Navigating the Evolving Landscape of Contract Management

Kyle Peterson:

Hello and welcome to today’s session. The title of this discussion will be Navigating the Evolving Landscape of Contract Management. I’m Kyle Peterson, the Vice President of Customer Success here at Visible Thread, and I was actually a former Contracts Manager in the aerospace industry before I joined Visible Thread. And I’m joined with two contractual experts, Ryan Connell, and then Dr. Dolores Kuchina-Musina. I’ll let them both introduce themselves. Who are you? Why are you here? And then we’ll kick off the discussion. Go ahead, Ryan.

Ryan Connell:

Sure. Yes. Ryan Connell, the Deputy Director of the Commercial Item Group, which is a 60 ish person organization in the Defense Contract Management Agency, DCMA. Been in this role for just shy of a year, but been with the Commercial Item Group for almost seven years at this point, which was the inception of this group. Happy to be here. Excited to talk about the future of contract management where I see things going from my perspective, what our team’s doing as far as leveraging technology, and just looking forward to the conversation today.

Kyle Peterson:

Thanks, Ryan. Then over to you Dolores.

Dr. Dolores Kuchina-Musina:

Hi, I’m Dr. Dolores Kuchina-Musina. I’m the Chief Disruptor at REXOTA Solutions. My company focuses on creative contract solutions and also helping government and industry get connected. Huge contracts nerd here. So really excited to be part of this panel. Claim to fame as I wrote my dissertation on other transaction authorities, graduated last year, earned that Doctor right in front of my name. So really excited to talk about the evolving landscape and seeing how we can optimize the contracting field.

Kyle Peterson:

Excellent, thank you. Anytime I hear OTAs, I get excited. So we’ll get along just fine. Thank you both. So we’ll kick it off. And before we talk about next steps, technology, I always like to frame problems, challenges, even horror stories, let’s say, to just get everybody on the edge of their seat. So I’ll introduce some challenges or observations I’ve seen in my travels and then I’d love to hear from you guys whether you agree, any other stories, things like that. But to really kick things off and you mentioned it, Dolores, in terms of contracts nerds, I think too often contracts teams can really be pigeonholed into these compliance buckets. They’re just going through the legalese, they are bureaucratic, there’s a lot of red tape, and we can be isolated from our commercial partners if we’re trying to win business or buy and procure business. So would you guys agree, what do you think contributes to that isolation where I think contracts is inherently commercial function? Why is that? What have you seen? Ryan, why don’t we start with you?

Ryan Connell:

Sure, yes. It’s an interesting conversation. From my perspective, I think the level of bureaucracy tends to follow the largeness of any organization. So I don’t even know that I’m necessarily jumping to it’s a government bureaucracy that’s leading to what you’re describing or if it’s just a large organization. I think you take some of the largest companies in the world and they’re likely a lot of bureaucracies involved as well. So that’s immediately what’s coming to the tip of my tongue. And if Dolores has anything else to add to that, maybe I’ll riff off of her.

Dr. Dolores Kuchina-Musina:

I would love to add. I think it’s also just how organizations are structured. So if organizations are valuing the contracts team as part of the sales enablement piece within the company, then the contracts team really gets brought in early. You’re able to support the proposal efforts. You’re able to come in into the strategic planning part of it. If you’re looked at as more of, like you said, Kyle, the compliance or the person that says no a lot as we usually hear for the contracts people, you’re going to be isolated. And so I’ve worked in both types of organizations and it’s very challenging because you have to break through the cultural barriers.

You have to break some people’s paradigms of what a contract manager actually is. But also for people that are very passionate about this field, you will see them reaching above and beyond those boundaries and they become the trusted partner for the programs team. We all know the programs versus contracts debate always there. You become friends with the finance person and it becomes almost like a cross-functional team where you’re able to support each other. And so it starts with each individual. But I think based on the barriers that you’re addressing, Kyle, it starts with how the organization is structured and how they prioritize the contracts team.

Kyle Peterson:

That’s a great point, Dolores, and framing it that way and you’re using words like enablement, partner, I’m sure that’s conscious and it’s really well said. And in my experience, I think team structure, organizational structure and design absolutely contributes. I would also argue in my experience, just a lot of the manual nature of the contracts management function can contribute to that.

If I’m going through five different RFPs and I’m trying to pull out, maybe it’s far in DFARS clauses, if it’s a commercial effort, I’m looking for IP rights, restrictions, et cetera. And that’s a task that we don’t necessarily… Haste makes waste, we can’t miss anything. And does that partially isolate us because we have this manual tedious review process, but we’re hesitant to maybe speed up because the stakes are too high if we were to miss, would you agree that that contributes to that as well? And Dolores, you’re on a roll, I’ll have you take that first.

Dr. Dolores Kuchina-Musina:

So I think yes, but also it depends.

Kyle Peterson:

Sure.

Dr. Dolores Kuchina-Musina:

So I have been on both sides. So I’ve been on the position of where I am the holder of the document and I do the entire review in a silo. And it doesn’t work very well because you’re not able to do the knowledge transfer, you’re not able to understand what’s going on the other side and you’re not able to negotiate for the benefit of everyone that’s involved. And then I worked for organizations, which I actually love the way that they did this, is they had the programs or the business development side make sure that their business terms were agreed upon between both parties.

So in a teaming agreement, for example, your exhibit A was already agreed upon. So all of those little businessy things that hangs up the contract were already done. And all of the legalese negotiation aspect of it and making sure the risks are managed appropriately are then handed over to the contracts team. That way you’re ahead of it and the business people are happy, the dollars are there and the contracts people are just there to help mitigate that risk. So again, it depends on how the organization is structured and whether you’re viewed as an enabler or whether you are used as the compliance check and the barrier between people making some bad business decisions.

Kyle Peterson:

Anything to add there, Ryan?

Ryan Connell:

Yes. I think it’s awesome. This is a good conversation. So there’s that element inherently and whether we frame it as compliance or what. And if we don’t have that enabling function, we’re inherently sort of that last stop. And so you have someone developing a need problem statement, developing a requirement, soliciting, and then actually going through the procurement effort of negotiating and putting it on contract is that last step before now you have awarded, you can start executing performance. And so inherently coming from my particular team, I don’t have the necessary compliance issue that you brought up. Because our team’s naturally focused on trying to get to yes, just inherently in the job we do.

But we absolutely feel the pressure as being the last pain point, if you will, before contract award. So when we’re reviewing a proposal for example, and we’re helping Army, Air Force, Navy come up with a negotiation position, the clock’s ticking. And when someone says, “Hey, why aren’t we negotiating this?” It’s Ryan’s group, the DCMA organization or whoever, DCA, whoever happens to be assisting is the one that’s holding up that process. And so naturally there’s a lot of finger pointing and to Dolores’s point, the earlier we really engage and the earlier we can help out, that just sets us up for success because we have that communication throughout.

Kyle Peterson:

Great points, Ryan. And yes, that can be a lonely island to occupy in terms of-

Ryan Connell:

Sure.

Kyle Peterson:

… You’re at the tail end of the process. You’ve mentioned in our prior discussions, procurement lag time, we all want to get to that same spot to that yes. But yes, there’s some tension there. So I’m sure we’ve traumatized a lot of the people on the line. So these are the problems. This is where we see that tension lag times, things like that. Let’s pivot into best practices, observations. And I know Dolores, you’ve already spoken to organizational design, how we can partner with business program stakeholders. How else can we start to break these silos down to reduce staff procurement lag time? Why don’t you take it away there to start, Dolores?

Dr. Dolores Kuchina-Musina:

Yes. So I think the number one way is making sure that everybody understands what role they have to play within the process and within the value chain of getting the contract negotiated. Everyone wants to get to that close. That’s how the business finalizes everything so that they can invoice and so that we can make that money, we can have that profit and we can be successful in getting that relationship off the ground. The other part about it, I think that’s very important here, is making sure that you’re using all of the tools that you have that help accelerate where you can. So I’m sure we’re going to jump into this a little bit later, but emailing for signature is something that takes a long time. You got to find the right version, you got to do this. So tools that allow for a faster electronic signature are really helpful.

Also, any way that you can do your dot comparisons and your red lines is very helpful. And when you’re keeping that version control, making sure that you’re keeping that aligned with where you are in the negotiation process for your negotiation file. So using all of those tools. And then being very clear in the timeline that it takes to deliver something. I think that’s something that a lot of people probably relate to is nobody likes to be told we’ll have this tomorrow and then you have it in two weeks because you’re all under a crunch time and everybody has a queue of what they’re negotiating, what they’re reviewing, what they’re looking at. And so making sure that there’s a really good, I don’t know if it’s a project management type software or something like that, that tracks how long it takes for you to negotiate a non-disclosure agreement, a teaming agreement, subcontract. Each of those could have almost like a SLA in a sense from the contracts team to help automate that and manage expectations.

Kyle Peterson:

Great point. Anything to add there Ryan?

Ryan Connell:

Yes, sure. I think Dolores’s earlier point, I’ll just exaggerate a little bit further, but I think there’s something to be said from thinking with an agile framework in trying to set up any sort of process into small little sprints and bringing all of those right partners on and in early. And I can give you a sanitized example, but we had an example where we’re looking at supporting, I think it was Air Force, it doesn’t matter for the sake of the conversation, with a radar altimeter and goes in a helicopter, points to the ground, tells you how high you are in the air. And looking at the proposal I have, because at this point we have a proposal in hand by a contractor and effectively very expensive, 40, $50,000. And we’re doing market research and we’re finding all of these very commercially available equivalents from companies like Garmin, companies that you and I would associate with things that we use in our everyday life.

Non-traditional defense players. Technology wise they seem better. I’m not an engineer, but I’m looking at speed, distance, those types of things. And it’s surpassing it and it’s click now I can add one to my cart for $10,000 and I’m like, “What am I missing?” Because I’d like this to be my recommendation back to my customer, but I have a proposal in hand. The requirement’s been defined, they already went sole source solicitation to a specific offer. And so, gosh, I wish I was just involved earlier. So I think from breaking down those silos, figure out who the right people need to be as part of that team and part of solving that problem, getting those players involved early and then marching towards those sprints, [inaudible 00:12:46].

Kyle Peterson:

Absolutely. And so I think to synthesize both great contributions there, I think it’s all about visibility, whether it’s that lead time of an NDA versus the teaming agreement versus just batting documents back and forth via email. And so what repetitious parts of our process can we automate using solutions, to your point, Dolores, document comparison? So every time we do a red line volley, we can track those puts and takes and we can keep that me memorandum going over time. I’ve heard of other organizations where every time they update a statement of work, for example, or an RFP, not only will they send the amended parent document, but they’ll also send the comparison report alongside it.

We’re being transparent, we’re not trying to hide anything and this in theory should speed up the process. And then looking at solutions where if I need to feed information into a CLM system, Contract Lifecycle Management, what am I constantly being asked to input for every single contract that’s awarded? Whether it’s certain flow downs, certain clauses, can I automate, I can run RFPs, I can run contract sets against the list of predetermined clauses, search terms, et cetera, that I need to input into my CLM anyways.

I don’t want to use the word mindless, but some of that repetitious tasks that if we can speed it up, that allows us to run in parallel with the commercials as opposed to being that anchor, for the sake of argument, or it just allows us to be kept too far to the right, let’s say. Anything maybe to just kind of exclamation point there, I think we can pivot into another topic, but I think we’ve hit this pretty hard.

Dr. Dolores Kuchina-Musina:

Just to add to that, I think it’s also just a matter of making sure that you’re iterating within that process. So if you’ve created those templates and you’re tracking how you’re negotiating, one way for you to make it faster is see what clauses are being constantly negotiated. Maybe there’s something in your language that isn’t clear enough and create a process around it where you’re not editing your template every six months, that’s too much, but maybe every year and a half or something like that, you go into a review process, you have someone that’s responsible for tracking what’s being negotiated. And it could be just a simple edit of, you didn’t realize you’ve been putting in the wrong clause reference for example, and now all of a sudden you do that and that cuts down your negotiation time by, I don’t know, an hour for whatever reason.

So simple things like that is iteration, making sure you’re testing the process and that you’re also working as a team. So maybe you split it up and who’s really good at negotiating your NDAs and you have a backup for that person. So if there’s a backlog, you don’t have a bottleneck created. From my experience, the contracts team is usually very lean to support very large organizations. So you are usually the person that’s holding everything up because there’s three people to a department of 10,000 programs BD people. So doing those little tweaks I think helps automate it in an easy way that’s not necessarily a big expenditure for a software or something like that within an organization.

Kyle Peterson:

Anything to add there, Ryan?

Ryan Connell:

Just from a mindset perspective, finding those efficiencies, leaning into the technology. I know I said this to you the other day, but just from the perspective of people are always worried about their job when it comes to technology taking over their job. And my mindset on that is today, I’m not worried about technology taking over my job. I’m worried about someone who has learned the technology, who’s more efficient and better at using it to become a more efficient and effective employee taking over my job. So I bring that mindset to contract management and what tools exist that I can use to make my job better, faster, more accurate, whatever that metric is, and just trying to lean in and experiment and find the ones that will work for us.

Kyle Peterson:

Great point. We want to invest in those solutions that free up your time to spend that time on value add activities that makes you a more valuable contributor as opposed to people that choose not to make that investment a priority. So great point. And there’ll always be boilerplate to redline I think is what I’m hearing there, so it never ends, does it? Excellent.

So I think pivoting in terms of looking at… The seas constantly change, but where do you think emphasis is going to lie moving forward? And I’ll group it into a couple different buckets or variables. We’re hearing a lot about cybersecurity, supply chain visibility risk, intellectual property concerns, can we tie this into this discussion in terms of automating parts of the process, being strong commercial partners who are being brought in early, where do we see change regarding those topics? Now I’ll Ryan, why don’t you take it away, particularly on the procurement side if you don’t mind? Where is the focus, what should industry or buyers be aware of when we want to navigate these treacherous, I’ll say, regulatory waters?

Ryan Connell:

Yes, I think there’s Ryan’s opinion, but I think it’s pretty obvious that the department is moving towards trying to find more non-traditional players. That’s been a narrative for several years, trying to find that balance. But as we try to find them, that becomes a market research exercise, which market research is, everyone has their own opinion, potentially a labor-intensive exercise. And I’ve seen several tools over the last decade that have come out that help bring visibility, whether it’s just scraping sam.gov and understanding who can play or who has played, but just even Web Scrape that can tell you who potentially could play in this market that has never even had a federal contract before.

That’s a particular interest to me as it comes to bringing in that particular group of non-traditional players and identifying them. And I’m trying to articulate how that can help specifically the supply chain challenges that you mentioned. And really just bringing visibility to them, I think at the end of the day is one of the hardest things that we’ve been trying to get our arms around.

Kyle Peterson:

Interesting. Dolores, anything to add there? Maybe particularly around this supplier diversity vendor lock, we hear that word a lot. What have you seen? Anything to pivot off of what Ryan just shared?

Dr. Dolores Kuchina-Musina:

Yes, so Ryan and I talk about market research a lot I feel like in the last six months. I would say that this is where I think technology can really help save a lot of time and pull data points. And you just have to have people that are really good at evaluating what’s out there. Technology is changing very quickly and so are the solutions that are being offered. So when you go to these industry days and you’re watching these small businesses that are pitching their solutions or you’re even looking at what solutions that large primes, for example, are providing, people get comfortable. And so it’s just human nature. You go with what you believe in. We all have some brand loyalty to something. We all seen the memes, the iPhone versus Android, there’s always a fight there. And so people go with people that they trust.

And I think that’s the main thing is you have trusts in the people that have delivered for you before. And so when you’re going into some of these emerging markets, it’s hard for you not to lean on those same type of customers or same type of vendors. And so this market research aspect is so critical because there’s companies popping up regularly trying to build a solution and they’re trying to put it in the forefront for the government to use, whether it’s DOD, whether it’s another agency, they’re trying to figure out how can they solve that problem for the government. And the government is inundated with all of the information that’s coming towards them.

I’ve heard countless stories of… My inbox is flooded and I can’t respond fast enough. And Industry’s like, “Why aren’t you responding to all of my questions that I’m sending you on this RFI?” It’s like, “Well, because you’re not the only one that’s sending 50 emails asking those questions and it’s hard to keep up.” We’re all human. And so I think some of that automation would be very helpful so that people can actually focus on the analytical part and make sure that that technology is essential for the mission that’s being accomplished or for the problems that that’s there. And it’s not just a raw data pool and they’re doing more of the analytical work versus the data entry piece.

Kyle Peterson:

Absolutely. And I think going back to our earlier discussion, whether you are a buyer or a seller, when you’re so bogged down, there’s so much data now to your point, and when we are bogged down in manual processes, it’s just safe to go with who you know, right?

Dr. Dolores Kuchina-Musina:

Yes.

Kyle Peterson:

And I can’t even bring my head above the para pit. So we’re going to go with vendor A and B, we know them, we’d love to diversify, just can’t seem to get our head above water to do that. So whether it’s sourcing new supply, whether it’s lining up requirements against vendor responses and not having to do it one document at a time, one evaluation factor at a time, is that a way that we can further diversify vendor bases, sources of supply? We’re not only are you just preventing vendor lock, but ideally you’re getting a better price, right, Ryan?

Ryan Connell:

Yes, absolutely. No, that makes sense. I think there’s so much we can do with technology and I think you hit it, but I think there’s only so much time in the day, like Dolores said, and finding those tasks that technology can help us with so that the human part of us can focus on the hard decisions and the problem solving that really needs to be at the forefront of how we do contracting, how we do procurement.

And I’ll just plug outside of my day job in supporting NCMA, we have a community practice for innovative and agile contracting and we get together once a month, once every other month. And it’s just a web call with 10 people if that. And we are just trying to solve real life problems. And there’s nothing that feels more organic and real than just sitting around the room and “Hey, I think that far 12 or far 13 is the right answer.” Or “Hey, is it on the GSA schedule? How can we get this on contract today? It’s the last day before the fiscal year.” Those kind of conversations and just kind of ripping live. That’s where I want to spend my time because that’s the problem solving skills that we need to bring and let the technology handle everything else. So just wanted to add that.

Kyle Peterson:

Absolutely. Well yes, far 12, far 13, Ryan, now we’re off and running. So anything to add, Dolores? I always have another thought to add, but anything to add before I jump in as well?

Dr. Dolores Kuchina-Musina:

Yes, I just wanted to add in addition to the communities of practice that Ryan had mentioned and CMA also has collaborate, which I have personally used a lot for my dissertation research of just asking for some kind of subject matter expert that might know that has already pulled the data or that’s an academic that’s already been looking at it. They’re certain aspects of people’s data that you can dive into that’s meaningful for you. And again, echoing a little bit of what Ryan said before is breaking down the silos. There might be information, and again just an example, that the Space force is pulling for something that, let’s say, the Department of Energy might be really interested in being able to understand what are the industry participants that are looking at this specific product or this specific offering.

And so opening those types of communications and being able to share some of that data, especially from government to government, I think would be very helpful for market research purposes. But also to make sure that you don’t have vendor lock and that you’re getting the best price available, that you’re leveraging all of the information that you have. And I think that technology and organizations like NCMA are able to provide that kind of platform for people to have those type of conversations.

Kyle Peterson:

Yes, absolutely. So one more topic in this area and then we’ll pivot into really looking ahead and talking about some hot topics that we’re hearing a lot about lately. It’d be remiss of me not to bring up the word risk, and that’s always a broad word, but whenever I’m talking with contracts professionals, risk is so important where we need to understand scope, we need to understand requirements, we need to understand contract structure and pricing structure. And is part of the challenge here that when we are bogged down in whether it’s the legalese, whether it’s just sifting through all this of unstructured data, do we become disconnected from the ultimate deliverable from getting to yes?

Where I’m so focused now on, well if I’m from the commercial side, I’m just looking for indemnities, excessive limitations on liabilities and I’d love to work with my program team to put together a better risk register, but I can’t do that. Have you guys come across that in your travels? And same idea, what can we do to better connect business development contracts programs? Because it’s all one unending timeline, right? Between proposal to award to execution, where the rubber meets the road, we have to deliver on time and ideally on budget. And anything to kind of riff off there? And I’ll start with you Dolores, this time.

Dr. Dolores Kuchina-Musina:

I was ready. You got me going here. So yes. So with risk, I think one of the things where we get trapped a little bit as contract professionals or even on the legal side when we’re working for the general counsels and when we’re supporting the legal team is that there’s this notion that we have to mitigate risk. We have to make sure that it’s risk proof. And if you’re looking at a contract that way, you’re going to be stuck in negotiations for a very, very long time. And this is where it’s essential. And again, I’m going to echo what Ryan said here is for us to get in the forefront with the proposal team or the strategic planning side on the government when they’re figuring out what their needs are is because we have to understand what are the potential risks.

But the answer is how do we manage for those risks and how do we structure the contract so we have enough checkpoints during the performance of that contract where we can catch something before it becomes a really big problem? Or where there can be contention. And this is where that relationship again with the program office or the BD department is so critical because they can flag it for you when they start seeing it happen. Like, “Oh, we’re having some argument on this deliverable. They want it to be a PowerPoint just as an example, and we thought it was a PDF deliverable.” Well let’s look at the contract. Is it silent on it? Did we agree on it? What happened? Did we expect this risk? What did we miss?

And sometimes you’ll find that that’s not a risk that you really thought that that would happen, that there would be an argument on type of document, but for whatever reason there is. And so you just have that conversation. But again, you’re not trying to completely eliminate the risk out of the contract and indemnity, limitation of liability, warranty, all of that is really important. But if you don’t have the relationship there and you can’t have those conversations, I think it makes it really hard for you to be a really good contracts manager and be able to manage the risk that comes along with the work, especially if you’re not involved from the beginning.

Kyle Peterson:

Absolutely. I’m chomping at the bit, Ryan, but I’ll give you a shot too before I jump in.

Ryan Connell:

Yes. Dolores nailed it. So calculated smart risk taking is the right approach in my mind. And just understanding classic risk rating, chance of it happening and then the impact if it does happen. And understanding what that looks like before you make a decision. In a very, very dumbed down version, maybe it’s not smart for me to go pick up my kid from daycare on an empty gas tank because I might run on a gas, but if I had the exact same gas level in my car, it might be worth the risk if there’s an emergency I need to get there. So I think just thinking through different aspects and I think everything is just a case by case. It depends on the specific context and understanding the environment that you’re operating in and what risks are necessary and which ones aren’t. So again, I think for me it just comes down to smart calculated risks.

Kyle Peterson:

That’s it. Understanding the scope, understanding the requirement, and being able to communicate the why. Dolores, you nailed it. We can’t de-risk 100%. It’s a fool’s errand and I’m sure I have some horror stories of redlining with maybe a more obstinate party where you’re fighting over every single clause and I’ll just use tech data limitation on rights, just as an example. You’re just duking it out over data rights and it turns out you’re not delivering any tech data at all. Maybe we’re delivering a box of nails, just to use a dumb example. We have to pick and choose those battles and where can we make a commercially reasonable concession? Where do we have to dig our heels in? And that comes back to understanding scope, understanding the requirement, having those relationships with the program team and then to communicate effectively with your counterparty to say, “Hey, I’m not just being difficult here, here’s why, and let’s get to that yes faster.”

And I think that ability to flag those items based on the specifics, Ryan, faster and to position contracts managers to make those good judgment calls, not only positions you once again as an inherently commercial partner, but ideally we can get to agreement faster. So I’m terribly passionate about the topic. Great thoughts and points. So I’d say, last thought here, great discussion so far. Let’s look ahead and I’ll drop some, we’ve heard a lot in the headlines right now, automation, AI, analytics, what’s next for the function? What parts of contracts management can be automated? What parts maybe shouldn’t be automated? Ryan, are our jobs at risk? I know you already partially answered that, but I’ll start with you and let’s kick it off.

Ryan Connell:

Sure. Yes, I think there is a whole host of things that technology can make more efficient. I’ll reiterate what I said earlier. I think there is a methodical part of contract strategy that maybe there’s data that’ll help us make those decisions better and reduce risk. But I think there is a problem solving part of contracting that I think that’s where you’re paying the smart people, let them understand all of the far and make those types of decisions, all the regulations around them and pursue the best one based on that problem solving ability. From the data perspective though, gosh, what Chat GPT got launched, has it been a month? I’m not even sure it’s been a month and buzzword, it’s been everywhere and I’ve experimented with it. I haven’t had a whole host of luck in the contracting perspective yet.

More so write-ups and those kind of things, more narrative. But that said, there’s so much data out there. There’s products on contract for how many dollars, there’s names of cleanse, names of contracts, all of that data. My team specifically putting 100s of market research reports together annually, being able to read those reports, understand that data is not something that doesn’t exist today, that’s technology that we have access to. And so it’s really just getting our arms around how do we best use it, procure it, understand it, let the data get ingested and make decisions off of it. And I know they’re starting, I’m seeing for those within the DOD space with [inaudible 00:33:14], there’s something called Game Changer, which allows the ingestation of policy and they’ve subsequently launched Game Changer contracts, which has read all of the DOD contracts.

And so the power of that is I can search for a part number and I can find all the contracts it’s on, but I can search for a clause and find all the contracts that Clause exists in. And so you start thinking about, wow, there’s a lot of power behind that because hey, should I insert this clause? I don’t know. And then you go search and you can see, here’s where it was used in a 1,000 contracts and how it was used. So there’s power at your fingertips. I think there’s some absolute benefits that we can take advantage. So I really don’t think that’s far away in my mind.

Kyle Peterson:

Absolutely. Anything to add there, Dolores?

Dr. Dolores Kuchina-Musina:

Yes, so I think that a lot of people are looking for ways to automate the contract negotiation piece of it or the construction of a contract. And where this is really, really important is we all start with a template. Everyone hates starting from a blank page. And this is why the lawyers make the big box because they can start from a blank page and start writing clauses, but it’s difficult to get there, especially if you’re writing for something that doesn’t exist currently. And so having reference points of similar type of contracts or similar types of language that you’re trying to write for, I think this is where technology can really come into hand. And earlier I talked about tracking your negotiations. That’s something that software can do. There’s software that rips through solicitations, that rips through contracts, that points out like, “Hey, this could be risky, this could not be risky, maybe this clause doesn’t belong.”

Things like that, that help flag it for you. And then you have the people that can use their discretion of like, “Can we accept this risk? Can we not accept it? Should we negotiate? Should we modify it?” So things like that. Like you said, some of the repetitive tasks, Kyle, those kinds of things I think we can definitely automate, but we have to first understand how do we automate it and then at what point do you have someone come in and you have someone check that process and have that iteration throughout to make sure that it’s still valid, that it’s still repeatable and that you can still apply it to all of the different contracts that you’re issuing for the type of solution technology or product that you’re trying to negotiate for.

Kyle Peterson:

All excellent points in terms of seeing that visibility of clauses across the universe of DOD procurement, Ryan, and then Dolores to your point, can a Chat GPT or something similar get me 80% of the way through a certain kind of contract boilerplate? And then I can just focus on tweaking those specific parts that need to be changed. Where an indemnity clause for a contract where we’re going to build a dam near an endangered rainforest is very different from an indemnity clause if I’m opening up a lemonade stand, that’s where we can focus our time there. And I’m actually just mentioning Chat GPT and yes, I think it has been, what, three weeks maybe, Ryan, we’re in big trouble if Chat GPT starts whipping out [inaudible 00:36:23] two four. And not withstanding for going, we’re probably not very far away from that, which ideally we can get away from it, but we never can.

Ryan Connell:

I think we have some time. The other day it told me I had to do price cost analysis in accordance with far apart 25 and I said, no, that’s not right. So I think we have a little time.

Kyle Peterson:

Yes, there’s an issue there. Absolutely. So there’s always going to be a role for that context and that confirmation, but if it can help us get part of the way there and allow us that time and breathing room to engage with those partners and just to focus on what does matter that value add time, it is exciting and it will make the contracts management function even more fun. So that takes care of all the agenda items I wanted to hit. I think it’s been an excellent discussion. So I think what we’ll do before we close any last words, Dolores, and then we’ll go over to Ryan. Parting shots.

Dr. Dolores Kuchina-Musina:

Yes, parting shots. So I think for me, my parting shots is make sure that your contracts people are your allies. That’s the only way that we can advance the profession, but also make sure that we’re working and have the proper terms for what you’re trying to achieve. And then the other thing is itterative, right? It’s not something that’s one and done. There’s things that you can do. There’s things that you can always improve and do your market research. Find out what technologies can help create those efficiencies, can make the process better so that you can leverage your contracts team and cut down on the turnaround time. That’s it for me,

Kyle Peterson:

Ryan, over to you.

Ryan Connell:

Just parting words, I’d say it’s important for us to make sure we’re leaning into the tech, not get scared of the tech. And for those that say they don’t have the time or resources to invest in that, my argument back is I don’t think we have the time and resources to not invest in that. And so that’s my parting words.

Kyle Peterson:

Nailed it with a bang there, Ryan. And I’ll just add that purely from a Visible Thread perspective. There’s tons of solutions out there, Visible thread is just one. But I’ll argue that it made me a better contracts professional because it did free up some of that tedium and I know more about the far now than I care to admit Visible Thread allowed me to do that. So to your point, Ryan, we can’t afford not to invest. So anyways, great stuff, great conversation. Big thank you to NCMA, big thank you to Ryan, to Dolores, excellent insights, fun discussion. I think that there might be some kind of questions sent in. We’ll moderate that and deal with it, but hopefully we can have another discussion. Thanks again for your thoughts and thanks to all for attending this discussion. I hope you found it as interesting and substantive as I did. So thanks all.

Dr. Dolores Kuchina-Musina:

Thank you.

Ryan Connell:

Thank you.