Most organisations govern contracts well up to the point of signature. Approvals, legal review and standard contracting terms are usually in place and working. What is often missing though is any equivalent standard for the months and years that follow.
That’s where margin disappears quietly. Costs creep upward. A notice window closes before anyone claims the entitlement behind it. A change is agreed by email, delivered, then never priced. None of it looks like a major issue at the time.
Three questions
We think any organisation should be able to answer three questions about its contracts.
Are we making the margin we expected? The cost and forecast of each contract, what has been invoiced and what is still owed.
Are we getting what we’re entitled to and meeting what we promised? Changes to scope and price, the rights and duties that carry deadlines, then the terms passed down to suppliers.
Will we see the next problem before it arrives? Contingency and risk, plus whether what is learned reaches those pricing the next bid.
If any of those is hard to answer with confidence, that difficulty needs to be resolved.
The Commercial Health Check
The Commercial Health Check is a single day, run with your team. We work with two to four people from Commercial and Finance, with delivery or project represented where possible, because one person on their own can only confirm their own practice.
We start with whatever concern brought you to us, then widen across eight areas of interest and evaluation.
Each area is tested on the same four points. Does a process exist? Does one named person own it? Does it run on a defined cycle? Does what it produces reach the people who take decisions?
You will get a heat map showing how each of the eight areas stands, with a view on what to address first. Where nobody in the room can confirm how something works, we record that as it stands rather than guessing at it. Not knowing is a finding in its own right.
It is deliberately a first step and it doesn’t commit you to anything further. We set out three potential routes at the end: a full Contract Governance Diagnostic, a Diagnostic focused only on the areas that scored worst, or nothing further at all.
Fee. The Health Check is a fixed fee, the same whatever the size of your contract portfolio. We’ll confirm it when we reply to your enquiry.
Who it is for
Any organisation holding a portfolio of live contracts that wants an independent view of how they are governed after signature. It is particularly relevant where obligations are passed down a supply chain, since the gap between what a customer requires and what a supplier has agreed tends to show there first.
What can follow
Where the Health Check points to something wider, a Contract Governance Diagnostic examines the position properly, through structured interviews across the organisation, setting out what actually happens against what policy says should happen.
Where you want a consistent way of working, the Contract Governance Framework is designed around your contracts, piloted on real ones and embedded with the teams who will run it. We train your trainers rather than inducting your contracts one by one, because governance that depends on us isn’t long-term sustainable governance.
Many advisers would stop at the report. We stay until the framework is in use.
Getting in touch
If you’d like to discuss a Health Check, contact us via our enquiry form. We aim to reply within one working day.
About The Commercial Toolkit
The Commercial Toolkit supports organisations to better manage how their contracts are governed after signature. We work across various sectors including (amongst others) defence, aerospace and marine.