Charles Petrie, from Stanford, released a short article entitled “The Problem of Coordination,” which highlights 4 categories in which businesses find it difficult to connect:
Interoperability
Agent Communication
Semantic Unification
Coordination
Though this article refers to a specific type of business, its principles are just as applicable to any business, especially when collaborating on a contract. Contract collaboration and management is difficult in any business, and
negotiations can go on for weeks, months, or even years. In seeking to manage contract deliberations, organization of personnel, documents, and software can make or break a clean operation.
Using Petrie’s model, this article explores how right contract management software is solution to problem of coordination.
Interoperability
Interoperability is defined by Petrie in question “Can you read my data?” Search “contract management software” in Google, and in .44 seconds you will be introduced to millions of products indexed for your specific search-18,400,000 to be exact. The only problem is that they are not all compatible.
The most commonly used business software is MS office software, which coordinates email with other applications targeted toward common business needs: spreadsheets, word processing, presentations, etc. The problem cited by Petrie and applied to contract management is that businesses which work together need to have right contract management software, which will aid collaboration within these commonly used business applications. The solution is surprisingly simple.
Agent Communication
Again, some questions: “What is protocol? How will you find me?” In contract management, generally a draft is drawn after much negotiation and deliberation. The man or woman who is “lucky” enough to draft contract must draw from up to thousands of documents of drafts and notes. This draft will quickly multiply into an almost unmanageable number of drafts and documents.
The old way to handle this document influx was either to file them in a drawer, paperclip them together, or pile them on your desk. This is virtually impossible to handle because it takes up so much space and is so difficult to organize. What most people don’t understand is that if you are saving these drafts electronically, you still have same problems. It is almost impossible to manage all of drafts, and you may overload your desktop.
The other way protocol becomes a problem is that editorial cycle is really not a cycle at all but a cyclone of drafts whirling back and forth in no particular order. The likelihood of always finding most recent draft right away is about same as reaching out into cyclone for a specific thing and finding it in first grab. In other words, you may send several drafts to several people before any
