cloud-based contract management system

Nearly 80percent of business activities are controlled by contracts. Contracts are a fundamental part of any company. No matter if you're a new business or a massive corporation the chances are that you'll be dealing with hundreds of contracts . For example, partnership agreements non-disclosure agreements general employment agreements, property and equipment contracts there are many more. How effectively are you managing them? Do you use paper, spreadsheets and other legacy systems? Have you ever thought of moving to contract management systems? If yes, then this article can help.

contract management

Before investing in a contract management software, make sure you analyze these seven questions in order to avoid the pitfalls.

software solutions contract management tools

Does the program have AI capabilities?

contract life cycle management

With the sheer volume of contracts, ensuring consistency of managing contracts as well as collecting essential data is an enormous problem. Some organizations may not have a standardized method of organizing contracts databases. If your business is a good example, it has a large number of procurement contracts , each with different renew dates and renegotiation agreements. A team of representatives could spend hours studying, reviewing, and tracking the information to ensure that no opportunities are missed. Instead, if you go in an intelligent contract administration system powered by AI task can be completed within minutes. By using Doc.AI capabilities, the information like contracts' titles, renewal dates as well as negotiation terms can be extracted. This allows for easier reviews, approvals and signs offs.

software contract management

That's not all there is to it. Further, advanced contract management systems with AI capabilities are able to help review contract clauses, compare clauses as well as classify contracts by the kind of clauses. AI-enabled CMS can assist in staying compliant with the changing laws. NLP analyzes every document and provides a list of threats and opportunities.

solution provider contract management software

Are there templates that are standard for contract writing and editing?

best contract management software

Contracts are among the most tedious things. What a hassle it would be to make documents with similar clauses along with terms and conditions phrases, and the same content multiple times of times. This is the reason your CMS must have easy-to-use templates and clause libraries that cover different areas. When you use these templates, that have been approved by your editorial and legal teams, you can swiftly draft contracts without any language flaws. Furthermore, a feature to standardize and centralize contract templates means that you can have an overview of your contracts. You can follow them using custom filters and co-work with colleagues on how to read, edit and store.

What's the ROI potential? How much money can my business contract life cycle management save?

Savings numbers are among the largest factor in helping you make the right decision whether you should put money into a contract management program or not. A study by Goldman Sachs concluded that an automated contract management system could reduce the time for negotiations by 50 percent, cut down on payment mistakes by 75 to 90 percent, decrease the expense that managing contracts is 10-30 per cent and cut the total number of people needed to manage contracts by between 10 and 20 percent. Indeed, managing contracts is a viable cost-effective option, when it is used correctly.

In the ideal scenario, you should consider factors like the time spent in audits and tracking renewal dates reduced disputes with contracts, creation of new opportunities and reduction of sales cycle.

Are the solutions customizable?

Nearly every company in their market promises to offer solutions that are tailored to the requirements of every business. But is this always the case? Instead of spending a fortune for customization, consider a detailed breakdown of your workflow, processes that are crucial changes that must be made, look into options by asking more precise questions.

For instance, in a typical contract management workflow that is completed by the author, when the author writes the documents, the system automatically routes it to the approver. But, without limiting this basic option, a customisation could include an email containing the document link sent to the person who approves. The link should also support or work on the entire range of devices: smartphones, tablets and computers.

However highly customizable software can create a complicated and cumbersome to use, and the simplicity can be too little. Thus, it's always sensible idea to examine the benefits and capabilities of the individuals who will utilize the software and after that, decide on how to modify it.

What are some of the distinctive features or highlights that can streamline manual processes?

Within a Contract Management System, contract documents are saved in a central, secure and searchable database that allows users to have access. This allows the best compliance and extensive reports. For instance, contracts can be easily traced, and the review and signing is made easier by e-signatures. Another example would be statistics and analysis. To pull out information on how long it took for negotiating a contract, users are able to quickly identify the problems, calculate the number of times it was necessary to iterate and produce comprehensive reports. This will aid with the creation of clause libraries, and gain insight into the past performance of the company and decreasing the duration of contract cycles.

Another essential feature to search to is redlining in contracts, also known as editing. Redlining is the act of highlighting text in order to mark changes, additions in addition to deletions. It also indicates approvals and rejections. This feature is helpful particularly for situations where more than one person would like to work on the identical document in a collaborative manner. It provides a greater freedom when reviewing and negotiating contracts.

It is easy to deploy and use?

A contract management system that has an intuitive interface and easy-to-use functions will enjoy the admiration of your customers. To gain maximum advantage, when deploying the software, make sure to connect it to current systems that cut down on the amount of time spent navigating between different platforms. In this case, integrating CRM into the latest contract software could assist sales personnel to supply customer data, make contracts and forward them for approval, as well as being in control of the renewals, expirations and other important dates.

It is then time to check for the onboarding process. Great if it is something that is available out of the box so that you are able to launch and start operating in a few weeks' time. Be aware that long deployment cycles are not viable anymore.

7. Are the data and personal information be secure?

And lastly, but certainly not last important, data security is paramount importance. As contracts contain highly confidential and sensitive information it is essential to protect them against unauthorized access to ensure the confidence of your friends including partners, vendors or customers. In addition, the increase of cyber-attacks and threats expose companies to risk of potential legal fiscal, brand, and financial obligations. If you're trying to retain the trust of your important business relationships ensure that the supplier hasn't experienced any major data breaches.

Talk to our experts on [email protected] to find out more about Vuram's Contract Management Solution.