Sales Contracts with SAP CLM - Part 1: Business Process Overview

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Benefits of Sales Contract Management

The business process “Quote-to-Cash” is the main focus for typical Sales Contract Management. Generally, the main motivations for customers to implement sales contracts in their business are similar to procurement contracts: 

• Companywide Contract Visibility across the value chain
• Risk and Compliance Management especially to ensure contract compliance post execution
• Accelerate Quote-2-Cash Process – increased time-to-value through automated workflows
• Optimize through Integration – Integrate sales contracts with other systems such as ERP-SD, CRM
• Increase Collaboration – collaborate internally and externally with customers and stakeholders on quotes and contract drafts

 

Sales contracts business process

Typically the business process can be viewed as a reverse source-to-contract business process with the following steps.

Sales Contracts in CLM

Mapping the high level business process to the capabilities of SAP CLM, the realization could be executed in the following way.

• Quotation: The quotation which is sent out to a customer is done in a different system than CLM. Typically this would be done in a CRM-system. After an initial negotiation, there will be a first contract draft for the customer.
• Create Contract: The first contract draft will be done in CLM by creating a Master Agreement and the first draft of the contract document.
• Negotiate Contract: The contract negotiation can be done inside CLM by using the Check-in / Check-out functionality in SAP CLM.
• Approve Contract: After the initial negotiation, the contract can be moved via approval workflow to the next phase.
• Create Sales Order: Move contract execution phase e.g. via SAP ERP-SD to create sales order
• Monitor Contract: Track the key dates (Expiration date, renewal date etc.) in SAP CLM

The implementation of Sales Contracts has many different aspects which have to be considered. In upcoming blog posts, we will cover other topics like:

• Implementation approaches
• Security concepts
• Integration aspects

Stay tuned....