MyContractManager: users share their stories

“I’m temporarily replacing a colleague who recently left on pregnancy leave. Besides my regular job as a regional manager, I’m now also responsible for the contract with the cleaning company in our concession. When I was given those duties, I was afraid it was going to get very complicated. Of course, I didn’t have time to study a complicated legalese contract of a hundred pages and check personally with the cleaning company whether they’re complying with all the requirements.

Fortunately, with MyContractManager it was much easier than I thought to keep this contract under control. I have a list of requirements that need to be met; and for each requirement, I know exactly how, when, and from whom to expect status updates. I can easily search the contract for a specific term, so I don’t need to dig through the entire document when I need a particular piece of information.

Now, if I receive a complaint, for example because passengers were faced with smelly rubbish bins or dirty chairs, I can look in the MyContractManager portal to find out who I need to contact at the cleaning company. I can also easily track how they’ve followed up on the complaint, and I receive an automated notification when action has been taken. That allows me to communicate back to the customer service, and they can inform the passenger what was done with their complaint. I also get a notification if nothing happens to the complaint within the agreed time frame. Then I know it’s time to pick up the phone.

What’s also very helpful is that I have access to a traceable history of the contract. My predecessor Marie, who’s on leave now, negotiated some additional performance agreements relative to the original contract. All those e-mails are stored in the MyContractManager database and are linked to the relevant requirements and KPIs.

Thanks to this system, I was able to easily take over the contract management and all information was quickly made available and transparent to me. It didn’t take me much time or effort to keep this under control, so I was able to fulfill all my other responsibilities despite the extra workload.”

"Thanks to MyContractManager, I was able to easily take over the contract management and all information was quickly made available and transparent to me. It didn't take me much time or effort to keep this under control, so I was able to fulfill all my other responsibilities despite the extra workload."

“Our business supplies organisations across the Netherlands with food and drink for their company restaurants. We also arrange other aspects of facility management for our clients, such as reception desks, cleaning, and security.

In short, I manage a lot of contracts at once. At our company, we can do a lot of stuff ourselves, but we also have contractors across the country to help provide different types of products and services. We used to purchase all our food and drink from one wholesale partner, for example, but more and more of our customers have specific wishes, like food from local producers, or ambitious social return goals. To meet those requirements, we had to negotiate additional contracts with more specialised parties.

Personally, I’m responsible for about 20 contracts. You can imagine that I don’t have the time to verify each and every requirement individually. When I just started this job, I tried to do that, but it led to me being on the phone all day, and it drove me crazy. So I was very happy when we started working with MyContractManager.

Every requirement has its own update frequency, and the portal automatically sends update requests to the requirement owners at our various suppliers. I can easily track what the status is of each contract. What information did we already receive, and what’s still missing? I no longer feel responsible for sending people reminders in advance, those e-mails like “remember you promised this improvement plan by next week?” – no more. That saves me a lot of time.”

“There are 5 public transport concessions in our province, including both bus and train contracts. These are sizeable contracts with 7-digit annual revenues, and each contract involves hundreds of requirements. My tasks are primarily focused on the level of strategy: discuss with our service providers where we want to move in the future, where we want to invest, how the service should be responsive to new developments in terms of infrastructure and housing, for example.

In short, it’s way below my pay grade to be involved with individual requirements or all sorts of details; each concession has its own contract manager to do that. But for me, MyContractManager is also very valuable, because it gives me an overview of all our contracts at a high level. I can monitor the status of performance agreements, improvement plans, audits, and the planning of important projects, especially as they relate to other developments in our province.

If our contracted service providers don’t meet their commitments or are consistently late with their information, I give them a call. If necessary, we can initiate a new tender when a service provider doesn’t perform. For each contract, we know when the optional extension years start and what the deadline is to potentially end a contract. So in my own calendar, I have a clear date when I need to start evaluating a service provider and decide whether the contract should be extended. We’re never forced to extend simply because we accidentally missed that deadline. That was a risk that used to keep me up at night, and it’s great not to worry about that anymore.”

 

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