Contract Expert is a tool that helps contracting professionals decide which clauses to include in a contract. Contract Expert consists of rules, questions and constants. Contract Terms Library Administrators set up the rules, questions and constants so that the contracting professional can run Contract Expert, respond to the questions displayed by Contract Expert. Based on the responses to the questions provided by the contracting professionals, and the rules defined by the Contract Terms Library Administrator, Contract Expert includes the relevant clauses in the contract terms for the given template. Contract Expert also supports reporting deviations of different types based on the policies prevalent in various contracting organizations.

When using Contract Expert, keep the following consideration in mind:

Use Contract Expert on the CLM document to bring in additional clauses, based on criteria such as items, item categories, payment terms, and other agency terms in the document. The system also runs the Policy Deviation rules and reports on policy deviations.

All of the Contract Expert-recommended clauses are brought into the CLM document and organized under appropriate sections. You can also specify which section the clauses get created in based on document parameters.

For more information about setting up Contract Expert, please refer to the Oracle Procurement Contracts Implementation and Administration Guide.

Adding Clauses Using Contract Expert

If Contract Expert is enabled for the contract template and the profile option OKC: Use Contract Expert is set to Yes, you will see the Use Contract Expert button in the Contract Terms page.

Before you submit the business document for approval, you must answer all the mandatory questions.

If you want to edit responses to questions that depended on others, you must edit the lowest-level questions first, then work back up the hierarchy as far as you require.

You may select a blank answer to a lower-level question to remove it from the list of questions.

If the response for a question is numeric, and you do not provide a value, the system uses 0 as the default value. It is strongly recommended that you provide a value, otherwise Contract Expert may bring in or remove clauses based on the response of 0.

After you have answered questions in the Questions page, you can perform one of the following operations:

1. Click Cancel to exit the Contract Expert session. If you have not saved any responses at this time, you lose the information you provided in the Questions page.

2. Click Save Responses to save your responses to the Contract Expert questionnaire. In future Contract Expert sessions, or even later in the same Contract Expert session, you can either answer further questions or change your existing answers.

3. Click Continue to see the clauses that will be added to the CLM document based on the rule conditions.

Policy Deviation Rules

These rules capture and report changes in terms and conditions on CLM documents as deviations from agency policy. As a result of negotiations on CLM documents, agencies may negotiate terms that exceed preapproved agency policies and regulatory limits. For example, as a policy, all customers are allowed payment terms of Net 45. However, the contract administrator may agree to payment terms of Net 60 on a specific CLM document. This deviation should be brought to the attention of contract approvers to ensure that all deviations from agency standards are approved in accordance with the approval policies. The Policy Deviation Rules feature helps you define all such agency policies and identify any variations from these policies on contracts.

If Contract Expert has been run on the CLM document, and you run the Deviations report, the system also runs the Contract Expert process. This evaluates Contract Expert rules and reports clause and policy deviations on the contract. If the results indicate that additional clauses should be included, some clauses should be excluded, or corporate policies have been violated, these will individually be reported as deviations.

Select Review Contract Deviations from the Actions LOV and click Go.

The Deviation Report appears, displaying the clause and policy deviations in the lower part of the window. The clause deviations initially appear sorted by Category - the deviation category.

Select the Generate for Approval check box if you want the Deviations report to be attached to the approval notification.

Selecting this option overrides the value of the profile option OKC: Generate deviations report for approval.

Optionally, click the Download button to save a copy of the Deviations report to your desktop. After downloading the report, you can edit it offline and attach it as a contract document with the category Approval Abstract. The Approval Abstract documents appear as attachments to approval notifications.