Running the process

Does every contract have an owner?

An owner is the person who answers one question: should we keep this? They don't have to be a lawyer. They just have to know whether the vendor is doing the job.

Contracts with no owner are the ones that quietly renew for years after anyone last looked at them.

What an owner is responsible for

Knowing whether the vendor is doing the job. Making the keep, change or end call before the notice date. Telling the contracts admin when something changes, like a new rate, a new location or a run of service problems. And handing the contract to someone else before they leave.

The owner doesn't have to negotiate or sign. That can stay with finance, an administrator or your contracts admin. The owner is the one who knows how it's going.

How to assign owners in an afternoon

Start with your full contract list and group it by department or category.

For each contract, name the person who uses the service most, not the person who signed it. The director of nursing knows the staffing agency. IT knows the backup vendor.

Give shared services, like phones or the copier lease, to one person, often in operations or IT. Two owners usually means none.

Send each owner their list and ask them to confirm by a set date. Anything left unclaimed stays with the contracts admin until someone takes it.

In a small agency, the same two or three people may own most contracts. That's fine. What matters is that every contract has a name next to it.

What usually goes wrong

The owner is whoever signed, often an administrator who has no idea how the shredding vendor is doing. The owner left a year ago and nobody reassigned their contracts. The owner has no say, so they flag a problem and nothing happens. Or the owner was never told they're the owner.

A quick check after any staff change, and a full pass once a year, catches most of this.

What to watch

How many of your contracts have no named owner?

That number is your risk list. Start there.

Does the owner still work here?

Check after any staff change. A departed owner is the same as no owner.

Does the owner know the deadline?

An owner who isn't told about the notice date can't act on it.

Does the owner know what you pay?

Cost often sits with finance. An owner who hasn't seen the invoice can't judge whether it's worth it.

Can the owner's call actually change anything?

An owner who can only raise concerns, with nobody acting on them, won't stop a bad renewal.

Can owners see their own list?

Someone who owns ten contracts needs those ten, not all of them.

How Sapphires helps

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