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The Future of Contracting

The goal of this research project is to answer two questions:

1. Over the next five years, how will be the primary role, impact and capability of the contract and contracting process change and who will be responsible for its management?

2. Over this period how will the contracting process create the most value for the enterprise?

Demographics

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* 1. Your Function

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* 2. What is your job role?

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* 3. To what industry does your company belong?

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* 4. In what country do you currently reside?

Buyer-seller relationship

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* 5. To what extent and in what ways do you see contract management and relationship management merging and what implications might this have on how the role is performed, and by whom?

In this first section we are seeking your views on how the market or business model will change in the coming 5 years and how that will influence the way you relate to customers or suppliers.

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* 6. In General, do you believe that trading activity will become more transactional or more relationship based?

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* 7. The perception of contracts and their role varies substantially across worldwide markets.  In many cases, their terms and purpose are not well understood.  How do you think these factors will influence the use and the design of contracts?

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* 8. What aspects of contracting will change over the next few years?

  Yes No
Will Common law maintain its dominance as the framework for international contracts?
Will there be more international and industry standards?
Will there be a focus on plain language (less legalese) and simpler design ?
Will there be greater use of visual techniques to improve understanding (i.e. pictures, graphs, flow charts)?
Will contracts be digitally created?

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* 9. What supplier or customer attributes will you value most highly in 2020 and why will these have changed?

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* 10. How do you think approaches to contracting will change?

  Less About the same More
Performance or outcome-based contracting
Evaluation of the balance between risk and reward
Collaborative planning and negotiation
Focus on agility/flexibility (including Agile contracts)
Payment by results

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* 11. How will you create incentives (and remove disincentives) for suppliers or customers to collaborate with your enterprise to achieve mutual profitability and other synergies?

Terms and Conditions

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* 12. Do you expect significant changes to terms and conditions and the approach to their negotiation?

  Yes No
Risk allocations (liabilities, indemnities)
Penalties or rewards
Jurisdiction, nature of recourse - e.g. alternative dispute resolution
Performance undertakings, measurements
Governance, information sharing, audit
Data protection, Cyber security
Intellectual Property
Contract scope or goals
Change Management
Other
Value management

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* 13. Relative to today, how important will these issues be? (on a scale 1-5, 1 less impact, 5 more impact)

  1 (less impact) 2 3 4 5 (more impact)
Automation / new technologies
Managing contract change
Coping with market volatility
Managing data and data analysis
Building collaborative networks
Simplification
Cost cutting
Reputation risk
Innovation (commercial models, terms and conditions)
Measuring and reporting value contribution

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* 14. Assuming the need to identify new cost savings or revenue generation opportunities by 2020, how will your function’s value proposition have changed?

Budgeting and planning

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* 15. How involved will you and your team be in your company’s strategic planning?

Organizational structures
In an ideal world, how would your company be organized in 2020:

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* 16. What will be your function’s reporting structure:

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* 17. Would there be benefits in consolidating buy-side and sell-side contracting resources into a single function?

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* 18. To what extent will technology allow increased empowerment or greater decentralization of contract management?

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* 19. What changes will there be to your function’s authority? How will review and approval systems have altered?

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* 20. To what extent and in what ways do you see contract management and relationship management merging and what implications might this have on how the role is performed and by whom?

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* 21. What changes would you wish to see in the relationships between contracting and legal groups – for example, is consolidation desirable?

Skills and Training
It’s 2020, what does your group look like in terms of the type and balance of roles on your team? How does this differ from today?

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* 22. Do you expect to be using resources from outside your enterprise in 2020?

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* 23. What skills and skill types will be most in demand in 2020?

Performance management
What will be the key metrics used in 2020 to meet targets and drive continuous performance improvements within your team and across your supply chains? For example:

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* 24. What sort of innovation/productivity targets will your team have?

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* 25. What will be the top three KPIs that will determine your team’s success?

Innovation
In the past decade, the focus of contracting innovation has been very much on things like: improving, capturing and structuring information, speeding up and automating processes, developing, analytics and implementing standards.

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* 26. How do you see the focus of innovation shifting in the coming five years - in particular, the balance between technical innovation and commercial innovation?

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* 27. Can you point to something you are doing today (something experimental) that might be seen in 5 years’ time as an accepted best practice?

Financial management

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* 28. What role will contracting play in overall financial management and how will this have changed from today?

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* 29. Will there be a shift in the emphasis between contracts as a legal instrument versus contracts as an economic, operational or communication instrument?

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* 30. What role does your team have in cost or pricing management today?

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* 31. How do you belive it will change in the future?

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* 32. What role will you play in optimising cash flow and working capital?

Summary (question to all interviewees – each answer to be no more than 30 words)

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* 33. Overall, do you believe contracting competence will be more or less important than it is today and why?

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* 34. In summary, how do you think that competence will be delivered and to what extent do you think dedicated professionals will be relevant to that delivery?

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* 35. Overall, how confident do you feel that your function is prepared for the demands of the next 5 years?

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* 36. Overall, how confident do you feel that you personally are prepared for the demands of the next 5 years?

Thank you for taking our survey!

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* 37. If you would like to receive a copy of the results of this survey, please enter your e-mail address here:

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