The contract nobody owned: renewing firewall support in time

08:00: Contract watch

Every weekday at eight, an autopilot called Contract watch has the Ops Assistant check every contract in Caliptic for an end date within 60 days, a missing owner or a notice deadline coming up. This morning it opens a task: support and updates for the core firewall pair end in 44 days. Auto-renew is off, the vendor needs 30 days' notice, and the owner left the company on June 30.

Without that contract, the firewalls in front of billing and the website stop getting threat signatures after the end date, and a failed unit has no four-hour replacement. The contract was on the list the whole time — with no owner, nobody was looking at it.

An owner, and the facts

• Deniz gives the contract an owner the same morning: Omar, who runs the network.
• Omar asks the Ops Assistant what the contract has actually been worth. The answer comes from the records: one power supply replaced in three hours, two critical firmware patches applied as changes, 41 signature updates, and every vendor ticket answered inside the contract's terms.
• The renewal quote is 19 % higher for one year. Three years with the price fixed comes out at €15,300 a year; changing vendor would mean a firewall migration before the year-end freeze.

Decided on the record

Omar proposes the three-year renewal and requests budget approval on the task. Deniz approves it the next morning, and the day after the contract is renewed until 2029 — twelve days before the notice deadline. On the contracts page it now shows as renewed, with a new end date and an owner.

Fixing the real gap

• When someone leaves, the offboarding request now lists their contracts and asks for a new owner.
• Contract watch flags any contract without an owner every week, not only near the end date.
• When finance asks what was decided, the Ops Assistant answers straight from the records.