Managing contracts is one of the most challenging tasks in any size organization today and one that has the potential to expose your company to risk along with significant financial loss through penalties incurred or bonuses not being realized.

Most organizations manage thousands of contracts through-out the life-cycle of their relationship with suppliers, vendors and individuals. These contracts run the gamut from simple employer agreements through to multi-vendor, multi-national projects with governance, regulatory, compliance and other considerations built in.

Because each contract is a unique entity, it often requires its own set of guidelines, regulations and procedures to ensure that carefully negotiated rules are understood, managed and enforced. Many times when contracts are not managed throughout the entire term, they auto-renew, again exposing business to financial risk by continuing an arrangement that is no longer needed or increasing expense by renewing at a higher rate.

Effective management of Contract Lifecycle Management means having the flexibility to easily document and establish the unique approval, oversight and governance processes that must be applied each time your company contracts a “promise” with an individual, corporation, government body or others.

Here are the 6 stages of Contract Management

• Create
  • Templates
  • Clauses
  • Re-use
  • Governance
  • Exceptions
• Negotiate
  • Financial
  • Terms & Conditions
  • Bargaining
  • Feedback
  • Workflow
  • Exceptions
• Approve
  • Authorize
  • Financial Consent
  • Legal Review
  • Workflow
  • Exceptions
• Store
  • Repository
  • Searchable
  • Governance
  • Security
• Discover
  • Workflow
  • Exception Management
  • Pricing/Financial Incentives
  • Reporting
  • Compliance
  • Governance
• Report
  • Expiration
  • Extension
  • Renewal
  • Renegotiation
  • Date Management
  • Compliance
  • Governance

Navantis is the leader in Contract Lifecycle Management for SharePoint. Through our Dolphin Software product suite, we can help you extend the value of your SharePoint architecture by implementing a contract lifecycle management process using technologies and tools that your teams and employees are already familiar with. Contact us today for a quick tour of our solution and a conversation about whether Contract Lifecycle Management on the SharePoint platform is the right fit for you.

The post Are You Complying With the 6 Stages of Contract Management? appeared first on Navantis Blog.

Having just returned from the mind-blowing SharePoint Conference 2014 at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas, I wanted to get my thoughts and impressions down while they were still relatively fresh. A LOT went down these past 5 days, and there’s no way I’m going to cover it all, but here goes!

Organization

My first and overarching impression of the event as a whole is how smoothly everything went. Events on a scale like this (10,000 attendees) always amaze me, but SPC14 seemed particularly well-planned. Heck, even the wireless access was much improved over previous SPCs and over what is typical at such large events (though certainly not perfect). But details such as the kiosk-based self-registration and badge printing, paperless session schedule and evaluations (using MySPC), and huge high-res screens in both the breakout sessions and keynote speeches really made this feel like a truly technology-savvy conference. The MySPC site did have its issues leading up to and during the conference, but nearly always seemed to be ready when I needed it – looked great on a mobile device too.

Keynote

Speaking of technology, the Bill Clinton keynote address was actually quite technology focused, and truly positive and inspirational; he’s a great speaker and humanitarian. However the bets that I’d made the previous evening regarding whether he would mention “SharePoint” or even “PowerShell” did not pay off as hoped. Bill did make references to the audience that gave some of us the impression that he thought we all worked at Microsoft. Close enough I guess, right?

Events

“Epic” is a word that gets thrown around a lot these days but there really was no other way to describe most of the official and unofficial events. A big topic of discussion among my fellow attendees (plus fellow Navantis colleagues – past & present) leading up to Tuesday night was how exactly they were going to transport thousands of folks to the Las Vegas Motor Speedway for the evening event. Much to our surprise and enjoyment, they pulled it off in spectacular fashion. Great planning, logistics and activities surrounding that evening event, topped off with a great 80s cover band, dancing, and plenty of buses between the Venetian and the raceway.

Unlike previous conferences, ClubSPC took place right in the exhibit hall this year, and although the drinks and conversation were flowing, I don’t think it worked as well from a social standpoint – that room was huge – though I’m sure the vendors appreciated the additional evening traffic from slightly tipsy prospective customers!

The vendor-hosted events (if you were lucky enough to score a wristband) were incredible, and really what else would we expect in a city like Las Vegas. AvePoint and Metalogix did not disappoint in delivering top-notch parties in incredible locations (Tao and Marquee, respectively). The icing on the cake took the form of numerous local get-togethers at various spots in and around the Venetian. The Bourbon Room, site of Sunday night’s SharePint social event, seems to have been the week’s default meeting place – though I now think I heard enough 80s hair metal to last me the rest of my life, thanks very much.

Sessions

Of course the real value of SPC consists of the breakout sessions. A recurring challenge for me and many others is how to pick sessions to attend: content vs. speaker. A session with promising content could fail to stick with a less-than-effective speaker, not to mention that dryly-presented content can be conducive to nodding off (especially to those of us sleep-deprived). So with each of these events, I try to attend sessions that might stray outside of my technology core in order to glean from acclaimed presenters like Kirk Evans and Chris Givens – and never regret it. Other session highlights include Todd and Shane’s sessions (hilarious and entertaining), Spencer Harbar’s rich Identity Federation talk, and Chris Johnson’s overview of Microsoft’s remote access & reverse proxy story. Bill Baer’s keynote also rocked – to a capacity crowd I’m told. It’s nice to know that on-premises SharePoint has an immediate future, but it’s high time I expanded my skills into the cloud! Also, although I didn’t attend myself, I’m told the Ask The Experts session was very well-attended and valuable.

Social Highlights

Without boring you at length with personal accounts, I’ll try to provide just a few of the moments that made this a great week for me (at least the ones suitable for a professional blog).

I like to think of myself as falling somewhere between the average attendee and the SharePoint Rockstar (defined by your favorite “Top 25 influencers” list du jour). I had the honor of not only being approached by random folks to thank me for my AutoSPInstaller work, but of also being recognized by the afore-mentioned Rockstars and allowed to rub elbows at the various events. But perhaps even more rewarding was the chance to meet fellow community members, who until now I’d only known virtually on Twitter or other social media. These encounters never cease to fascinate me, and typically fall into two categories: the “we have a lot to say to each other online but not much in person”, and the “barely tweeted to each other but now feel like we’ve known each other our whole lives”. Thankfully there were many more of the latter – made some great friends and looking forward to future conversations with them. Too many to mention, but you know who you are.

Other quick high points include doing a couple of laps around a racetrack in a Mercedes sedan, dancing into the wee hours, breakfast with Todd Klindt’s Netcast hooligans, innocently crashing the VIP at V Bar (sorry Chris and Bill), the quest for karaoke, finally meeting AutoSPInstaller co-contributor Andrew Woodward, dancing into the wee hours (seems to be a theme no?), and NOT gambling one penny (yes I’m Vegas’ worst customer).

But the sentimental favorite came early in the week when on Sunday evening I finally got to meet one of my top influences Spence Harbar to corner him for his thoughts around AutoSPInstaller (which in the past he had expressed some, uh, reservations about). This talk quickly transitioned to a lively chat about sports (naturally) specifically the merits of cricket vs. soccer vs. hockey… By the way, it seems in the end it seems we both agreed that AutoSPInstaller is not a shortcut around learning SharePoint (i.e. SharePoint for Dummies as I put it) but rather that, in the right context, it can be a valuable time-saving aid. I couldn’t really ask for more now, could I?

Summary

Of course a big thank-you goes out to my employer Navantis for sending me to SPC14, and for allowing me the freedom to focus on the sessions for the better part of the week – not something I take for granted as a busy SharePoint consultant. Hopefully the sessions and content will be made available for viewing and download soon; depending of course on how broadly these are made available, I highly recommend checking them out if you weren’t able to attend in person. Then start working on plans to attend the next SharePoint/Office 365 conference!

The post Post-SPC14 Blues, News & Reviews appeared first on Navantis Blog.

On March 27^th, we hosted senior leaders from regulatory bodies and associations, spanning a variety of industries, for a round-table event to discuss the common issues and potential solutions these regulatory agencies & associations are currently facing. Challenges, opportunities, observations, and current trends were brought up to encourage idea exchange and discussion among the attendees.

The group setting facilitated peer-to-peer discussion where the senior leaders re-analyzed how their data and member information was being stored and took a closer look at how efficient their current business processes are. Navantis provided attendees with a pressure-free environment allowing for the free flow of information. The event was the perfect opportunity for senior leaders to learn more about how other regulatory bodies and associations are overcoming challenges similar to their own, and how Navantis’ Peopleworks helps others make their business more efficient.

Although every regulatory body and association represented at the event was unique, and had its own set of concerns and requirements for a member management solution, we were able to identify many common issues. Here are just a few:

• Multiple systems and databases being used to record, and store information making it difficult to access, search, and organize data.
• Inefficient use of time and resources manually implementing processes like initial registrations and renewals.
• Lack of employee training and support after implementation.
• Little integration between the company website, databases, programs, and other departments.
• The security of information is at risk as there is currently no access limitations.

If you are facing these types of issues you should consider reaching out to us for a consultation, we’d love to hear from you!

Laura Panteluk, the Executive Director and Registrar of the College of Registered Psychiatric Nurses of Manitoba (CRPNM), flew in to speak at the event. She provided attendees with invaluable insight into the entire process, as the CRPNM faced many of the same challenges and recently implemented Navantis’ member management solution, Peopleworks. Laura discussed her needs, decision making process, how her team managed the risk, and experience working with Navantis. What many were interested in however, was how smoothly the implementation process was and how Peopleworks is working for the CRPNM now.

About Peopleworks

A constituent relationship management solution for regulatory bodies and associations can offer solutions to all of these issues and provide functionality which you may have not considered yet. Peopleworks is built on the powerful and robust Microsoft Dynamics CRM platform. It provides everything your organization needs to eliminate repetitive work tasks and frees your staff resources to focus on other objectives such as driving membership growth, stakeholder management and enhancing services.

Navantis and our award-winning Peopleworks product has helped hundreds of membership organizations and regulatory bodies realize value. From the very small to the very large, we have a solution that enables you to harness your vast repositories of data and turn that into valuable business information and insight that you can leverage to serve the needs of your constituents.

The event was certainly a success and provided all attendees with valuable information to take away. We hope to organize future events similar to this, focusing more closely on the issues you are facing, and how Peopleworks will work for you. Stay tuned for updates on future event details!

The post Peopleworks: Preparing Regulatory Bodies for Change appeared first on Navantis Blog.

Microsoft has recently released a bulletin and fix for what they have deemed a critical vulnerability affecting the Office suite of products (which includes SharePoint and its companion Office Web Apps). The vulnerability affects both SharePoint 2010 and 2013 where Word Automation Services have been provisioned (or may be provisioned in the future), and all instances of Office Web Apps (2010 and 2013).

If exploited, these vulnerabilities could lead to remote code execution, which provides attackers with the ability to execute commands on a targeted machine from another. The flaw requires that a user opens or previews specially made rich-text formatted (RTF) data with an affected version of Microsoft Office Software. This RTF could be sent via email or could be hosted on a compromised website.

Users who have fewer user rights will be less impacted than those users who have full administrative rights. If successful, an attacker can take over an entire system – creating new accounts and viewing or altering data – therefore it is extremely important to apply the fix as soon as possible.

As a valued customer of Navantis, we would like to take this opportunity not only to alert you of this vulnerability, but also to offer assistance in applying the fix. Patching SharePoint can be a daunting task even for seasoned SharePoint administrators; having an experienced partner like Navantis at your side is a good strategy for minimizing your SharePoint farm’s downtime during this and any other update. You may also want to take this opportunity to get caught up on service packs or cumulative updates, as the SharePoint platform has no doubt received several updates since we last worked with you.

Please don’t hesitate to reach out to us to schedule a time when Navantis can assess your exposure to this vulnerability and help apply the fix to your SharePoint environment(s).

The post Don’t Leave Your Users At Risk, Eliminate the Vulnerabilities in Microsoft Office appeared first on Navantis Blog.

It took innovative thinking to successfully negotiate that contract for new equipment; the documents are signed and sealed and the equipment installed. Job well done. But it isn’t over yet. Because although today all the salient facts are at your fingertips, three years from now this contract will not be top of mind. You might remember the renewal date is coming up, but wasn’t there also a clause in there about getting an early upgrade? If only you could find the file.

And that’s just one contract. What about all the others with various suppliers? What are their obligations; what are yours?

Every business has contracts of some description. An estimated 80% of business-to-business transactions are underpinned by legally binding contracts and agreements. Whether those contracts are big or small, managers need to keep track of each one; their lifecycles, renewal dates, provisions, special clauses, and the myriad of details that are so easy to forget once the papers are signed, sealed and filed away.

If not proactively managed, contracts can put your business at risk for hundreds of thousands of dollars in unrealized benefits or non-compliance penalties. Organizations are increasingly looking to contract management as a way to keep bottom line costs down and increase net revenues from business-to-business transactions. A comprehensive contract management system provides control over manual contracting processes and provides an alert system for finance, legal, procurement, sales and other stakeholders who must keep track of milestones, commitments and obligations.

Dolphin Contract Manager, a contract lifecycle management solution, helps you streamline your contract management needs, capture information previously relegated to dusty files and give managers the information they need with the push of a button, ensuring their organizations aren’t losing money, business or their reputation due to sloppy contract management.

The solution improves visibility into each stage of a contract’s lifecycle. Through the use of advanced reporting and analytics, organizations are able to automate important processes involved in contract creation, management and archiving. Built on Microsoft SharePoint, Dolphin Contract Manager easily integrates with your current technology investments and offers a familiar look and feel with the flexibility to grow with your business.

Valuable information is right at your fingertips. To learn more about how Navantis’ Dolphin Contract Manager can help contact sales@navantis.com today!

The post Start Recognizing Revenues Faster and Avoid Unnecessary Costs, Risk, and Liabilities appeared first on Navantis Blog.

Performing health checks on a regular basis is an important part of your SharePoint implementation’s lifecycle.

It’s a sad but well-known fact of IT life: many organizations feel they can’t afford or justify keeping a full-time dedicated SharePoint administrator on staff. So either the job gets added to some unfortunate soul’s already full roster of duties, or worse, nobody handles on-premises SharePoint administration duties at all – leaving the platform to fend for itself. SharePoint involves a lot of moving parts. Even a perfectly-built farm can degrade over time if left unmaintained – never mind a farm that was built quickly with little planning, or even (gasp!) using the Farm Configuration Wizard. Personally, I’ve never met a farm that couldn’t use at least some TLC (Tuning and Log Checking), whether it be arriving at a quick one-day “Top Ten” issues list or a multi-day effort complete with performance, capacity and response time monitoring.

Some of the bad things that can happen over time:
• SQL database transaction logs grow to excessive sizes
• User profile synchronization service stops syncing
• Search crawls take forever and/or never seem to complete
• Other SharePoint or Windows services spontaneously stop or become unresponsive
• Central Admin Health Analyzer shows lots of warnings or errors. And contrary to popular opinion, these are not just “to be expected” – in most cases they can be cleared up – restoring your Health Analyzer to a useful state!

A health check for SharePoint involves gathering and analyzing metrics from several different sources: disk, memory, network, event logs, ULS logs, SQL server, Central Admin, and Windows performance counters. In addition, if your users anecdotally report that “SharePoint is slow”, this warrants its own investigation and analysis, both from the perspective of the user and as viewed from the infrastructure itself. SharePoint as a platform can have its share of adoption challenges; a farm that’s perceived as “slow” will face even more of an uphill battle. For their part, as a minimum organizations should have a plan for updating SharePoint, including identifying the update frequency and the types of updates (service packs vs. cumulative updates vs. security fixes). But health checking involves much more than determining if a farm is up to date. A proper and thorough health check looks at all the components and technologies that make up a SharePoint farm, and compares them either against community-accepted best practices, or the standards and business requirements of the organization itself.

Whether performed internally, or by an experienced partner like Navantis, all SharePoint deployments, no matter how carefully built, require monitoring, maintenance and yes, the occasional health check. As you can probably imagine, in our years of architecting, building and developing for SharePoint, we’ve performed a fair number of these health checks. And whether on a one-off basis or as part of an ongoing Managed Services support agreement, Navantis is an excellent partner for helping you reduce or eliminate your SharePoint’s “sick days”.

The post Your SharePoint is Sick! (or maybe a little under the weather) appeared first on Navantis Blog.

Last week I underwent an intensive immersion in all things Yammer in a two day session provided by Microsoft and Yammer folks in Chicago, and I left with a newfound enthusiasm for the Yammer platform and its potential for adoption within the Enterprise, and for the positive business value a properly tended Yammer roll-out could create for our customers.

While the intersection and co-existence of Yammer and SharePoint 2013 Social still remains muddy, one thing is clearer to me – if a firm is considering a major Social foray inside the firewall, and wants to facilitate the connection and collaboration between employees separated by geography or role, they cannot go wrong leveraging the Yammer platform.

Some thoughts that will feed a few future posts on Enterprise Social:

• While still hazy (particularly for on premise SharePoint), the symbiosis between Yammer and SharePoint 13 Social (My Sites, the Activity feed and the follows and likes inside SharePoint itself) is imminent, but when is the question, and what features will come online first. For now they continue to mirror much of the same functionality. Microsoft has released a App/Web part that allows for targeted Yammer groups to be exposed within SharePoint itself. While these feeds can replace or co-exist with SharePoint Social, it would be confusing for end users to have two Social feed systems, so my recommendation is to choose Yammer (depending on governance, budget and compliance situation you find yourself in).
• Relating to governance, a clear-eyed consideration is needed for the document management features of Yammer – as it is not just on Social that Yammer mirrors SharePoint. Yammer users can now post, follow, and collaborate on documents in Yammer. The feature cannot be “turned-off” so Enterprises need to be aware of the ramifications of placing corporate content outside of their servers and govern it with a personalized acceptable use policy – and police it accordingly. Once a document leaves SharePoint into Yammer, consideration is also need for the loss of the rich DM features SharePoint brings around version control, workflow, publishing, search and a whole host of other sophisticated features SharePoint brings to the table.
• With a paid Yammer network, the ability to allow for Single Sign-on (SSO) through Active Directory Sync is an absolute must for seamless end user experience, and proper network security management. Now when people join or leave your organization, and are managed properly in your Active Directory they are automatically provisioned/de-provisioned for Yammer – and consequently can pick up yammer feeds embedded in SharePoint pages without the bother of a second log-in to Yammer from within SharePoint.
• The paid for Yammer network (free for E4 class Office 365 customers), also allows for all sorts of additional and critical features around administration and measurement (analytics) of Yammer. Additionally admins can now control and delete, backup and pull down content from Yammer with a series of interfaces and APIs.
• The free Yammer network is good for testing the potential of a Social solution (in a POC sense), but should not be considered for a full enterprise roll-out. There are too many missing administrative needs and governance holes.

The single most significant aspect that became clearer to me on this deep dive was that the commitment and on-going success of a Social program requires a fairly strong commitment from an enterprise. You can’t just set up a Yammer site, and let your people in. You need a roll-out plan, you need to find and train evangelists, you need to designate administrators and Community Managers. There all also a whole host of ideas we have to help generate the positive roll-out and ongoing operational success of an enterprise grade Social network. We are happy to discuss any of these issues, concerns and potentials with you – just ping us!

More to come.

The post A Newfound Enthusiasm For Yammer appeared first on Navantis Blog.