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SEMYOU - SEM.CONTRACT


Joanne Duncan, CPA, CAE, now senior vice president and CFO of the Credit Union National Association (CUNA), was about to present to the board her final report for the 2014 Fiscal year with a positive net overall. It’s not a big margin but a positive nonetheless. Right before she leaves her desk for the presentation, a project manager handed her an unpaid bill of $75,000 from a contractor who has been delinquent in invoicing but efficient in their work . The supplier had to be paid and the black ink is now red.

It was a twist worth of a Hollywood movie, one that no CEO, manager or business owner would want to be a part of in real life. The funny thing is that a simple platform like sem.CONTRACT could have prevented all these. In a one screen, you can view all your contracts and milestone. More importantly, you may opt to view all your contracts using certain parameters including, but not limited to:
-    active contracts
-    finished contracts
-    according to milestones
-    new contracts

Lawsuits and Financial Losses

sem.CONTRACT goes beyond serving as an alarm for your contract milestones or payments. It provides you with utilities that can save you or your company from possible lawsuits or eventual disputes.

One of the most popular contract management failures is that of Jeffrey S. Tenenbaum, Esq. He was a partner in Venable LLP’s association practice group. With staff, volunteers and consultants, they created a certification program which was initially for internal use only. However, the company eventually decided to sell the certification program. When the people who helped create the program learned of it, they questioned and successfully obstructed the company’s rights to sell the program .

The mistake happened in the beginning of the project. It was never put in a contract. Judging from the end product, it must have been a well-managed project that resulted to a product good enough to be sold. However, all potentials are gone with one simple error.

Sem.CONTRACT can ensure that all projects have a corresponding contract. It allows you to create a folder for all projects and connect all contracts to that project.

Assuming you are a software company and a group of employees decided to collaborate with several clients to develop a project management platform meant for that specific project alone. Ownership of the program may be in question eventually but having a like platform like sem.CONTRACT, you will be able to log and keep track of the each contract attached to a program. You can easily spot an activity tht is being undertaken without a contract.

Fulfilling the Essence of Corporate Governance

Very few appreciate what corporate governance stands for because it seems such a big word. In reality, this is probably the best way for managers, CEOs and finance heads to keep track of where the money of the company is going and what it is bringing the company. Corporate Governance ensures that every investment the company is making helps the company progress. That is not as simple as it sounds, of course. After all, there are so many aspects of a company operation whose revenue contribution is hard to measure.

Let’s assume you are starting a contract with a big client. The total contract price really indicates what could actually be your biggest contract to date. With sem.CONTRACT, you can set up this project with this contract.

Let us say you will need to work with other vendors. You can then set up those contracts and connect it with the main contract. You can also connect other resources or tools you will need to fulfill this project or contract and that includes company employees, machines, properties and others. In the end, you can easily compute how much you are actually spending,

In a single screen, you will also be able to identify what projects or departments seem over-budget. For a businessowner, cEO, or manager, you can independently watch the progress of each of your project based on the contract and easily check what projects are running without a contract.

Daily Audit

Sem.CONTRACT also allows independence in terms of auditing your projects, budget, or operations. It provides you with a spreadsheet of your contacts and important milestones you need to consider such as payments or deliverables.

You can automate it to push messages to you so that you don’t have to visit it everyday just to see what important developments should be happening on any given day. This way, it is also easy to see if deliverables are fulfilled before payments are made or if payments were made without completion of milestones, then it’s easier to investigate.

Process Shapes Behavior

The biggest advantage of a sem.CONTRACT is its ability to guide the behavior of everyone in the company and shape a process that works for everyone. Although contracts may now be digitized, it is still hard to keep everything in check because it would require going through the contracts one by one to check every detail.

Let us say you own a chain of restaurants and are opening several new branches. You, as a CEO or owner, will not have enough knowledge about how restaurants should be constructed. That’s why you hire someone you trust but trust does not guarantee the results you are expecting. sem.CONTRACT may force you to be clear about your requirements and milestones. Thus, it is easier for everyone to be accountable to what they commit to deliver.

Sem.CONTRACT has no place of ambiguity. It forces you to become specific which makes governance easier and more efficient.


sem.CONTRACT Features



To-do lists
A rundown of things you or other people must do which may be sent as a list or as an alert. You can track each item by assigning a status and filter your view by active or complete to-do items

Administering amendments, Requirements and Extensions
In a single screen and few clicks, you can amend contracts, change or add requirements or extend contracts

Archiving
When a contract is done, you may archive it but still make it searchable. You may also archive tasks, milestones and others.

Administering companies, people and contracts
You can create profiles of companies, people and contracts. You may connect everyone to every contract they have worked on which makes it easier for you to search or analyze contracts, projects or people when you need to do a review.

Reminders
You may create reminders in advance and send it once or multiple times. This saves you time from reviewing the contracts and deliverables everyday just to make sure everything is fulfilled.

Comprehensive Security Model
Each person may be assigned the extent of information he or she may access. If one employee is involved in different projects but only needs to know basic information, you can choose the specific information he or she can access.

Notes
You can write any idea connected to a project or any remark of changes which needs to be later visited.

Transactions and Rebates
You can keep tabs of your invoices, rebates, collections and others.

Organizational structure
You can set the organizational structure of the whole company, of a department or of a project.

Dashboard & analyses
You will always have access to all of your contracts in your dashboard screen. It’s easy to spot what contracts are getting delayed, on time or getting completed fast. You will also have a graphical representation of each project to make it easier to analyze the capacity of your company at any given day.

Amendment tracking
Every change made will be tracked and archived.

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