Contract management solutions take many forms, but the best ones deliver on three key pillars: visibility, control, and compliance. Any solution that doesn’t address these areas is unlikely to have much impact.
A well-designed contract management solution integrates seamlessly with your line-of-business systems. This allows any employee to initiate contracts right from within familiar applications.
Reduces Risk
Having an efficient contract management process mitigates risk for your business. Without it, you might lose valuable partners due to missed renewal dates or face legal action for mishandled contracts that expose your organization to liability.
A structured contract workflow streamlines the process of drafting, reviewing, approval routing, electronic signature, and tracking. It minimizes bottlenecks and provides clarity to all stakeholders.
Legal teams use contracts from negotiating with vendors to setting pricing, delivery terms, and revenue recognition. Sales and marketing teams also rely on contracts for partnership agreements, non-disclosure agreements, and service level agreements. A streamlined contract management process streamlines workflows across these different teams, eliminates handoffs, and reduces cycle times to boost productivity. This frees up your highest-value employees to focus more on their strategic work. It also ensures you have the information you need when needed — and reduces risk from missed deadlines or a lack of visibility.
Boosts Efficiency
Contracting isn’t just a set of rules but a process to manage the lifecycle of a business relationship. Companies can dramatically improve their efficiency by implementing standard methods and protocols throughout the contract management cycle.
For example, a well-designed contract management solution allows users to initiate contracts from within the line-of-business (LOB) systems, eliminating access as a bottleneck and increasing speed and accuracy. The solution also eliminates waiting for a legal team to upload contracts, decreasing turnaround time and increasing productivity.
Moreover, a centralized contract database makes it easier to collaborate on contracts, shortening the signature and execution process. This allows for more flexibility, reduces mistakes, and ensures that all the stakeholders are working with the most current version of the document. The resulting increased efficiency and improved productivity allow organizations to make faster decisions and increase return on investment. In addition, the centralized database facilitates compliance and audit tracking. This is vital in ensuring that contracts are legally compliant and up-to-date.
Eliminates Paperwork
A paper-based contract process can be a significant bottleneck to the efficiency of your business. Contract contracts can take days or weeks to reach the people who need them. Resulting in costly delays that make it hard to get the work done.
Contract management solutions eliminate the need for a paper-based system by storing all contracts in a central repository where they can be easily located. You can also integrate the system with your e-signature and CRM systems to further streamline the contract management process.
Additionally, an effective contract management system can help you cut contract cycle time by streamlining the creation of new contracts and amending existing ones. Smart templates and smart authoring tools allow you to create contract drafts using pre-approved language and terms, eliminating the need for line-by-line legal review. You can also use playbooks of preferred and fallback terms to simplify negotiations for routine contract types, further speeding up turnaround times.
Scales as Needed
With contract management now a priority for revenue growth and sales teams, business leaders need to invest in an effective, scalable contract system. The right system will offer a centralized repository that allows teams to quickly find contracts rather than searching through multiple folders, email attachments, and physical files.
It also must have robust reporting capabilities, document version tracking options. And customization protocols to align with specific business needs and requirements. It should also integrate seamlessly with the organization’s line-of-business systems to eliminate process bottlenecks that slow cycle times and reduce overall productivity.
Many contract management solutions are now cloud-based. Making them convenient for organizations with remote and mobile teams. Alternatively, contract management software is available as an on-premise system that runs locally within the business network. Both solutions are designed to automate contract processes and provide easy access to data across the company. In addition to offering a flexible deployment option. The best contract management solution also provides easy-to-use tools that make it simple for employees. Read more interesting articles on Theflipbuzz
Discussion about this post