Starting contract management rarely means starting with a blank sheet. There are suppliers delivering services, contracts scattered across folders, owners who have moved roles and renewal dates approaching. The first job is to understand which commitments matter and who can act on them.
The original WOP video sets out three priorities: relationships and benchmarking, processes and assets, and visibility and ownership. This written companion turns those priorities into a practical 90-day sequence. The sequence is a planning aid. A critical renewal or failing supplier can require immediate attention before the rest of the programme is ready.
Days 1 to 30: understand the work before designing the system.
Speak to the people who experience the contract. Include procurement, finance, legal, operational owners and the colleagues who approve invoices or receive the service. Ask what they need from the supplier, where performance is unclear and which decisions regularly arrive too late.
Build a first register using the agreements you can actually locate. Record the supplier, contracting entity, business owner, service, start and end dates, notice requirements, spend and location of the signed documents. Separate verified facts from missing information. A blank notice date is a task to resolve, rather than permission to assume the contract can be cancelled whenever you like.
Prioritise a manageable pilot portfolio. Consider business criticality, renewal proximity, performance concerns and the difficulty of replacing the supplier. A small, important portfolio gives you a way to learn the operating process without pretending you have already brought the entire estate under control.
For each pilot contract, establish the current baseline. What was promised? What is being delivered? How is delivery evidenced? Who agrees whether the value has reached the business? An agreed discount is different from an invoice that reflects it. A service level is different from evidence that the service met it.
Days 31 to 60: create the minimum working assets.
Create a contract summary that an operational owner will use. It should explain the scope, key commitments, measures, commercial mechanisms, important dates and escalation route. Keep the signed agreement as the authoritative source. A summary should help people find and manage obligations, rather than silently replace the underlying wording.
Create an obligation record with an owner, evidence source, frequency and next action for each material commitment. Some commitments sit with the supplier, some with your organisation and some depend on both. A buyer that has not supplied the required information can contribute to a delivery failure. The record needs to make those dependencies visible.
Agree a practical handover from sourcing into operations. Cover the negotiated outcome, assumptions, unresolved points, operating responsibilities and commercial decisions that may arise later. Include the person who will manage the relationship. Sending a PDF after signature leaves too much context behind.
Set a review cadence that fits the service. A critical supplier with an active delivery issue needs a different rhythm from a stable, low-risk agreement. Every review should end with decisions or actions, named owners and dates. Collecting attractive dashboards without changing the work is administrative theatre.
Days 61 to 90: prove the process on real contracts.
Run the first reviews, reconcile the evidence and test the escalation path. Check whether an owner can explain the commitments without relying on the person who negotiated them. Check whether finance can connect the commercial terms to invoices and whether operational colleagues know how to report a change.
Choose one renewal and work backwards from the decision date. Leave time to assess demand, performance, alternatives and implementation effort. The notice deadline is a constraint. It should not become the first moment the business thinks about whether it still needs the service.
Record what the pilot revealed. You may need better source documents, clearer ownership or a simpler review pack before you need new software. Use that evidence to decide the next portfolio and the resources required. Expand a process people have demonstrated they can operate.
A worked example: a facilities service.
Imagine an organisation buys maintenance across several sites. The contract lists response times, planned visits and reporting requirements, but sites record issues differently. The first month establishes the signed scope and the site owners. The second introduces a common issue log and visit record. The third checks actual attendance, resolves disputed work and creates a renewal decision pack.
The useful result is a service the business can manage. A larger register is a supporting asset. The evidence of progress is that owners can identify missed commitments, explain the commercial consequence and agree the next action with the supplier.
What to take into the day-90 review.
Bring the pilot register, verified dates, obligation records, completed reviews and unresolved risks. Explain the changes you made and what remains uncertain. Measure coverage of critical commitments and completion of actions, alongside the administrative effort needed to maintain the process.
The next decision is where to extend coverage. Choose the portfolio where better ownership and evidence will change an important outcome. Ninety days can establish a credible foundation. Maintaining it depends on people using the records when the contract changes, the supplier fails or the renewal comes around.