Quote Quoting adjusterjack
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You'll have to clear something up for me.

Contract Management?

Are you referring to a person you hire to manage your contracts?

Or are you referring to a person with whom you have a contract and he performs management duties on your behalf?
Hi adjusterjack,

I reached out to the Contract "handling" organizations for a couple of larger companies who were kind enough to invite me in and describe what they do and who is involved in doing so. The common description from each of the people I've interviewed is that Contract Management is anything that is done and put in place to support all aspects of a Contract's lifecycle, for "all Contracts" that a company deals with.

So, for example, companies like Bank of America, Merck, or Ford know that they deal with many Contracts, all day, every day. The people, processes, tools, and technologies, they put in place to support Contract related work is all part of Contract Management, as a discipline.

In a very small company, it can be one person who does the work part-time, because the demand for working with Contracts is limited. In a very large enterprise, where Contracts are constantly being worked in some way, shape, or form, hundreds of people can be involved in the support of Contracts, with different people having different roles & responsibilities… Writers/Reviewers/Executors/Supporters/Filers/Archivers/Records Managers/etc.

The reason I originally reached out was because I've gone through a pretty significant number of sources, most of them being Legal Sources. However, what I believe to be the most complete definition (that aligns with the people I've interviewed in these companies) is the one provided by the International Foundation for Information Technology: Contract Management. The majority of the Legal Sources only focus on the "activities" that are executed to support Contracts, while the IF4IT breaks it out into four more specific categorical areas…


  1. the professional discipline of dealing with Contracts (i.e. you can become a professional Contract Manager that handles some piece or all pieces of Contract Lifecycle)
  2. the processes put in place to support the lifecycles of one or more Contracts (i.e. the activities)
  3. the solutions put in place to support the lifecycles of one or more Contracts (i.e. the people, the technologies, the tools, etc.)
  4. the enterprise capability put in place to support the lifecycle of one or more Contracts (just like a company performs Marketing, Sales, Product Development, etc.)



I'm just trying to find more sources that support or negate this. Most only support the 2nd and say nothing about the others (neither supporting or negating).

Thanks