Contract Analyst

American Electric Power•Columbus, OH

22h•$63,496 - $79,369

About The Position

The Contract Analyst will play a critical role within the Procurement Center of Excellence, ensuring operational integrity, continuity and efficiency of the organization’s contract lifecycle. This role is responsible for managing the contract renewal pipeline, the administration of the Contract Lifecycle Management system, and providing analytical support through reporting and contract dashboard maintenance. Additionally, this role is responsible for drafting and negotiating contracts and amendments for services, working with vendors, internal business and Legal stakeholders to protect the interest of AEP. This position does not represent AEP as legal counsel but having a JD or Legal background is preferred. The Contract Analyst will demonstrate ability to work beyond routine assignments by solving transactions/problems of moderate complexity and seek new opportunities and areas of learning which increase value to the organization. The Contract Analyst will understand each party’s interests in a negotiation, offer solutions to requested changes that meet those interests, apply issue recognition, and understand how issue recognition fits into the negotiation process. The Contract Analyst shall be highly detail-oriented, possess strong technical aptitude for system administration, and execute low to moderate complexity contracting activities while maintaining procurement schedules and deadlines.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree in Business Administration, Finance, or related field of study.
Minimum of four (4) years of related contract and/or supply chain experience or related experience in work activities and projects.
Follow policies, practices, standards, and rules of the company and those regulations and procedures required externally.
Apply problem-solving skills and use creativity in problem solving.

Nice To Haves

Having a JD or Legal background is preferred.

Responsibilities

Assist in procurement planning by monitoring upcoming contract expirations and coordinating with stakeholders to ensure that proper actions are taken in advance of such deadlines.
Manage Contract Lifecycle Management system.
Draft, review and negotiate low to moderately complex contracts and amendments using approved templates and pre-defined negotiation playbooks.
Understand the parameters of the boilerplate terms and offer solutions to requested changes for standard variances from terms.
Serve as primary administrator for the CLM system, ensuring data integrity, user access management, and workflow optimization.
Monitor contract workflows to ensure timely movement through legal, finance, procurement and other stakeholder approval changes.
Regularly audit the CLM database to ensure all metadata (e.g. dates, parties, values, obligations) is accurate and up-to-date.
Ensure that integrated systems are updated accordingly.
Own and update Procurement dashboards (e.g. Power BI, Agiloft) to provide real time visibility into contract status, spend and expiration.
Generate periodic reports on key performance indicators such as contract cycle time, renewal success rates and vendor compliance.
Maintain the library of procurement templates, ensuring all documents are updated in alignment with legal and regulatory requirements.
Lead the negotiation process through strategy development, issue recognition, and escalation of issues for low to moderately complex negotiations.
Determine contract pricing/rates/surcharges pursuant to escalation provisions.
Analyze vendor pricing claims and assist in negotiating settlements for impact of changes-in-law and governmental impositions.
Coordinate, prepare, and track documents to declare, close, and quantify impact of AEP force majeure events.