Name: Clayton Utz Location: Australia About: Clayton Utz is a leading Australian law firm with a national presence, they have nearly 200 partners, and over 1400 staff (Legal and Support Services). 1. Reasons for Seeking a Solution At Clayton Utz, the procurement team approached us with a familiar challenge. Managing agreements through an Excel spreadsheet proved inefficient, particularly when faced with due diligence checks on suppliers concerning Modern Slavery and IT Security risks. The manual process of setting calendar reminders led to oversights, unauthorized executions, and the realis ..read more

Vendor Lifecycle Management (VLM) involves the strategic oversight and coordination of a business’s relationships with the vendors it uses to obtain products and services. VLM covers such relationships from initiation, through operation, to termination and sometimes beyond. The primary goal of VLM is to deliver maximum value from as many vendors as possible, while minimising the associated risks and optimising the operational efficiency of dealing with them. Like any business practice, VLM typically starts small and hopefully evolves in lockstep with business growth, to deliver increased fu ..read more

Non-profit organisations (NPOs) play a crucial role in addressing various societal challenges, but they often face resource constraints and operational challenges. They usually receive income from a combination of grants and donations from the government, businesses and the public. Some non-profits may also have other funding sources, such as revenue from products and services they might sell, or the return from any investments they might have. Like every business, non-profits are subject to general business regulations. Unlike most other businesses, they need to comply with specific regulatio ..read more

Australian Prudential Standard CPS 234 Information Security was created to enhance resilience around security incidents. It focuses mainly on cyber attacks for APRA-regulated entities that need to maintain information security capabilities to protect their organisation and customers. You’ll want to consider this alongside your APRA CPS 230 requirements. For vendor-facing teams, you likely provide your vendors with sensitive information or that they control swathes of information in the services performed. The likelihood of cyber attacks in a supply chain is high. According to a Security ..read more

The healthcare industry relies heavily on contracts to manage finances, comply with regulations, and deliver patient care. These contracts, encompassing everything from insurance to medical equipment, can be complex due to the intricate nature of healthcare services. Effective healthcare contract management is crucial for businesses to control costs, comply with regulations, ensure financial stability and deliver high-quality care. This article explores the complexities of healthcare contracts and their operation. It outlines: Why healthcare contracts need to be well-managed The healthcare ..read more

Procurement teams across the world have a common fear: RISKS. I used to scour my supply chains trying to figure out what risks I may face throughout my years in Defence, Aerospace, and FinTech. Why? Because when these risk events emerge, they can severely disrupt your organisation’s operations. For me, risks should be on every CEO's, CFO's, and Ops leader’s agenda every day, especially when it comes to your vendors (and even their vendors). In this article, I will go over some of the risks that I think you should be aware of and how a Vendor and Lifecycle Management (VCLM) approach should be u ..read more

Managing vendors and contracts has emerged as a key aspect of financial strategy for businesses in today's complex economic environment. It is increasingly clear that poor vendor and contract lifecycle management can lead to substantial financial losses.  The World Commerce and Contracting Association states that contract erosion, which is the value lost in contracting that directly impacts revenue figures is on average 8.6%. CFOs and Procurement teams can stop bleeding cash through their vendors by implementing Vendor and Contract Lifecycle Management (VCLM) best practices. That’s wha ..read more

A prominent US Fortune 500 Mortgage company experienced substantial growth from 2019 to 2021. However, during this period, they lacked a formalized contract process for filing, organizing, and approval, which became a pressing issue as their contracts multiplied with the company's expansion. The absence of an efficient system made contract management increasingly cumbersome, leading the team to spend 15 hours per week searching for and chasing contracts. Contract Management Challenges The Fortune 500 company told us: We were executing contracts that had not been properly vetted. And we didn ..read more

Name: Exscientia Location: Oxford, UK About: Based in the UK, Exscientia's mission is to encode, automate, and transform every stage of the drug design and development process, by combining the latest AI techniques with experimental innovation, to enable the design of patient-centric drug candidates with an improved probability of success. Their validated platform has delivered the first three AI-designed drugs to enter clinical trials and is the first AI system proven to improve clinical outcomes in oncology. The Struggle Dan, the Head of Legal at Exscientia, was facing a familiar struggle ..read more

The Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) is the first piece of legislation at the European level addressing digital operational resilience for financial services. The regulation will come into effect in January 2025 and will impact most financial entities in the EU. DORA establishes rules for ICT risk management, incident reporting, resilience testing, and third-party risk management. In short, it wants to make financial organisations and their supply chains more resilient in terms of cyber protection and operational resiliency. We’re seeing recognition that digital supply chains need som ..read more