The total ‘contract’ can consist of thousands of pages in many different documents. It is common practice that there is a hierarchy in those documents, as per the Client’s demands. The contents of documents higher in the hierarchy presides the contents of documents lower in the hierarchy, this helps if the statements in the different documents are contradictory. If there is no hierarchy in the documents, a hierarchy should be negotiated with the Client, to avoid later discussions.

How all these contractual documents are named and what the contents is, varies per Client and per contracted type of services. In some cases the contractual documents refer to terms and conditions in a ‘Frame’ contract that was made years ago, maybe even for another purpose. Getting a complete view of all contractual obligations might be cumbersome but is essential as it is the baseline all work streams in the transition program have to work with.

There should be at least one document that describes which services Capgemini or her subcontractor will deliver and what Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are used to determine whether these services are delivered according to the Client’s requirements. A document like this is often referred to as the Service level Agreement or ‘SLA’.

Of course there is also at least one document that describes the financial consequences related to the delivery of services.

The financial consequences can vary per service:

• A fixed fee per ‘unit of time’ regardless whether the service was delivered in that period or not, is quite common; This could be a monthly service fee to make sure that Capgemini keeps the resources available and maintain the necessary knowledge just in case this service needs to be delivered
• A fixed fee per unit of service, a ‘pay per use’ type of financial agreement, is also quite common, especially where infrastructure services are concerned
• A variable fee, a ‘time and material’ type of financial agreement, depending on the amount of time spent on delivering the service and the related expenses for used materials, travel expenses etcetera
• A combination of one or more of the above.

A document describing the financial consequences is often referred to as Services Financial Agreement (SFA), containing all services and the related pricing, invoicing requirements and conditions. Often you would also find a resource price list, showing what amount can be invoiced per hour for what level of resource, for what kind of work.

Please be aware that the financial consequences associated with milestone breaches, penalties etc. may also be spread across multiple contractual documents like the KPIs in the SLA and the penalties elsewhere.

If applicable, the Finance And Contracts work stream team creates and negotiates all Client Contract artifacts, both internal and external, makes sure that these are signed by all necessary parties and are stored in the appropriate document repository for future use during the continuous service delivery.