In my pervious post here on the ELP blog, I examined how improving  imposing policy, process, and system changes to ensure compliance is the second most prioritized supply management strategy for the next 24 months, as reported by my recent survey of nearly 300 supply management and business executives. I also shared insights into how Qualcomm had leveraged new regulatory and competitive pressures to securing funding and support for improvements in these areas.

Today, we'll conclude this compliance tale by looking at Qualcomm's approaches for launching and expanding its contract lifecycle management (CLM) initiative.

While Sarbanes Oxley Act and litigation helped speed alignment for contract standards and systems, Debbie Adams, Senior Project Manager at Qualcomm, identified the following as critical success factors:

• Independent project management: Adams and the contract organization were not tied to any one team or IT. Instead, Qualcomm aligned the contract management group and initiative with an influential sponsor: corporate legal. “Having the General Counsel driving this initiative really helped get the businesses in line,” says Adams.
• Strong relationship and capable software tool: “Ensure that the [CLM] solution provider you select is configurable to your company’s processes and that your solution provider is responsive to your enhancement requests.”    
• Consensus through Steering Committee: Qualcomm drove and maintained support for the contract management initiative by ensure that all business units and multiple functional groups had input into the program structure and improvements. “We realized that people would be much more likely to support [the program] if they have a voice in it.”
• Mentor power users: Qualcomm’s contract group trains and advises power users within each business unit to speed responsiveness to stakeholders and alleviate pressure on the primary enterprise administrator. “Internal customer service and support can make or break a program’s success,” says Adams.
• Centralized oversight with decentralized ownership: Qualcomm’s contracts group and steering committee provide program vision, contracting and process business rules, system management, auditing, and training. They also manage the relationship with the company’s CLM solution provider. Leveraging the visibility and controls of the CLM system, Qualcomm affords business units and functional stakeholders the latitude for decentralized data entry, contract administration and management, unique reporting, contract negotiations, and customer and supplier relationship management. “We put a reliance on internal customers to provide the functional expertise to provide the unique language and terms required to ensure best value agreements that limit risk to the company,” says Adams. This “center-led” structure is becoming more popular, thanks to the visibility and control afforded by improved information management and reporting. This organizational structure has been examined in previous Supply Excellence posts.
• Audit and measurement: Qualcomm ensures corporate goals and system adoption through standardized and periodic auditing and measurement. Adams says such standards also help Qualcomm quickly report on overall program performance and benefits.

Moral of the story: the quickest way to get a contract or supply management initiative or technology investment funded is to attach it to a crisis. For Qualcomm, SOX and patent litigation were crises senior management and frontline employees could rally around.

Is there a crisis that you can use to curry support, resources, and budget for supply management initiatives at your company?