Overview of Contract Lifecycle Management for Public Sector

Overview of CLM

Oracle Contract Lifecycle Management for Public Sector (CLM) is a comprehensive solution for managing procurement processes that need to be performed by US federal agencies. CLM features are available in OA Framework HTML pages. CLM supports FAR, DFARS, and other agency regulations that define the federal business processes, and encompasses a full procure-to-pay process flow within Oracle e-Business Suite which maximizes benefits to federal users. CLM enables contracting officers to drive operational excellence in federal procurement functions and enables the agencies to cut procurement costs dramatically. By providing the end-to-end business intelligence with a single source of data, CLM provides data transparency and visibility and provides contracting officers with support for strategic planning and improved decision making.

The flow starts with the creation of a purchase requisition which is a document that represents a requirement or demand for supplies and services. This is associated to an acquisition plan that outlines the procurement plan on a larger scale. The purchase requisition is converted to a solicitation and the solicitation is posted to FedBizOpps for obtaining quotes/offers from vendors. When the offers are received from the vendors, the offers are evaluated and the contract is awarded to one or more of the vendors.

This process depicts all of the major procurement steps from purchase request initiation and commitment, through competitive solicitation with an offer evaluation phase, and ultimate award decision. The process is often not executed in its entirety – several steps are optional and at the discretion of the contracting officer depending on the procurement process. Some steps may be required by an agency in order to follow it's policies and regulations, but from a system's perspective, the steps can be executed without every procurement document in the chain.