Books about managing contracts after the signature

The contract has been signed. Now the business needs to know what was promised, who will carry it and how a change reaches the people doing the work. If your reading question starts there, a drafting manual or a book about bargaining may leave the management task unfamiliar.

These selections focus on understanding that task. Infinite Upside supplies the owner’s operating perspective. Peter Sammons treats contract management as a business competence. IACCM’s operational guide places it within the wider commercial lifecycle. Both specialist books range beyond the period after signature; choose them for the management work you want to study.

1. Infinite Upside — Vijay Sheth

   Begin with what the agreement asks people to keep doing. Chapter 9 describes arrangements in which an asset owner and an operator supply different parts of a service. Exclusive management can give the operator a clearer view of availability, while requiring it to make that arrangement worthwhile for the owner.

   Chapter 10 examines a related operating problem: responsibility has to survive a handoff. The next person needs the current commitment, what remains unfinished and a way to act. Approving a response does not establish that the promised service has arrived.

   That is why Infinite Upside comes first here. It keeps the commercial promise attached to the business carrying it. Imagine a supplier that agrees to a revised delivery arrangement, but the team scheduling the work still has the original version. The example is illustrative; it is not another incident from the memoir.

   Read for the continuing responsibilities. The book does not supply a contract-administration procedure or decide the legal meaning of a disputed change.

2. Contract Management: Core Business Competence — Peter Sammons

   Choose this to study contract management as a commercial responsibility. Kogan Page’s 2017 publication approaches the subject from an industrial-commercial perspective. Its public contents include administration and mobilization alongside contract design and dealing with problems.

   Investigate Sammons if the company has treated signing as the finish, leaving responsibility for continuing work scattered among the sales lead, buyer and project manager. The reading purpose is to understand the management responsibility itself, rather than learn a more persuasive negotiation technique.

   The selected book also addresses substantial client-supplier and procurement arrangements. That setting may be more elaborate than a small owner’s immediate contract. Examine the contents around the work you need to understand before choosing the whole reference.

   Its 2017 setting also matters when the discussion reaches technology or legal issues. The reason to select it is the commercial-management treatment, rather than an assumption that a reference supplies current legal authority for your agreement.

3. Contract and Commercial Management — The Operational Guide

   By Tim Cummins, Mark David and Katherine Kawamoto; IACCM.

   Choose this for lifecycle guidance across buying and supplying. Van Haren’s 2011 listing presents IACCM’s operational guide for practitioners on both sides of a commercial relationship. Its scope includes the wider contract lifecycle, with change control, risk and dispute resolution among the subjects.

   That view of both sides is the reason to investigate it when a company is both carrying customer promises and relying on suppliers. You may want a professional reference that gives those connected commercial activities a common subject of study.

   It overlaps with Sammons. Choose by the organization and scope of the reference, rather than expect two independent demonstrations of the same approach. The operational guide’s lifecycle emphasis is broader than your immediate post-signature question.

   The 2011 date belongs beside any application. Its historical professional guidance cannot establish the current rights, obligations or available remedies under a particular contract. No certification or implementation outcome follows merely from reading it.

Choose the contract-reading task

Begin with the continuing commitment, commercial contract-management competence or a wider operational reference. If you need to understand the wording itself, use the contract-language selection. If the difficulty is a conversation within the relationship, use the ongoing-negotiation selection.