Procurement and Contract Management

Running Head: PROCUREMENT AND CONTRACT MANAGEMENT

Procurement and Contract Management

(Name)

(University)

(Course)

(Tutor)

(Date)

1. Introduction

Supply management refers to a system which supports all the needs of the organization for the supply of goods, services as well as processes which are required to meet the goals set by the organization. It integrates various business opportunities such as purchasing, inventory management, warehousing, transportation and quality assurance among others into one department. A company needs to ensure adequate and effective contract management as well as project procurement. As a manager, it is important to know all the elements of contract management so that organizational projects can be finished in time. Moreover, it is necessary to be able to carefully assess proposals so as to ensure that the most qualified vendor is selected for a certain project. Choosing the wrong vendor will result to poor performance. Project and procurement management ensures that activities of the company are improved both in the short run and also in the long run. Organizations in public as well as private sectors are now facing a lot of pressure to reduce their costs of production while at the same time making sure that high performance in finance and operations is maintained. This paper will discuss procurement and contract management and various strategies and concepts that need to be adopted in order to ensure that proposals and projects are handled effectively and finished in time.

2. Procurement and Contract Management

Contract management refers to techniques that an organization uses in order to monitor the contract performance and make sure that the parties to a particular contract abide to its guidelines. This also involves reviewing the costs, preparation of variance reports and comparing the budget costs to the actual costs of the projects. Procurement refers to the purchasing function which is...