We live in a world where hyper specialization has taken control. Where a large dependency is found on external relations. A world where you are never alone. That is a world where relationships matter more than ever. And what governs a (business) relationship? An agreement. A contract. Therefore, it is not an overstatement to say that this is the age of contract management.

Contract management is not new. And usually it is not perceived as sexy. However, the field of play is fast becoming recognized as the area where the strategic differences can be made, for better and for worse. CATS CM^® is a comprehensive methodology that helps you to understand why contract management is essential in business success. But also how you can use the methodology, how you can drive value from it and also how you can tweak contract management to your needs. It is scalable, it is reliable, it is fully sizeable to match the already present business processes and support processes.

CATS is the acronym of Contract Administration and Tracking Scenarios. We have created an easy to use, scale and control approach to a subject that we believe is vital to your business. Creating CATS CM^® has taken over 15 years in testing, practice, thousands of people that have been educated.

CATS CM® is an independent, thoughtful and proven methodology. Over 500 organizations embraced CATS CM^® over the years and thousands of people gathered the CATS CM^® knowledge by reading the book or attending one of the trainings on the matter.

We have been working on the contract management since the early 2000’s on honing the methodology, making it practical, making it suitable, making it scalable for all types of organizations and most important making it a flexible fit to the fast changing environment it is incorporated in.

The journey to get to the method had to be long in order to be thoroughly tested and tuned. Over 15 years ago Jan van Beckum and Gert-Jan Vlasveld started to work on a framework to manage large IT contracts, purely out of frustration in managing the complex outsourcing agreements. With the addition of Arjen van Berkum and Linda Tonkes this framework vision was recognized for its ability to be a strategic value driver. They moved it from pure IT and pure procurement instrument to a generic approach, for buyers and sellers alike. In 15 years time, with a lot of testing, discussions, meetings with contract managers, contract owners and service managers, but also business manager, risk and compliance professionals, this lead to the launch of the 4th version of the CATS CM^® methodology early 2020.

CATS CM^® is an independent methodology a standard that can be used by all that want to use it. You can certify yourself like in any good method or you can decide to give it your own twist. It is however a registered trademark and if you want to use the courseware to share your knowledge with others we offer the possibility to become a certified trainer or coach.