It has announced general availability of its cloud-based Tracking, Auditing and Benchmarking (TAB) platform, designed to decrease complexity in error-prone manual contract management processes while integrating automated invoice auditing and market benchmarking capabilities.

Each year, the bottom lines of financial institutions of all sizes are negatively impacted by hidden cost savings and missed revenue enhancement opportunities. With TAB, financial institutions can reduce overhead associated with maintaining and administering vendor contracts in a paper-based form, freeing resources to address other business priorities. And, the software platform’s alerting capabilities push notifications to the appropriate personnel to allow an institution to respond to key contract milestones – expiration dates, auto renewals and notification of termination – eliminating many of the common mistakes in vendor contract management.

“Technology innovations are increasing the number of vendors we must rely on to provide the products and services our members expect, which has also increased the complexity of those contracts,” said, Dawn Graeter, CEO of Southern Security Federal Credit Union. “There are so many variables to consider that a binder, file folder and spreadsheet are not sufficient to address the challenges associated with all phases of vendor relations and contract management. SRM’s TAB has incorporated the kind of capabilities that are required for the task.”

TAB provides a secure repository for all contracts that a bank or credit union may wish to centralize. The system automates the process of identifying, collecting, storing and maintaining the vendor documents required by various oversight agencies. In addition, it tracks the overall savings of critical vendor contracts, automating the invoice auditing process as well as utilizing SRM’s proprietary benchmarking database to alert the institution if any contracts drift outside of market averages for similar banks or credit unions.

SRM has applied its collective expertise to add $2.2 billion of value to the bottom line of more than 700 banks and credit unions over the last 25 years. With the introduction of TAB, the company is leveraging its experience and proprietary data to equip financial institutions with technology that functions according to the best practices associated with vendor contract services.

Brad Downs, CEO of SRM, said, “A financial institution’s opportunity to improve the bottom line in vendor management is based largely on two factors: an ability to reduce expenses associated with third-party relationships and its potential to increase the revenue generated from those relationships. Enabling banks and credit unions to track, audit and benchmark their vendor contracts can help with both of those factors. SRM’s unique scope of data and experience enables us to empower institutions with services such as TAB that can make a substantial impact on their bottom lines.”

The TAB dashboard presents relevant and critical data in a simple and intuitive format, simplifying the task of monitoring all the material factors associated with the hundreds of contracts an institution may have. Also, banks and credit unions licensing TAB are supported by SRM’s concierge implementation service that eliminates the need for them to do the heavy lifting associated with configuring the system to track contract milestones, vendor compliance with document requests, contract savings, invoice auditing and market benchmarking. SRM performs all of these services as well as the ongoing maintenance required with adding, deleting and revising contracts throughout the term of the institution’s license term.