@Kiran. Building a full featured contracts management solution is a huge undertaking. The Excel solutions I build take three months to establish and a year of refinement. I have an Access solution that is far more powerful and it is many years in the making. The key consideration if you are going to build your own solution is to design the schema for scalability, not for the number of users, but for the breadth of functionality. Then you can deliver the initial functionality and grown the solution as the client maturity grows.

Freeware wise, you are best to look at a site such as Source Forge, but I think there is little available there. Using a DMS solution misses the real power a properly designed contract management solution can provide through alerts, analysis and visualisation of data relationships. Managing the documents is a small part of the functionality and I don’t recommend this path if you really want to give your client a solution to take them along the journey of procurement maturity.

Paid solutions range in price and capability dramatically, and price does not necessarily equate to quality. I’ve seen some serious capability gaps in some very big name solutions, so assess functionality carefully if you go down this path. Genuine SAAS solutions are the current best option for speed to deployment and cost effectiveness, but they offer limited adaptability to meet specific needs. The pricing I have seen in this space ranges from $80/user/month to in excess of $800 and you would need to allow for a lump sum up front for training, Data ETL and confiuration. Many also charge based on volumes or values of processes managed.

Good luck with your project

PME4U Admin