Streamlining Annual Contracting Process for Recurring Events
Answered
- Account name - H3 (Hamilton City Council)
- Region - APAC
- Client version (Enterprise) - 24.4
- Description of the issue - Currently, each recurring event, regardless of size, requires a full contract. This process is inefficient for both small-scale gatherings (e.g., Rose Society - Small association) and large-scale events (e.g., rugby games). It places unnecessary administrative burden on both the organization and the client, making it difficult to focus on strategic account management.
- What does the client want to do? - The client wants to introduce annual contracts for recurring customers, where each event falls under that contract rather than requiring individual agreements.
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Why do they want to do this? -
- Reduces time spent on contract creation and approval.
- Simplifies event management, particularly for high-frequency customers.
- Allows better account management instead of repetitive processing.
- Please give a descriptive user story. Often clients want to solve a problem by doing X. If we know the problem, sometimes it can be solved via Y. - As an event organizer managing recurring clients, I need a streamlined contract process so that repeat customers can operate under an annual agreement, reducing administrative overhead while ensuring compliance for each event.
Instead of creating full contracts for every instance, the goal is to shift towards a master contract model, where clients have a long-term agreement covering multiple events.
- What you've already tried or suggested. Why does this not work?
- Current contract workflow requires full agreements per event (word merge documents to be generated and sent)
- No existing process to automatically roll individual events under an annual contract
- Business impact if not resolved
- Continued inefficiencies in processing repeat event contracts.
- Loss of productivity due to excessive administrative tasks.
- Reduced client satisfaction as the process becomes cumbersome.
- Increased risk of errors in contract management due to repetitive workflows.
- Attach relevant files (such as screenshots) - Not Applicable
- Links to articles where you've looked for solutions and also other steps you've taken to research the issue.
- https://supportcenter.ungerboeck.com/hc/en-us/articles/204563008-Add-and-Manage-Contracts
- https://supportcenter.ungerboeck.com/hc/en-us/articles/204562908-Configure-and-Assign-Contract-Groups
- Post from Viva Engage: Hi all, I've been asked as to what the benefits are of using the contract module, over just pushing a report out of an event? I realise it's a bette...
- I've further researched from one of the article above that contract groups could be used but we have recommended NOT TO as there are some gaps. The comments in above article shows a need to uplift on how contracting works in Enterprise generally.
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I'm tagging Richard Marmura on this as he does discovery around the sales workflows and contracts.
We won't have an answer right now, but can say we're considering this input for discovery. I'm marking this post as answered.
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Thanks Seth.
Richard Marmura - Would be keen to hear your thoughts on this as this is a goal we are trying to accomplish this year with this customer and I'm sure many others may benefit.
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Richard Marmura - Any insights would be helpful!
Martin Wooding - Have you heard these requests from customers previously or similar?
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Himanshu yes I have seen this quite a bit before. There isn't a perfect answer to the problem, although this is what some have done in the past.
- Have a master event that the contract sits on. Each event is linked to the master event through the parent event field. Where things get interesting here, is where do the bookings sit (on each event, or the parent event). You could use season and series to link these as well since I last did this.
- One of the rare uses for an opportunity. Have the contract on the opportunity and have each event linked to it. The issue is again that the revenue needs to sit on the individual events and there is nothing on an opportunity. Costs can live on the first event in the series.
- The last one would be to use a suite management ownership. These can apply to specific events and a fulfilment order can be used on the ownership. The issue with this is that it is far from the intended purpose of the module and could provide issues when they want enhancements.
If I was doing this, I would use the parent event and have a specific event status, category, class and type for multi-year contracts. The future events potentially wouldn't have any bookings and only specific costs for the event. It all comes down to what is needed on each event
Richard Marmura Seth Halvaksz what would be good here is something similar to Purchase Order Contracts. The current contracts module is far too specific and only applies to a single event. Being able to add multiple events to something like the purchase order contract would be perfect. Anyone who does multi year deals do it out of the system currently.
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Thanks Martin, using parent event sounds good i guess, i'll chat with the customer to see if we could make it work.
As i think more, do you think utilising function scripting for mini events would be too much. I'm thinking we use Functions for these mini events and use function categories and usage further for breakdown of activities rather than multiple events. The downside, you lose the holistic reporting on events.
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