Using a Powerful Contract Management System to Improve Delivery
You have promised a Journey to Space, now you have to manage the commercials to ensure you reach the destination. This is where Contract Management is essential.
During the initial sales process you need to be able to easily track and manage leads. Establishing processes that allow you to easily manage inbound enquiries will ensure no leads are missed and that due diligence is given to every enquiry, but this is only half the equation.
We all know there is so much more to managing expectations and getting paid for a job well done.
If you want to keep your team on the road to success then ensuring you have ongoing work and a constant stream of jobs coming into the business is critical, but happy customers mean repeat business and your agreements must be delivered, documented and managed.
SpaceX wouldn’t send astronauts into space if they weren’t ready, so don’t send your drivers out on the road unless you can profit from their hard work.
When you use a paperless contract management system, clients rate cards are stored in the database, which are linked directly to the activities caught by the drivers during and after delivery.
For new clients, the process of defining how your price is managed using in-built tools can be simple or complex depending on the requirements, but the big gains come when the contract management is automatic. Fast invoicing and factual billing information removes conflict and keeps the wheels rolling with repeat business, because clients like dealing with suppliers that make their life easy and do what they say.
Using a customised system ensures that you can provide new and existing clients with the information they need efficiently to ensure you can close deals quickly and measure success accurately. By building a system that is designed your way your company maintains the ingredients that made it successful in the first place.
You can easily standardise your processes for winning contracts from start to finish and ensure your team has access to business intelligence dashboards to view historical data with ease because data is captured along the whole delivery cycle.
Provide contract management with the same care you would undertake when maintaining the engine of a spacecraft.
Having a system in place to manage the stages from the first enquiry to “proof of delivery” and every step in-between reduces the administrative burden within the business. Using a system that provides detailed contract management will allow a smooth flow of information into your company, but more importantly the ability to provide an agreed service with your customers.
Building a spacecraft is no easy feat. Ensure your contract management system is designed to the same standards as a space mission and you will lock in customers for life.
With a paperless contract management system your sales team can identify an opportunity and can easily manage all aspects of that deal throughout each stage. Items like opportunity value, key contacts, special rates, and likelihood of success can be viewed from anywhere in the world. If you lose a team member unexpectedly the information is available for the whole team so you can easily get new team members up-to-date.
Every time a client requests services and they have a prearranged pricing module under contract or through an agreement, the sales team can easily quote for the job without chasing information and undertaking manual quoting again. Or even better, the operations team can invoice automatically with every aspect of the contract built into the pickup and delivery process.
Using a digital system can automate the workflows to get your team out onto the road to start work on the job easily and efficiently. Premium solutions will also include any quality, health, and safety of factors to ensure regulations are met. Each step of the customer journey flows smoothly when you use one-system for all aspects of your business, especially one that covers Chain of Responsibility, NHVR standards, or aligns with industry best practices like the ALC code of conduct or Trucksafe.
Stick to the agreement to ensure the launch continues on schedule.
When you agree on a price with your clients at the beginning of the customer journey, it’s important to ensure this is adhered to throughout the entire process. It’s easy for details to get lost in the paperwork and this can result in massive mistakes being made. To remove the risk of easily avoidable errors, the best option is to switch to a paperless contract management and job management system, which might also be known as a Transport Management System or TMS. We believe the bit that’s often overlooked is the efficiency of the process from job allocation to mobile manifesting and always the gap in driver safety, fatigue management, and maintenance.
Astronauts are required to eat breakfast at T-minus 5 hours to liftoff, and arrive at the launch pad 3 hours before liftoff. Although they don’t carry Work Diaries we can assure you that fatigue management is critical and it’s electronic!
When your drivers leave the depot they need to know where they are going for their next job. This is no different to your clients needing to know that the price they agreed upon is what they’ll pay. With paper-based systems it’s not possible to keep track of the different rate cards and specific pricing agreements. This is where a digital contract management system will give your business the advantage it needs.
Timing is important and having agreed upon the flight schedule, the team knows how long they have to prepare for launch. Ensure your clients know what they’re getting to keep them happy by leveraging the power of mobile technology.
When SpaceX launches their rockets, everyone involved knows exactly what is happening and who is responsible for each stage. With the level of risk involved with space transport, do you think they’d use a paper-based system to manage all of their processes? Not a chance! Your business might not be SpaceX, but functioning like them is possible with the right system in place. Ask Kynection about how your transport task can be managed from launch to landing in “one-system”.
Want to deliver successfully every time? Please contact us at contact@kynection.com or 1300 786 272 to discuss how we can help your business.
© 2020 Autolync Pty Ltd, trading as Kynection
Originally published at https://www.kynection.com.au on November 10, 2020.
