Ask any executive what is in the corporation’s collection of contracts and the executive will tell you that there is no problem finding out. What the executive means is that given any one or two contracts, a lawyer can look at the corporate contracts and tell what is in them.

But when it comes to looking at ALL the corporation’s contracts and looking at those contracts collectively, that is a different story altogether. When all 10,000 or 100,000 or 1,000,000 corporate contracts are considered:

• How many contracts expire before the end of the year?
  
  
• What penalty clauses are in all of the contracts?
  
  
• What incentives are in all of the contracts?
  
  
• What is the total cost of a production failure as calculated by looking at all of the contracts?
  
  
• For all of the contracts, what conditions trigger an alternate payment schedule or amount?
  
  
• What is the total amount of money at stake across all contracts in the eventuality of a service failure?
  
  
• Has your company done business with XYZ company before, even when XYZ was known as another company?
  

Executives around the world have NO IDEA what information is in their collective corporate contracts.

Now with technology available from companies such as Forest Rim Technology, you can read all of those contracts, take the important and detailed information out of the contracts, and put that information in a standard relational database. Once the information is in that relational database, you can answer all sorts of questions about your total collection of corporate contracts.

Furthermore, once the contract data is in a standard relational database, you can query that database with the speed of a computer. And you can change your mind about what you are looking for. It’s as easy as the flick of a wrist. Now you can look at ALL of your corporate contracts and find out what they contain in seconds.

For example, a corporate contracts application allows you to build your own standard relational databases from your corporate contracts. First, the vendor's textual ETL product is installed. Then, a consultant spends two weeks at your site building the first of your corporate contracts databases. Along the way, your staff is trained on how to continue the process of building the corporate contract database. Or, if you like, consultants could build all of your corporate contracts databases in your choice of DB2, Teradata, Oracle, SQL Server or any data warehouse appliance.

Now your executive can turn the information light switch on.

SOURCE: Corporate Contracts Application

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