Kansas State University

University to implement a contract lifecycle management system

Submitted by Memory Buffington

Kansas State University is partnering with Cobblestone Software to transform procurement and contracting activities at the university through the implementation of a contract lifecycle management system, or CLM.

An in-depth analysis of the procurement contacting processes highlighted the need to modernize contracting processes across the institution. With strategic investment fund support, the Division of Financial Services is able to implement a contract lifecycle management system to improve the contracting process.

Cobblestone will allow the university to move from the current manual contract management process to an electronic workflow that allows for greater transparency and increases efficiencies. Some features include:

• Workflow to automatically route contracts through appropriate approval processes.
• Transparency for campus users regarding contract workflow and status.
• Enhanced collaboration and approval tracking.
• Elimination of paper requests and forms.
• Contract expiration notifications to improve contract renewal management.
• Universitywide contract repository.

Over the next several months, staff from the Division of Financial Services will work in coordination with campus partners for input and implementation support. The implementation process is expected to take five months.

• Discovery Phase: February-March. During this phase, Cobblestone is learning about K-State's current and desired business processes during weekly focus sessions.

• User Acceptance Testing: March-May. This phase begins when Cobblestone and Purchasing work together to populate K-State users, departments, legacy contract and vendor data, request configurations and workflow configurations. The phase will give K-State an opportunity to conduct quality assurance testing on the production instance of Cobblestone and final testing of desired processes before opening the system to the full campus. 

• Training: May. K-State Purchasing, Office of General Counsel, Division of Information Technology and Office of Risk Management will provide hands-on training sessions for the campus community. 

• Go Live: June 2022. The anticipated go live for Cobblestone CLM is June 1. More information on training sessions will be provided in the coming months. We are excited to begin this next phase in our efforts to modernize the university’s procurement practices.