but just makes all of us more stressed and annoyed”. Reminding her that at least she had no pets to manage failed to cheer her up!
Read More
Topics:
IACCM,
contracting,
TASK
A disaster, or a well-managed asset? See how you score on this brief test:
- When the pandemic hit, was it easy to find all your contracts?
- Could you be confident it was the current version?
- Could you quickly search across each contract for key terms – for example, rights of termination or delay, force majeure, payment obligations?
- Were you able to rapidly produce consolidated management reports on risks?
- Could you easily assess the impact of supplier default on the performance of customer contracts?
- Did you have rapid insight to opportunities for renegotiation or term offsets?
Read More
Topics:
IACCM,
contracting,
competence
When looking at the benefits of automation, there tends to be a strong focus on direct and measurable efficiency and economic gains. There may be mention of a notional side-benefit of ‘freeing up people to perform higher-value activities’ – though it is more likely that the CFO will have a greater focus on headcount reduction than redeployment.
Read More
Topics:
contract /commercial management,
technology,
IACCM,
automation,
talent
"Disbelief and denial, a sense that this is just temporary and things will soon return to the way they were, aren’t the ideal responses to change. Agility and adaptability are."
Read More
Topics:
contract /commercial management,
IACCM,
organizaton,
Change
The Covid-19 pandemic has powerfully indicated why supply chain visibility is an essential feature of today’s business environment. Research shows that it is also acting as a catalyst for new thinking and approaches to sourcing strategy and customer delivery models.
Read More
Topics:
IACCM,
supply ecosystems,
Research Forum
The level of investment in Procurement technology has far outdistanced the spending on customer contract management - but the coronavirus pandemic is revealing weaknesses. A survey of 500 companies, ranging in size from $100 million to over $40 billion, reveals that Procurement groups have faced greater difficulty than their sell-side colleagues in several key areas:
Read More
Topics:
IACCM,
Coronavirus,
contract management automation
