“We already have AFAS, so why add something else?” As a contract manager or buyer, you will get that question from the board sooner or later. And it is a fair question. A procurement and contract management platform sounds like a single system that does everything, but in practice it rarely works that way. Procurement and contract management are two different layers that do different work. Once you have that difference clear, you can give the board an honest answer.
In short: a procurement or spend system is strong at ordering, recording and invoicing. It tells you that something was ordered and paid for. It does not tell you whether the supplier delivers what was agreed. That contract content, the actions, SLAs and performance, sits in a different layer. GRIP adds that layer and feeds data back through integrations.
What a procurement or spend system does well, and where it stops
Systems such as AFAS, Spendcloud, Exact or SAP are good at what they do. They handle the ordering chain: from need to order, from invoice to payment. You see your spend per supplier, you match invoices, you pull basic reports from your spend data. For the procurement layer, that is exactly what you need.
These systems also record that you have a contract. Supplier name, start and end date, the amount. And that is where it stops. The content of the contract, what was concretely agreed about quality, performance and indexation, stays out of view. Take a 60-page cleaning contract with SLA agreements, penalty clauses and an indexation mechanism. In your spend system, that is one line: contract number 123, four-year term, annual amount.
That is not a shortcoming of the system. A spend system is not built to monitor SLAs or track open actions. This is about different layers, not about better or worse.
What happens after the order (and where it goes wrong)
The order is placed, the invoice is paid. And then? Then the work begins where most value leaks away. In the sector this is called leakage: money and value that disappear from contracts because performance is not monitored.
The questions your spend system does not answer:
- Which actions are open on this cleaning contract?
- Is the supplier meeting the agreed DKS score at the Rotterdam site?
- Have we already settled that SLA penalty from last quarter?
- When is the next indexation due, and is the percentage correct?
- Will this contract renew automatically if we do not cancel in time?
For a procurement manager at a care organisation with 15 sites and 30 suppliers, those answers are scattered across mailboxes, Excel files and colleagues’ heads. When someone leaves, that knowledge disappears. This is exactly the layer where the GRIP contract dashboard does its work. You can read more about that difference in the article on contract administration versus contract management.
Everything in one system: sounds logical, rarely works
It is tempting to think: one procurement and contract management platform that does everything saves hassle. In practice, the depth then dilutes. A spend system that also tries to manage contract content stays shallow on the contract side. A contract system that also wants to place orders does that half-heartedly. The depth in the contract layer disappears when you attach it to your ordering system.
And then the objection every contract manager recognises: another system means another integration, more explaining to the board. That objection is real and deserves an honest answer. This is not about more systems. It is about the right depth in the right place. Your procurement layer keeps doing what it is good at. The contract layer does the work that does not fit there. GRIP is ISO 9001 and ISO 27001 certified, which makes the “but is it secure?” part of that board conversation easier.
Two layers that complement each other: how the integration works
The added value only becomes credible when the data flows back. GRIP does not replace your procurement system, GRIP connects to it. With AFAS and Spendcloud there are concrete integrations. Broadly speaking, the basic contract data and supplier details flow from your ERP or spend system into GRIP. The contract content, the performance measurements and the financial agreements you manage in GRIP. Settlements and invoice data can flow back to your ERP.
That way you never enter anything twice. The ordering side stays where it belongs, the contract side gets the depth it needs. On the page about data ownership you can read how those data flows and their ownership are arranged.
Can you, and do you want to? The honest trade-off
Back to the board’s question. One system for everything: technically that is possible, but it rarely delivers the depth you need on the contract side. The better trade-off is not “one system or two”, but “which layer does which work”. An organisation with only a spend system lacks visibility into what happens after the order. That visibility is exactly where value leaks away, or is recovered.
Organisations that take the contract layer seriously save an average of 8% a year and gain up to 30% time on contract administration, provided it is done compliantly. With 525+ active users across 50+ organisations, including universities and care organisations with complex multi-site contracts, that is not just theory.
Want to see what work the contract layer concretely does alongside your existing procurement system? Have a look at the overview of the key features of contract management software, or request a demo to see GRIP working alongside your AFAS or Spendcloud.