The purpose of this feature is to provide users of Buying and Supplying Organizations to be able to collectively author, collaborate and create contractual documents. When Buying organizations make decisions on Suppliers based on the responses received for Sourcing events, generally, they get into contractual negotiations. While pricing negotiations are conducted and concluded as part of Sourcing events, contractual negotiations are around legal and other terms & conditions of the Contract. Agreements can be authored by raising a request from Supplier Management, both before and after the Supplier is approved.
- When a Contract is created in MeRLIN (either through Award package approval or ad-hoc Contracts), Buyers can request to initiate “Contract Authoring”
- Such requests will supply the following information (data elements) to the Contract Authoring module
- Details of the Buying Organization
- Details of the Supplying Organization
- Details of Materials / Services being sourced (Price List or Award Summary)
- Any other Comments
- Legal User (Contract Author) of MeRLIN Buyer portal will use a Template into MeRLIN Contract Authoring module, make changes if required
- MeRLIN Contract Authoring module will provide the data set containing the data elements of the Contract to the User
- Contract Author can place the data elements at appropriate locations within the document and MeRLIN will make them non-editable
- The contract Author will then initiate the Contractual document for approval of Internal stakeholders.
- Approvers will review the editable contents (excluding data elements) and make changes/comments using the “Track Changes” feature of the Contract Authoring module
- An approver can choose to send the document back to the Author for corrections (Reject) or route it for further approval (Approve)
- The author will review the Document and accept or reject the change(s) and resubmit for approval
- This approval process will continue until the final approver approves the document
- The document will get baselined at this stage
- The author will publish the baselined document to the Supplier associated with the Contract
- Supplier user will review the contents of the document and propose changes using Track Changes
- The author will review the changes and accept or reject them.
- If the Author accepts one or more changes proposed by the Supplier, the document needs to be routed for internal approval again along with Track changes
- Approvers will approve the changes
- Once all internal approvals are completed, the author will submit the final draft for signatures of the authorized user within Buying and Supplying organizations
- Once all parties sign the contract document, the author will share the signed PDF to the Buyer who requested the Signature
- Buyer will associate the signed document with a Contract
Target Audience
- Buyer
- Contract Author
Prerequisites
Not Required