OWC

2005 Consensus Software Awards

Product Description

Open Windows Contracts is an Enterprise Contract Management (ECM) system. ECM is the positive management of all aspects of buy-side and sell-side agreements and contract life-cycle, incorporating risk mitigation, document management and collaboration, project management, relationship management, and compliance management. The overall benefit of ECM being to minimise organisational expenditure and maximise profits.

Open Windows Contracts customers include over 10% of Australian local government, Federal Government agencies, State Government agencies, Commonwealth Bank, Tattersall’s Holdings, NRMA, BlueScope Steel, and John Fairfax Ltd, some of Australia’s largest corporations.

Open Windows Contracts was born in 1994, when company Director Shane McInnes identified a need within Victorian government for a computerised Contracts Register. The product has, in 10 years undergone 4 upgrades, including the current version 5, which is 100% browser-based.

Open Windows Contracts provides the following benefits for customers:

• Mitigation of the risk of liability in contracting

• Elimination of vendor overcharging

• Tighter contract compliance

• Enables easy enforcement of contract obligations

• Preventing double entry and administration inefficiencies

• Ensuring document version control, access, and visibility

• Control of contract processes and procedures

• Contract financial management

Innovation

‘September 11’ opened a risk management can of worms in the United States regarding storage of information. Companies lost massive amounts of information that was not contained within centralised systems. This event triggered a large increase in the awareness of a need for better contract management, and an industry of now over 30 vendors in the United States selling Contract Management software systems.

Open Windows identified in 1994 that Contract Management was an issue and met an immediate local need by servicing within the first 2 years, over 60% of Victorian Local Governments, and their need to put major parts of their business out to public Tender and to track and report on this activity.

Their first product met this need by providing an electronic register of contract and tendering information and reporting this information in a standard format. Many of Open Windows original clients are today using Contracts version 5.

Open Windows has kept pace with technology and legislative changes, ensuring that our product was always relevant to the needs of our customers, by listening to our customers and incorporating new functionality and migrating to new platforms.

Open Windows has always expended heavily in R&D, and in 2002 released the entire package as Contracts version 5, having rebuilt it from the ground up in the Microsoft .NET Framework (while the framework was still in beta release). Contracts 5 also delivered a considerable amount of new functionality.

The strategy was to open a door into the massive market of Australian corporations needing to deploy a central repository of contract information, and put in place scalable risk mitigation and contract-lifecycle management processes and infrastructure.

Commonwealth Bank of Australia is one of the pioneers in Contract Management in this country and an early corporate adopter of Open Windows Contracts 5, and has already saved millions of dollars using the system since 2002.

In 2005, Open Windows continues to be the clear leader in Australian Contract Management Software.

Performance

Gartner states that “Enterprises should audit the risks to which they are exposed through poor contract management, and assess the opportunities for immediate bottom-line cost savings that could be achieved through better visibility and management of contracts.”

Companies utilising Open Windows Contracts are seeing the benefits instantly, and clients such as Commonwealth Bank have put into effect massive compliance savings, with Open Windows Contracts assisting to notify suppliers of contract deliverables.

Contract value is increased by positively reinforcing due dates and capturing compliance of hard fought terms and conditions under the contract.

In Australian governments and corporations, contracts have previously been managed poorly, and actual documents only dug from filing cabinets when something goes wrong. Open Windows Contracts allows contract compliance to be tighter, and at the same time less resource intensive.

Open Windows Contracts has been proven over scaled Enterprise installations, such as BlueScope Steel Asia, New Zealand, and Australia, and John Fairfax Limited managing over 30,000 contracts with Open Windows Contracts.

Open Windows continues to win bids against US developed contract management products, despite the large industry base in America driving R&D. Open Windows Contracts is 100% Australian and is functionally and technically competitive with the rest of the world in Australia.

Potential

“Contract management must improve if business models are to change from monolithic to more-virtual models. Contract life cycle management will be worth $20 billion in software and services in 2007.” – Andy Kyte, Gartner.

The Enterprise Contract Management Software market in Australia is still a young market and will continue to grow for the next 3 to 4 years.

Open Windows Contracts is now competing with global Contract Management and ERP vendors and winning, gaining such customers as John Fairfax Limited, BlueScope Steel, and Tattersall’s Holdings (the biggest privately owned company in Australia).

Open Windows expends above industry standards for R&D to ensure the company’s growth potential is reached. Open Windows is committing even more R&D dollars to Open Windows Contracts this year to build additional functionality and remain at the forefront of the market. Open Windows is also projecting greater marketing and sales budgets this year, and wishes to increase education of the market and product visibility in the market place.

Open Windows must continue to grow and maintain its market share in Australia, and begin exporting to compete in the global market by 2006.

Today, Open Windows is wholly owned by Directors Shane McInnes and Adam McInnes.

Other information the judges should know

Click here to view the product brochure (pdf 492KB)

Content Copyright©Open Windows Australia Pty Ltd
Format Copyright©Consensus Pty Ltd

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