Reducing points of failure

A big problem we hear about a lot is:

1. We have one person / a small team looking after our contracts.
2. They have built a contract database (usually in a spreadsheet).
3. There is no blueprint explaining exactly how the database works.
4. Important context surrounding the contracts is in the person’s head.
5. That person left 2 months ago and we have no idea what is going on.

It’s incredibly brittle to depend on a person or team who could leave at any point, especially when contracts touch every part of the business. You have a single point of failure.

All the value and knowledge accrued ends up resetting to zero. Anyone coming in to replace them is going to miss a lot of critical information and take forever to get to grips with the rest of it. You’ve quantifiably lost time and money and taken on a load of unnecessary risk every time that happens.

If you set up a self-maintaining contract database that comes with a blueprint, then it doesn’t matter who comes and goes. You’ve got a long-term solution embedded in your team that never stops accruing knowledge. You never know when you’re going to need to refer back, but it’s 100% guaranteed that you will need it one day.

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