ASC Blog

All Contracts Types and Contract Hierarchies

ASC supports all contract types and contract hierarchies to flexibly represent sales, procurement, HR, compliance and other contract management needs.

Business is built on contracts. Different industries and business functions require different types of contracts and legal agreements to effectively manage their day-to-day business processes and relationships. The ASC contract management system enables flexible representation of any and all contract types to address different types of business and industry needs (e.g., healthcare, government, energy and utilities, telecommunications, etc.) as well as to allow for cross-organizational (e.g., sales, procurement, HR, compliance, etc.) or shared services deployments of our ASC Contracts solution.

All Contract Types

The required contract types can be tailored specifically to your business requirements. This includes complete flexibility in identifying the fields and their values for each contract template, along with field types, default values, mandatory fields, validation rules, etc.  There is no limit on the number of contract types that can be configured and no limit on the required fields.

The Principles of Hierarchy Structure

If contract information cannot be found it has little value. To effectively manage contracts, a logic-driven but efficient structure for the storage and display of contract records and document relationships is critical for ensuring ease of contract location and retrieval as well as processing efficiency.

The ASC system repository stores documents in a well-indexed, hierarchy-based structure that is easily searchable and enables fast retrieval and convenient sharing of documents.

The ASC solution uses parent-child or master-subordinate hierarchy as a core organizational logic for contracts and agreements. Additional relationships/hierarchies established in the system include form and document and form and related fields.

This hierarchy is completely configurable to the customer’s needs for properly indexing and relating their records, contracts and supporting documents within the central ASC system repository.

Flexible Hierarchy Logic and Labels

The ASC solution’s hierarchy tab is quickly and easily tailored to customers’ needs such as unlimited relationships and dependencies and required connections between forms, records, documents, sub-documents and amendments, categories, etc.

Typically, the hierarchy shows a nested view of related contract documents such master agreements, schedules, amendments, exhibits, order forms, statements of work (SOWs), etc., under an account record or other parent type.

The ASC solution also enables the relationship between subsidiaries, parent form objects, etc., and other critical relationship criteria to be represented.

The solution allows you to define and associate any attribute (e.g., organization, type, project, features, associated products) to a document, form or record and associate that to another document, form or record to establish the necessary hierarchy and/or classification.

Additionally, the ASC platform enables representation of the relationship between suppliers and vendors (e.g., subsidiaries, parent companies, etc.) or other entities.

The defined hierarchy then drives the display or nested view of parent-child/master-subordinate relationships within your contract forms.

For instance, a user has the ability to create a SOW and an amendment under a master services agreement related to a particular account.  The hierarchy tab will display a nested view of those contracts under the “Hierarchy” tab for that account.

Alternative or Multiple Hierarchies

Alternative or multiple hierarchies can be established to best represent different business needs (e.g., accounts, vendors, customers, contracts, product categories), different functions (e.g., sales, procurement, HR, etc.) and their organizational/functional requirements (e.g., sell side and buy side).

This capability is very important for customers with a broad shared services model (many diverse organizations) or those simply requiring a few distinct functions to use the solution.

Note: The security and access control mechanisms available in the system enable complete data partitioning for each function (e.g., Sales can’t access HR data and vice versa).

Hierarchy-Related Document Naming Standards

The ASC solution provides the full ability to profile each document as it is created with a unique document identification number (based on your document nomenclature requirements).  Based on these pre-defined document naming standards, each system generated document is then automatically assigned its unique identifying number. Part of this standardized naming convention is used to convey the relationship and hierarchy of contract documents.

For example, the master agreement would be labeled MSA123456 by the system while the subordinate amendment documents would be nested and labeled AMEND123456-001, AMEND123456-002, etc. Note the common “123456” component of the document names and the versioning logic for the amendments (“001” and “002”). Another example would be the simple incrementing of the numeral aspect of the document naming standard when new documents are created – VND27536, CON27537, CON275348, etc.

Comprehensive Account View with Intuitive Hierarchy and Tabs Drilldown

Sometimes contract managers and other stakeholders require a complete view of a particular account (e.g., customers, vendors, suppliers, etc.) in order to access multiple contracts, amendments, SOWs, etc. 

ASC’s hierarchy-based structure and associated tabs enables a complete and logical view of an account and its associated contracts and agreements.

Users can easily and effectively locate contracts and related documents and information simply by drilling down in the hierarchy, using the navigable tabs and following the document nesting logic. From the parent or master, users can drilldown through the nested view to all the child or subordinate documents or entities.

The content is also well-indexed and easily searchable. Additionally, users have access to personalized to-do lists, dashboards, calendars and tasks.

These combined features enable fast retrieval and convenient sharing of documents.

Why ASC?

ASC's flexible hierarchy and alternative hierarchies capability is an integral part of all our web-based, zero footprint solutions.  Whatever your business process automation needs, you can trust ASC to deliver tailored online technical solutions that streamline your business operations for improved performance, advanced business intelligence and a better bottom line. Find out more about ASC solutions.

Flexible and alternative hierarchy options to flexibly represent the contract types most reflective of your business.