Revision as of 13:29, 20 December 2019

ICM Business Applications

ICM Business Applications, built on the Icertis Contract Management (ICM) platform, help customers address specific business requirements and get even more out of their investment in the ICM platform.

ICM Sourcing Application

The ICM Sourcing application places contracts at the center of the sourcing process to ensure compliance, minimize risk, and create long term strategic agility. Get full visibility into supplier’s risk profile and ensure compliance throughout the procurement process. Leverage AI/ML based contract terms and clause recommendations to better negotiate RFx events and surface opportunities for savings. Perform side-by-side analysis of bids or proposals, and score them with both qualitative and quantitative criteria. Get a complete view of your relationship with suppliers including current and past contracts, historical performance and complete risk profile for a unified view for sourcing events.

ICM Obligation Management Application

In the evolving landscape for Enterprise Contract Management, proactive obligations management is playing a critical role. Tracking the obligations enshrined in contracts is critical to an enterprise’s understanding of whether the business is proceeding as planned and taking proactive steps to correct the course if not.
Non-compliance on obligations not only hurts performance, but also can expose businesses to substantial risks – including reputational damage, financial loss, and soured partner relationships
With this release, we introduce the ICM Obligation Management application which helps companies achieve contractual compliance at an enterprise scale. Built on the ICM platform, the ICM Obligation Management app transforms how organizations identify, create, manage and fulfill obligations that were previously hidden in complex contract language. The app includes OOTB constructs for “Obligations” & “Fulfillments” assisted by powerful rule-based obligation ownership, workflow tools to ensure seamless obligation fulfillment, and sophisticated analytics – all designed to protect your business and maximize the ROI of your relationships. You can configure existing or new ICM Agreements to be able to manage Obligations. 

The Obligation Management App offers the following capabilities:

• Ability:
• to identify the contractual obligations from different ICM signed contracts
• to create fulfillments from the identified contractual obligation
• to review obligations and related fulfillments
• to inherit contractual obligations from one contract to another
• to assign appropriate users assigned to your obligation and fulfillments
• to drive obligation and its related fulfillments to completion and giving you workflow controls (hold, withdraw, and cancel)
• to monitor your obligations and its business impact

Figure 1 Configure your agreement contract types to add the association to the Obligation. This will start tracking Obligations lifecycle for your agreements

Purpose of the Document

The purpose of this document is to:

• Introduce the ICM Obligation Management App and how it fits into the enterprise contract management workflow.
• Describe the business context and solution framework for ICM Obligation Management App
• Describe how the obligation Management is built on the ICM platform and how to set up and configure for your implementation needs.
• Describe the Config, Workflow for managing the Obligation life cycle.

The Prerequisites

The user must have:

• Completed ICM Platform Training
• Obligation Management Application must be enabled on the customer environment

Overview

In this fast-paced business scenario, the relevance of Enterprise Contract Management (ECM) to handle global contracts has grown manifold. Contracts establish a working model for a business to reach a future desired state: It defines the rules of business interaction and defines how business outcomes will be achieved. Yet until business parties live up to the plan, those outcomes are not ensured. 
Therefore, tracking the obligations enshrined in contracts is critical to an enterprise’s understanding of whether the business is proceeding as planned and taking proactive steps to correct the course if not.
Non-compliance on obligations not only hurts performance, but also can expose businesses to substantial risks – including reputational damage, financial loss, and soured partner relationships.
The ICM Obligation Management Application built and designed along with the line of Icertis Contract Management (ICM) platform (a world leader in Contract Lifecycle Management) and provides OOTB Obligation & Fulfillment objects and their workflow. Like everything on ICM, the OM app is highly configurable and extendible to suit customer requirements

 
The Challenge

Contracts establish a working model for a business to reach a future desired state: It defines the rules of business and defines how business outcomes will be achieved. Yet until business parties live up to the plan, those outcomes are not ensured. 
Therefore, tracking the obligations enshrined in contracts is critical to an enterprise’s understanding of whether the business is proceeding as planned and taking proactive steps to correct the course if not. 
Yet holistic management of obligations in an enterprise is easier said than done. Manually managing obligations--as well as SLAs, and entitlements--enshrined in contract clauses and terms has many challenges, from the sheer number of obligations found in contracts to the complexity of identifying & fulfilling them.
A major impediment to tracking obligation fulfillment is the enterprise-wide nature of obligations themselves: One department creates a contract, but the onus to fulfill contractual obligations is usually on another department in the real world. 
This is a common scenario with manufacturers of complex products, like airplanes, automobiles, drugs, etc. The sales team at the airplane manufacturer accommodates an airline’s requirements in the contract to close the deal, but it is up to the sourcing department to buy the goods & services needed to meet those requirements and maybe the customer services department to fulfill the warranty related commitments. 
Consider this model to see how typical contract management leaves obligations siloed within departments, hindering visibility, tracking, and ultimately performance. 

 
Figure 2 Conventional view of Enterprise Contract Management where obligations are viewed and managed in business silos

Even at organizations where contracts are centrally managed, obligation fulfillment may still be fragmented across the organization. It is estimated that at large organizations, 2% of revenue is lost due to missed obligations.
Therefore, the key questions that keep the CxO/senior leadership awake in the night are: Are we fulfilling all our obligations? Are we defaulting on any business/regulatory or statutory obligations?
That question is impossible to answer if obligations are not centrally managed and are not linked to various contracts that the organization has signed. 
A McKinsey & Company study estimates leakage due to unfulfilled obligations at 2% in large enterprises. For an enterprise with $2 billion in annual spend, that adds up to $40 million a year. The identification and extraction of obligation is currently a human-vetted process, which is typically driven by the legal team and prone to human errors. 

Some of the key challenges faced by companies dealing with Contractual Obligations are:

• A lack of insight and visibility into contractual obligations
• Fail to discover obligations
• A missed obligation can lead to costly litigation
• Unfulfilled obligation often strains business relationships and can cause reputational damage
• No defined workflow for completion of obligations and commitments 
• No clear ownership of responsibilities
• Fail to gauge the implication of missed obligations

A new approach is an obligation centered on contract management. This approach extracts obligations from the ultimate source of truth that contracts are and centralizes them to improve visibility and performance. 
 
Figure 3 An obligation centered view to manage enterprise wide obligations

The Solution Framework

The ICM Obligation Management App, built on top of the Icertis Contract Management (ICM) platform, enables companies to execute this vision to drive compliance at enterprise scale, thereby building and protecting brand trust and improving business outcomes and most importantly ensuring that the business is always compliant.
The ICM Obligation App provides an integrated environment that identifies and extracts existing obligations, risks, commitments from different ICM signed contracts to make them manageable, trackable, inheritable and contract centric compliant. 
The flexible architecture and configurable design of the platform allow users to configure and run a variety of obligations to their logical fulfillment. Given that the Obligation Management app is built on ICM Platform, implementations can easily configure dashboards & reports to have all-up views on overdue obligations

 

The Capabilities
 

The ICM Obligation Management app helps customers address obligation requirements and get even more of their investment in the ICM platform. It offers these powerful capabilities for obligation management contracts: 

1.Automatic Obligation Discovery
Automatically discover, extract, and setup obligations from any contract, through the power of artificial intelligence. 

2. Flexible Setup & Creation of Obligations 
Create manual / time-based fulfillments from the identified contractual obligation such that system triggers fulfillments at appropriate points in time to enforce compliance

3. Rule-based Obligation Ownership
Assign obligations to both internal and external users and automatically handle reassignments due to transfers, departures, etc. 

4. Seamless Obligation Fulfillment
Generate and manage fulfillment processes using ICM tasks for internal users and for third-party users via the ICM Collaboration Portal or customized integrations. The out of box workflows for Obligations & Fulfillments will help review, approval of workflows to drive compliance. Easily control the process workflow by setting obligations on hold, withdraw, and cancel if required

5. Inherited Obligations Across Contracts
Quickly setup rules to cascade and enforce obligations across related agreements – e.g. from MSAs to SOWs.

6. Sophisticated Reporting & Analytics
Track and monitor overdue fulfillments. Measure risk and compliance to deliver rolled-up insights across the enterprise.

The Examples

Here we give a sneak peek into some examples of Contractual Obligations and how we could manage them on the ICM Obligation Management app. These examples are intended to build a deeper intuition on what contractual obligations/fulfillments are, how obligations and fulfillments differ and understand these from a lens of real world contracts. 
As you scan through the agreement/clause texts, one can recognize statements which enforce an action and ownership in the form of “X entity shall perform Y” kind of statements. These are typically referred to as the contractual obligations. 

• Example 1: Weekly SLA reports to track business/delivery performance

 
Figure 4 An Excerpt from a SOW Agreement depicting the Weekly Reporting obligation in the Reporting clause

• Example 2: Background validation for resources working on the account

For any typical Customer Offshore Development (ODC) scenario in a IT Services, the company has an obligation to ensure any resources working in this ODC/Customer Account shall go through background verification. This might be an obligation enshrined in the MSA or any of the ongoing SOW Agreements. The following are some of the scenarios:

This is an ongoing obligation until the duration of the customer’s contract. The Obligation owner may choose to fulfill the obligation in a time-based fashion say at monthly frequency

• The Obligation Owner OR Accountable Person(s) for this obligation is the SOW Owner. (Typically, Project/Delivery Manager).
• The Fulfillment associated to this agreement would be owned by another function (Say HR). But the Obligation Owner will certify of the Fulfillment is met or not
• The Fulfillment’s owners (HR in this example) will upload the Fulfilment Evidence in the form of a file or a zip which is approved by the Obligation Owner

• Example 3: Share Audit reports within XX days of notice

 
The obligation in this example is on the Company to furnish the Audit reports to the Customer within a stipulated time (10 business days) when asked. This is not a time-based obligation, but will be manually accepted upon the event when the Customer asks for it. The Audit report can be submitted  

The Benefits

The key benefits of using the ICM Obligation Management App include the following: 

• Significantly reduced risks by complying with all obligations - Identify and execute any implicit or explicit promises, duties, and accountabilities 
• Reduced costs and contract turnaround time by automating the obligation lifecycle
• Improved customer and supplier relationships
• Better outcomes in contract negotiations and renewals
• Improved recovery of financial compensation for unfulfilled counterparty obligations
• Inherit obligation from the parent (MSA) to the child (SOW) to enforce compliance
• Cascade obligation changes from the parent (MSA) to the child (SOW) to enforce compliance

Demystifying Obligation AI, Obligation Management (OM) & Commitments

We have some capabilities in the system which allude to the Obligation lifecycle. Here we describe the scope of each of them and clarify the scope entailed.

Obligation AI (O/AI): As part of our Discovery AI feature set, we had introduced an ability to discover Obligations. This feature was scoped to only perform obligation discovery. Once Obligations are discovered, customers had the flexibility to integrate with 3p systems to manage obligations

Commitments: This capability is used to plan and perform agreement administration tasks. Some customers currently use Commitments to manage contractual Obligations as well. But we are positioning a dedicated app for managing the obligation lifecycle with ICM Obligation Management App. We strongly recommend using the ICM Obligation Management App instead of Commitments to manage the obligation lifecycle

Obligation Management (OM): This app focuses on setting and managing the Obligation lifecycle with a dedicated set of entities and their workflow. Currently, O/AI and OM are potentially interconnected but separate pieces of product capabilities. 

We intend to rationalize these 3 offerings to offer seamless workflows to the user upcoming releases for ICM Obligation Management app

The Obligation Management Process

The obligation management process augments your contract management process by giving you effective tools to discover, identify and manage obligations through to fulfillment. There are various scenarios in which Obligation Management fits into the Contract management process.

Post Agreement Execution
The focus during this scenario is to ensure that the right set of obligations are discovered (either manually or with Obligation AI discovery) and thereafter managed through the complete lifecycle. In this scenario since the agreement is executed, the obligations are also agreed upon, hence the focus here is to ensure they are tracked through the Contract’s lifetime.

 
Figure 5: We can see the post-agreement execution phases for obligation discovery & management. We also call out the typical user roles that are involved in the process.

During Agreement Negotiation
The focus during this phase is to use Obligations to assist the Agreement negotiation phase. When the Agreement edits, the Agreement Team would like to analyze the impact of change with respect to the obligations entailed.

 
Figure 6 This depicts the Obligation discovery & triage along with the agreement negotiate phase

(a)    A typical Obligation Management Workflow
We highlight the typical workflow for Creating, Reviewing, Accepting & Tracking fulfillments in the following workflow diagram. You can see the typical functions/user roles performing the respective operations. The key things to note are 

• The Legal / QC functions typically read through the agreements to manually extract Obligations or use Obligations AI to triage and discover obligations. This role has enough legal knowledge to identify the right obligations that matter for the agreement and the business as a whole. The obligations are created in the Draft sate
• Once identified the Agreement Owners, typically the Primary/Secondary Owner on the Team will accept and approve the Obligations. Only after Obligation is approved, the obligations lifecycle starts
• For approved Obligations, Fulfillment instances are spawned at the configured frequencies. It is also highlighted that the Fulfillments owner is different than the Obligations Owner
• Fulfillment’s team is responsible for submitting the fulfillment evidence and send it for approval to the Obligation owner
• If the Fulfillment is not approved before the due date, the fulfillment turns to overdue. 

 
Figure 7 A typical Obligation Management Workflow

Working with Obligations

The ICM Obligation Management app introduces necessary ICM entities to track and monitor obligations for your Agreements. The app introduces ICMOMAppObligation & ICMOMAppFulfillment entities. These are seeded with required config, workflows, rules, metadata which can be extended as required for your implementation needs. These entities are of type Associated Document Contract Types as referred to in the ICM terminology.
Obligation & Fulfillments are associated docs seeded with the required configuration. It is expected that you configure your existing/new Agreements by setting the association as depicted in the diagram below. In the sections below we highlight the configuration for the Out Of The Box (OOTB) Entities and also recommend a configuration for implementation
The OM app is using the construct of the “Association of Association”. The obligation is an association to your Agreement. And Fulfillment is an association to the Obligation.
 
Figure 8 Depicts the new entities introduced for ICM Obligation Management App

Section 6.01    The OOTB Obligation Entity
The ICMOMAppObligation entity is used to model Obligations. It uses the Associated Documents Contract Type and can be used to associate with the required agreements. The following sections will cover the out of box configuration, functional behavior and recommended the configuration for implementation teams. 
Note: Only system provided Contract Type can be used for Obligation Management.
(a)    Contract Types
•    The Associated Document ICMOMAppObligation is seeded to track Obligations.
•    It is expected that you will configure this seeded entity to suite your implementation requirements
NOTE: With the current release, we do not allow multiple configurations of Obligation/Fulfillments. Meaning you cannot create a new Associated Doc Contract Type and identify it for Obligation tracking.
 
Figure 9 - After you install OM, the configuration for Obligation entity is deployed for the instance

(b)    Seeded Attributes
The seeded attributes of ICMOMAppObligation are listed as per the categories below. Implementation teams can add new attributes for identifying, categorizing, tracking obligations as required
Obligation Identification    Description
Obligation ID    This will a script attribute to maintain ‘SysId’ for split obligations 

Name    The attribute is used to set the Name of the Obligation record
Description    This attribute is used to describe the Obligation with respect to its business context

Obligation Categorization    Description
Location    Helps categorize the obligations which are assigned to specific locations. 
Multi-party    Helps categorize the obligations by defining parties involved to fulfill the obligation

Obligation Behavior    Description    Default Value
Frequency Type*    Manual and Time-Based    NA
Frequency*    Mandatory if Frequency Type = time-based    NA
Allow Inheritance    When set as Yes, the system will inherit approved obligation from the parent agreement to peer (child) agreement    Yes
Allow Cascade    This seeded attribute can be added to your Obligation Contract Type. 
When an attribute value is set to Yes, actions performed on the parent agreement are cascaded to the child agreement’s obligations.    No
Stay in approved on edit    This seeded attribute can be added to your Obligation Contract Type.
When set to Yes, upon editing the Obligation, the Obligation will stay in Approved state    No
1st Fulfillment Due Date*    This mandatory attribute sets the Due Date of the Obligation (1st instance in case of time-based obligation). The system will mark the Obligation as Overdue if the Fulfillment is not approved on or before the due date    NA
Overdue buffer days    This attribute will be used to calculate the Extended Due Date.    NA
End Date*    This attribute sets the duration for which the Obligation is valid. The system will create time-based fulfillments during the obligation’s valid duration    NA
Extended Due Date    This attribute is computed if the overdue buffer days attribute is set >0. If set, the system will use the Extended Due Date to mark a Fulfillment as overdue    NA
* Attributes marked with asterisks are MANDATORY for creating the Obligation instance 
 
(c)    Association
The ICM Obligation Management App is modeled on the Association of Association. The following association hierarchy exists.
•    Agreement (Existing)
o    Associated to  Obligation Association
    Associated to  Fulfillment Association
It is expected for you to configure your existing Agreements to associate the Obligation Contract Type. We cover the details in Section 6.02
The following screenshot shows the Obligation’s association to Fulfillment which is seeded along with OM App.
 
For more information about Association, see The ICM Obligation Management Configuration guide.

(d)    Masterdata
There three Masterdata Contract Types are seeded along with the ICM Obligation Management App:
•    ICMObligationManagementSettings 
•    ICMOMAppLocationMaster
•    ICMOMAppPartyMaster
These seeded master data will be used by ICM Obligation Management app for supporting future scenarios on Location/Multi-party scenarios
 
(e)    Rules
The ICM Obligation Management App has seeded the following set of rules.  The contract type ICMOMAppObligation is configured with the following Rules
Terms    Description
Perform Action on Obligation Add Association (Associated Document)    Event Rule to perform an action on obligation add association event (for Associated Document). E.g. Copy Attributes from Obligation to the associated instance being added (like Fulfillment).

Perform Action on Obligation Approved (Associated Document)    Event Rule to perform an action on obligation approved event (for Associated Document). E.g. Create fulfillment for the approved obligation. Inherit the approved obligation.
Perform Action on Obligation Created (Associated Document)
    Event Rule to perform an action on obligation created event (for Associated Document). E.g. Set attribute(s) for the created obligation like calculate and set Extended Due Date.
Perform Action on Obligation Deleted (Associated Document)    Event Rule to perform an action on obligation deleted event (for Associated Document). E.g. Cascade delete action on related obligations (e.g Inherited Obligation).
Perform Action on Obligation Held (Associated Document)    Event Rule to perform an action on obligation held event (for Associated Document). E.g. Cascade hold action on related obligations (e.g Inherited Obligation). Cancel fulfillment for the held obligation.
Perform Action on Obligation Released Hold (Associated Document)    Event Rule to perform an action on obligation Release Hold event (for Associated Document). E.g. Cascade release hold action on related obligations (e.g Inherited Obligation). Create the next fulfillment for the released obligation.
Perform Action on Obligation Withdrawn (Associated Document)    Event Rule to perform an action on obligation withdrawn event (for Associated Document). E.g. Cascade withdraws action on related obligations (e.g Inherited Obligation). Cancel fulfillments for the withdrawn obligation.
Perform Action on Obligation Updated (Associated Document)    Event Rule to perform an action on obligation updated event (for Associated Document). E.g. Cascade update action on related obligations (e.g Inherited Obligation). Cancel fulfillments of the updated obligation. Create the next fulfillment for the updated obligation.

For more information about Rules, see The ICM Obligation Management Configuration guide.
 
(f)    Notifications
The ICM Obligation Management app has the following seeded notifications. Since the app is built on the ICM platform, implementation teams can configure notifications as required
 
 

(g)    Recommended configuration to the Obligation Object
The recommended objects are the additional attributes provided along with the seeded attributes of ICMOMAppObligation to enhance the experience of The ICM Obligation Management app.  Implementation teams can add new attributes for identifying, categorizing, tracking obligations as required.
The following are some of the recommended attributes:
Obligation Identification    Description
Instructions    Use this additional identification attribute to specify the instructions for the obligation/fulfillment’s team
Industry/Vertical    Use this attribute to identify the industry/vertical for which this customer contract exists. This will help aggregate obligations/fulfillments by Vertical. This is recommended if your implementation has contracts for customer’s in multiple verticals
Customer    Use this attribute to identify the customer for which the contractual obligation is applicable. This will help aggregate the Obligations/Fulfillments by Customer dimension

Obligation Ownership    Description
Accountable POC    The user/user-group attribute that will help assign ownership to the Obligations
Responsible POC    The user/user-group attribute that will help assign ownership to the Fulfillment

 
Section 6.02    Configuring your existing Agreement Contract Type to manage obligations 
You can use your existing Agreements or configure new Agreements to manage obligations with ICM Obligation Management app. Let us now look into the configuring needed to your existing agreement contract type. 
For example, if your implementation already has an Agreement Contract Type say MSA, the following steps show how to edit your config to start managing obligations  
1.    Click the Configuration tile on the Dashboard. The Configuration page opens.
 
2.    Click the Contract Types tile. The configuration page opens. 
 
3.    Select the Agreement Contract Type where you want to configure obligations. For example, MSA. 
 
4.    Click the View Record icon. The Contract Type Details page opens.
5.    Click Edit. The Edit Contract Type page opens.
6.    Click Next. 
7.    Toggle Yes in the Allow Third Party Paper field.
8.    Toggle Yes in the Allow Clause Assembly field.
9.    Toggle Yes in the Allow Copy With Associations field.
10.    Click Next. The Attributes tab opens.
11.    Select the attributes as per your requirement.  
12.    Click Next. The Association tab opens.
13.    Click the plus icon to add an association. The Add Association section opens.
14.    To inherit obligation, you need to select Obligation as Associated Contract Type.  
15.    Enter a name in the Association Name field. For example, Obligation. 
16.    Select Obligation from the Associated Contract Type drop-down. 
17.    Toggle Yes in the Allow Inheritance field.
18.    Toggle Yes in the Multiple Inheritance field.
19.    Click Save.
 
20.    Click Next. The Display Preference tab opens.
21.    Enter the details in the remaining tabs such as Display Preference, Team and Verify.
22.    Click Update. The contract type MSA is updated with Obligation as Associated Contract Type.
 
23.    Click Publish to publish the Agreement Contract Type.
 
Section 6.03    Creating an Obligation for an Agreement
1.    Click the Agreement Management tile on the Dashboard. The Agreement Management page opens. 
 
2.    Click the Create Agreement tab. The Create Agreement page opens.
 
3.    Enter all the details on the Create Agreement page. 
4.    Select MSA_OM for Contract Type Name.
5.    Select Own in the Type Of Paper drop-down. 
 
6.    Click Next. The Attributes tab opens.
7.    Enter the details in the remaining tabs to take it to Verify step.
8.    Click Create and Publish. The Draft page opens.
 
To create an Obligation with Time-Based Fulfillment
9.    Click the Add icon to create an obligation.  The Create Association – Obligation page opens.
10.    Enter a name for the obligation. For example, SAAS obligation.
11.    Enter the Description as per requirement.
12.    Select a location from the Location dropdown. 
13.    Select a party in the Multi Party dropdown.
14.    The Allow Inheritance field is already toggled to Yes. This allows the inheritance of approved obligations from the parent agreement to the child agreement. For example, MSA_OM to SOW_OM.
15.    The Allow Fulfillment Tracking field is already toggled to Yes. This allows the system to track fulfillment instances.
16.    Select Manual or Time-Based in the Frequency Type dropdown as per your requirement. For example, Time-Based. By setting it Time-Based will allow the system to instantiate the fulfillments at the set frequency and by setting it Manual user should manually add fulfillments to the obligation. 
17.    Select the fulfillment frequency in the Frequency dropdown. For example, Weekly. This will instantiate the fulfillment weekly. 
Note: You can set the following frequency: One Time, Weekly, Fortnightly, Monthly, Once in 2 Months, Quarterly, Semi-Annual, Annual and Once in 2 Years.  

18.    Select a date in the 1st Fulfillment’s Due Date field. For example, December 16th, 2019. This date indicates that if fulfillment is not approved until its due date, it will move to the overdue state.
19.    Select a date in the Overdue Buffer Days field. For example, 2. This date indicates the number of days that will be treated as a buffer after the due date. The system won’t treat a fulfillment as overdue during the buffer period.
20.    Extended Due date field is automatically extended by 2 and it becomes December 18, 2019. The extended due date is the summation of 1st Fulfillment’s Due Date and Overdue Buffer Days values.
Note: The system will treat a fulfillment as overdue after the extended due date is over.
21.    Select a date in the End date field. For example, December 19, 2019. This date indicates the end date for fulfillment.
22.    Select a file in the File Path field.
23.    Select a POC in the Responsible POC dropdown. 
 
24.    The obligation is created with a weekly fulfillment.
Note: An obligation can have multiple fulfillments. Users can create the following types of obligations:  
•    Scenario 1: Time-based Obligation & Time-Based Fulfillment
•    Scenario 2: Time-based Obligation & Manual Fulfillment
•    Scenario 3: Manual Obligation & Manual Fulfillment

To create an Obligation with Manual Fulfillment 
The above steps from 9 to 17 remain the same. 
1.    Select Manual in the Frequency Type dropdown as per your requirement. 
2.    Select a date in the End date field. For example, December 16th. 
3.    Select a file in the File Path field.
4.    Select a POC in the Responsible POC dropdown. 
 
5.    Click Create. The obligation is created with fulfillment.
 
Approving Obligations
You can send the Obligation for approval as described in the following steps
1.    Click Send For Approval for the selected Obligation. The Obligation entity is sent for approval. 
2.    And if the configured obligation is time-based, upon approval, the system generates the first instance of the Fulfillment. 
   
3.    The Obligation’s Team can be configured for the approver role. When the Obligation is sent for approval, it will create an approval task to the approvers on its Team
Note: Unless the obligation is approved, the user cannot create Fulfillment instances. 

  
Applying Hold on Obligation 
You can hold the Obligation based on default Role Action Mapping. You can hold an Obligation at Draft, Waiting For Approval, and Approved states.
If for some business reason, for a given obligation, it is required to hold some fulfillment instances, you can set the Obligation on Hold. This will prevent creating new fulfillment instances during the period of hold. You can set the expiry date of the hold using the Hold Expiry Date attribute.
 
Note: When you put an Obligation on hold, any fulfillment that is not Approved will be marked Cancelled and not be used to calculate overdue fulfillments
1.    Click Hold. The Association Hold Note window opens.
 
2.    Enter a hold note. 
3.    Select the appropriate Reason Code. 
4.    Select a day in the Hold Expiry Date field. For example, 18/12/2019. The obligation gets released from hold on this day. 

NOTE: Hold has a temporary nature used basically to hold fulfillments for a given period than cancelling the Obligation permanently. If you wish to cancel the Obligation, you need to withdraw the obligation (mentioned in the following section)
 
5.    Click Add. The fulfillment state changed to Cancelled state. All fulfillments that are NOT approved will be cancelled
 

(a)    Releasing the Hold
You can release the hold before the Hold Expiry Date by clicking the Release Hold date.
 
6.    Click Release Hold. The Association Release Hold window opens.
7.    Enter a hold note. 
8.    Select the appropriate Reason Code. 
 
9.    Click Add.  
 
The Obligation goes back to the previous state before it went on Hold. As seen in the above picture, that instance of Obligation went back to Approved state. 
After releasing a hold, if the user approves the Obligation or the Obligation was already approved, the future applicable Fulfillment instances will be triggered at the configured frequency.
 
Applying Withdraw on Obligation
You can withdraw an obligation to send the obligation to Withdraw state and all user actions are removed.
1.    Click Withdraw. The Association Withdraw window opens.
 
2.    Enter a withdraw note. 
3.    Select the appropriate Reason Code. 
4.    Click Add.
 
The obligation is withdrawn and all it’s fulfillments that are not previously Approved will get Cancelled.
 
 
(b)    Replace User for Obligations
You can replace a user in Obligation in the Team tab.
1.    Click Team. The Add Team window opens.
2.    Click Replace User. 
 
3.    Select the User.
4.    Enter Comments.
5.    Select the Reason Code.
6.    Click Add. The user is replaced.

 
Section 6.04    Inheriting Obligations
Let us create an SOW contract type to understand inheritance in obligation from MSA_OM to SOW_OM.
Concept diagram
Configuring your existing Agreement Contract Type to set Obligation Inheritance
Assuming that your instance has an SOW Agreement Contract Type, let us now edit its configuration to add association for tracking Obligations. After this, both our agreements MSA_OM & SOW_OM will start tracking Obligations. 
Additionally, we will configure inheritance such that any Obligation that is approved in higher agreement type (e.g. MSA_OM) will be inherited to child agreement type (e.g. SOW_OM) in order to force compliance of contractual obligations
1.    Click the Configuration tile on the Dashboard. The Configuration page opens.
 
2.    Click the Contract Types tile. The configuration page opens. 
 
3.    Select the Agreement Contract Type where you want to configure obligations. For example, SOW_OM. 
 
4.    Click the View Record icon. The Contract Type Details page opens.
5.    Click Edit. The Edit Contract Type page opens.
6.    Click Next. 
7.    Toggle Yes in the Allow Third Party Paper field.
8.    Toggle Yes in the Allow Clause Assembly field.
9.    Toggle Yes in the Allow Copy With Associations field.
10.    Click Next. The Attributes tab opens.
11.    Select the attributes as per your requirement.  
12.    Click Next. The Association tab opens.
13.    Click the plus icon to add an association. The Add Association section opens.
14.    To inherit obligation in SOW_OM, you need to select Obligation as Associated Contract Type.  
15.    Enter a name in the Association Name field. For example, Obligation. 
16.    Select Obligation from the Associated Contract Type drop-down. 
17.    Toggle Yes in the Allow Inheritance field.
18.    Toggle Yes in the Multiple Inheritance field.
19.    Click Save.
 

20.    Enter the details in the remaining tabs such as Display Preference, Team, and Verify.
21.    Click Update. The contract type SOW_OM is updated having an Associated Contract Type (Obligation).

 
(a)    Inherit Obligation from Parent Agreement
Let us look into an example of inheriting MSA_OM obligations to SOW_OM.
1.    Click the Agreement Management tile on the Dashboard. The Agreement Management page opens. 
 
2.    Click the Create Agreement tab. The Create Agreement page opens.
 
3.    Enter all the details on the Create Agreement page. 
4.    Select SOW_OM for Contract Type Name.
5.    Select Third Party in the Type Of Paper drop-down. 
 
6.    Click Next. The Attributes tab opens.
7.    Click the down arrow icon in the Associate and Inherit field to inherit MSA_OM based agreement obligations to SOW_OM agreement. 
 
8.    The Lookup Search window opens.
 
Note: Ensure that Allow inheritance flag is set to Yes in the Association tab of MSA_OM. 
9.    Select the MSA_OM agreement from which you want to inherit obligation.
10.    Click Select. 
11.    Enter the details in the remaining tabs to take it to Verify step.
12.    Click Create and Publish. The Draft page opens.
    
 
All approved obligations of MSA_OM agreement (Parent) got inherited to SOW_OM agreement (Child). Any changes made to the parent contracts obligations cascaded to child contract obligations. 
Note: The seeded attribute Allow Cascade Action is already set to Yes for the Contract Type MSA_OM. 

7.    Working with Fulfilments
Section 7.01    The OOTB Fulfillment Entity
The ICM Obligation Management App comes with a seeded Contract Type i.e. ICMOMAppFulfillment. As described earlier, Fulfillment is an association to the Obligation entity
(a)    Contract Types
•    ICMOMAppFulfillment – This is an Associated Document Contract Type. It comes with a seeded set of attributes, workflow, rules & notifications. Implementation teams can easily tweak the configuration as per the customer’s requirements.
For more information about Fulfillment Contract Type, see The ICM Obligation Management Configuration guide.
(b)    Seeded Attributes
The following attribute values are copied from Obligation to the Associated Fulfillment:
•    Agreement Code
•    Fulfillment for Obligation
•    Obligation Description
•    Frequency Type
•    Frequency
•    Due Date
•    Overdue Buffer Days
•    Extended Due Date
•    End Date
•    Location
•    Third Party or Vendor
The following attributes are used to capture Fulfillments completion:
Fulfillment     Description 
Fulfillment Evidence    This is a File Type attribute which helps the fulfillment owner capture the actual fulfillment evidence. The fill attribute supports zip format to be able to upload multiple files as evidence

Fulfillment Completed Date    Use this attribute to identify the customer for which the contractual obligation is applicable. This will help aggregate the Obligations/Fulfillments by Customer dimension

For more information about seeded attributes, see The ICM Obligation Management Configuration guide.

(c)    Rules
The ICM Obligation Management App is seeded with the default set of rules.  The contract type ICMOMAppFulfillment is configured with the following Rules: 
For more information about Rules, see The ICM Obligation Management Configuration guide.
Terms    Description
Perform Action on Fulfillment Created (Associated Document)    Event Rule to perform action on fulfillment created event (for Associated Document). E.g. Set attribute(s) for the created fulfillment like calculate and set Extended Due Date.
Perform Action on Fulfillment Updated (Associated Document)    Event Rule to perform action on fulfillment updated event (for Associated Document). E.g. Set attribute(s) for the created fulfillment like calculate and set Extended Due Date.

For more information about Rules, see The ICM Obligation Management Configuration guide.

Section 7.02    Creating & Editing Fulfillments
You can create Fulfillments manually for Obligations that have a frequency set to time-based OR manual
 
Figure 10 Manual based Obligation
 
Figure 11 Time-Based Obligation
Note: An obligation can have multiple fulfillments. Users can create the following types of obligations:  
•    Scenario 1: Time-based Obligation & Time-Based Fulfillment
•    Scenario 2: Time-based Obligation & Manual Fulfillment
•    Scenario 3: Manual Obligation & Manual Fulfillment
 
(a)    Adding Fulfillment Evidence
Fulfillment’s team is responsible for submitting the fulfillment evidence and send it for approval to the Obligation owner.
1.    Click the Fulfillment tab under the Associations tab.
 
2.    Click the view record icon. The Fulfillment Details page opens.
 
3.    Click Upload Fulfillment Evidence. The upload Document window opens.
4.    Click Select File.
5.    Click Upload File.
  
6.    By uploading the fulfillment evidence, you need to send the fulfillment for approval to complete the fulfillment workflow. 

(b)    Approving Fulfillments
The Fulfillments are approved by the Obligation owner by reviewing the submitted Fulfillment evidence. Let us look into an example: 
1.    Go to the fulfillment.
 
2.    Click the View Record icon of the Fulfillment. The fulfillment Details page opens.
 
3.    Click Send For Approval. The fulfillment goes to the approver.
 
4.    Upon approving, the fulfillment reaches the Approved state.

(c)    Cancelling Fulfillments
By performing withdraw action the Fulfillments which are in Draft and Waiting for Approval state are moved to Cancelled state. Let us look into an example:
1.    Assuming one of your Fulfillments is in Draft state.
2.    Click Withdraw.
 
3.    The Association Withdraw window opens.
4.    Select a reason code from the Reason Code drop-down field.
5.    Click Add.
 
6.    The Fulfillment in the Draft state moved to Cancelled state.

8.    Configuring Reports
The ICM Obligations Management app doesn’t come with inbuilt reports, however, since the ICM Obligation Management app is built on ICM platform, one can use the ICM capabilities for Search and Saved Searches to get an all-up view of Obligations and their Fulfillments. Additionally, you can use Saved Searches to set as Dashboard tiles. Some examples are given below:
(a)    Total number of Obligations
The dashboard is showing the total number of Obligations.
 
 
(b)    Total number of Fulfillments
The Dashboard is showing the total number of Fulfillments.
 

 
(c)    List of Fulfillments Overdue
The Dashboard is showing the list of overdue fulfillments.
 
 
(d)    List of Fulfillments overdue by Owner
The Dashboard is showing the list of overdue fulfillments by the Owner.
 

9.    Create Obligations in Bulk with Bulk Actions
You can add existing agreements with obligations using Bulk Actions tile. 
1.    Click Bulk Actions tile. The Bulk Action Management page opens.
 
2.    Click Update Existing tile. 
3.    Select Add Association To Agreement in the Bulk Upload Action drop-down field.
4.    Select All Agreements in the Saved Search drop-down field.
5.    Select ICMMSA_OM in the Contract Type Name drop-down field.
6.    Select the Association. For example, ICMOMAppObligation.
7.    Click Next.
 
8.    Select an attribute from the Available Attribute list as per your requirement.
 
9.    Click Generate Workbook.
10.    Add the attribute values in the Workbook.
11.    Save the Workbook.
12.    Click Add Batch in the Bulk Action Management page.
13.    Enter a Batch Name.
14.    Select the Data file. 
15.    Click Add. 
   
Agreements are created in bulk with Associations added. 
 
10.    Glossary
We will cover the terms and concepts introduced with ICM Obligation Management App.
Terms    Description
Obligation    An obligation is an act or course of action to which a person is morally or legally bound; a duty or commitment. 
The Icertis Obligation Management App identifies and extracts obligations for ICM customers to effectively track and manage obligations activities. There are two types of Obligations: Manual and Time-Based.
•    Time-Based: The Time-Based obligations are time bound that allow the system to instantiate the fulfillments as per the system defined frequency. 
•    Manual: The Manual obligations are also time bound, however, frequency fulfillment is set by users to instantiate the fulfillments. 
Fulfillment    The fulfillment is the achievement of something desired, promised, or predicted. The Icertis Obligation Management App allows you to set tasks and notifications on fulfillment actions.
Seeded Attributes    The seeded attributes are inbuilt attributes of the ICM Obligation Management App and are available with ICMOMAppObligation & ICMOMAppFulfillment entities.
Inheritance    The inheritance of obligations between different agreements i.e., the (Child) contract type inherited the obligations of (Parent) contract type. For example, MSA-SOW.   
Cascade    The ICM Obligation Management App defines cascade as a user action, such as hold, release, edit, and withdraw taken at the parent obligation gets cascaded to the child obligation. 

Extend Contract Type definition to be able to describe the Application Type

ICM offers the ability to determine the Application Type (Contracting, Sourcing, Proposal, Obligation Management, and Supplier Lifecycle Management) when creating a Contract Type. The access privileges for Business Applications such as Sourcing, are driven through Security Groups.

Related Topics: ICM Sourcing App | ICM Mobile App