“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!

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?