How can contract management software help rail transportation companies?

Rail transportation authorities and professionals, on a daily basis, deal with innumerable types of challenges. In our earlier blog on contract management software for railroads, we discussed the various complexities of railroad contracts and how contract management affects key rail business functions.

According to the needs of various departments, a railroad may face a lack of crew members, a price hike on fuel cost, repairing and maintenance of railcars, agreement, and compliance with standard regulations. All these hindrances put them under mindboggling pressure to eliminate ineffectiveness that cost the railroad operator a lot of money.

To manage compliance with regulations and industry bodies like the ASLRRA, FRA, APTA, and AAR, railroads are compelled to switch to a digital solution that will streamline and update the Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) process (which is inefficient when done manually) for the entire enterprise.

Contract management software for railroads

Modern, cloud-based contract management software empowers the rail organizations in four business areas: legal, procurement, finance/commercial, and sales/corporate departments, helping them to manage the entire contract process including contract development, negotiation, and execution – including post-execution rights, obligations, and reviews.

Let’s see how a modern contract management solution can help key departments of a railroad 

Legal: Legal teams in railroads have to ensure compliance with various regulations, labor unions as well as mandates from industry bodies such as the FRA, ASLRRA, and APTA. For legal heads, general counsels, and advisors, contract management solution helps too: 

• Ensure standardization by leveraging a robust clause and template library
• Approve, edit, execute and store all contracts and agreements, both buy-side and sell-side, covering all phases of the process, in one location
• Easily create variations in the workflow, rules, clauses, and templates based on regional needs
• Effortlessly track commitments, milestones, expiries, deviations, deliverables, and other contractual obligations across every business unit

Procurement: Rail projects are comprised of five major disciplines: civil engineering, signaling equipment, electricity, telecommunication, and tracks. As a result, railway procurement teams have to take care of multiple suppliers, car hires, locomotive rentals, raw materials as well as manpower. Sourcing managers, purchasing officers, and procurement heads can use a contract management solution to: 

• Support supplier checks and related third-party data for key reference, interline settlements, other data
• Monitor the speed and efficiency of the supplier contract process with a simple dashboard that provides insights on cycle times, deviations, risks, and procurement metrics such as expires, renewals, and pending
• Manage contracts across multiple geographies with comprehensive multilingual support and easily customized variations in the workflow

Finance/Commercial: Railroad executives have to deal a lot with various properties, track ownership, real-estate leases, and complex invoices. A contract management solution can empower CFOs, finance executives, and commercial and business managers to: 

• Uncover opportunities to reduce costs and increase cash flow
• Reduce labor costs by empowering employees to process contracts with greater speed, efficiency, and accuracy
• Access detailed risk reports in making informed decisions
• Modify the contract process to adapt to new changing business conditions without incurring the high cost and delays of custom development

Sales/Corporate: Rail transportation companies have to manage complex commercial arrangements such as rate price management, revenue sharing under Interline Settlement System (ISS), and complex freight invoices. A contract management solution can help sales and business operations staff to: 

• Keep deals moving forward without delays by using configurable proposal creation rules and templates, self-service contract wizards, and adaptable approval workflows
• Track contract performance, and manage risk and obligations with smart, contextual information about each contract using customizable alerts and notifications to help avoid penalties and take advantage of potential rebates or incentives
• Gain efficiencies by using one system to manage any contract, including buy-side, sell-side, corporate, NDA, MSA, SOW, employment, and MoW

How CloudMoyo can help rail transportation with Contract Management?

Using the CloudMoyo Rail Contract Management (CRCM) solution, we enable rail and transportation companies to lead digital transformations across procurement, lease management, real estate, legal, and sales. Our solutions help railroads transform their commercial foundation ensuring compliance, improving governance, mitigating risk, and enhancing user productivity. This improves the bottom line. Powered by the cloud, advanced analytics, automation, and AI, CRCM allows customers to increase contract velocity and agility, and proactively manage entitlements and obligations as well as surface commercial insights and intelligence.

Helping a Class I rail with contract management

In 2017, CloudMoyo helped a class 1 railroad with a contract management solution to manage its real-estate leases by creating a comprehensive store of real-estate inventory by organizing new and legacy agreements in one system. This mega-project handled over 35,000 legacy contracts, 120,000 documents, and 250 inventory listings. The key benefits of this contract management solution were: 

• Cataloging and proactively managing lease contracts,
• Automation of financial processes (rental payments, price escalation and indexation, variable rent and concessions, and settlement of service charges)
• Gain insight into costs, yield, and occupancy

To know how you can modernize contract management for your railroad, get in touch with us!