Dramatic acceleration of on-boarding and off-board Cloud services and continuous control of the entire vendor portfolio.
The situation
The client, a multinational company, with increasing requirements for Cloud services, wants to get faster contracting and more control in contracting cloud solutions.

The client had a full list of pain points
  • Organization: The people involved in contract negotiations, lack experience. There is no consistency in teams negotiating deals (i.e. people are new, without background or experience, not all teams present)
  • Tools: There are no tools or training for teams involved in contract negotiations.
  • Best Practices and Processes: Unclear RACI for contract life-cycle. No contract management process ownership. The contracting teams are not involved early enough. There is limited to no handover from the negotiating team to the team that will operate the contract. The expectations in terms of timing are not well managed. Vendors come away with imposing standard terms & conditions.  The "risk management" aspect is not well managed.
  • Data: There is no contract "Summary" that provide key contractual elements. People do not read the contracts. Not all data is collected at the start of the process

Follow up Workshop organized by Glownexus
The client asked Glownexus to organize a follow up workshop. In the preparation the pain points were discussed, the objectives formulated and the agenda for the workshop (4 hours) was finalized.
The workshop was Power point free and held in a meeting room where there were panels describing the process, possible accelerators and topics for discussion taped to the walls.
The workshop was led by two very experienced consultants who stimulated the discussion and took notes. After the workshop the notes were translated in recommendations for “quick wins” which were presented and accepted by the CIO.
 
Conclusion
With the help of external advisors, a quick analysis of the GAPS against best practices were established. A program has started to work on lean and standardized processes which be supported by tools. The organization will have to evolve to support these changes