You likely realize that there must be a better way to manage the contracts your legal department generates or is responsible for vetting. Or, maybe you have a contract management system in place, but it’s no longer working for you.
Table of Contents
As you start thinking about searching for help, you may wonder what the “best practices” are for managing your contracts and selecting a contract management system for your organization.
While the tradition is normally to manage contracts manually through folder and file cabinet storage, the practice is riddled with inefficiencies that can only detract from an organization’s overall efficiency. Integrating with an automated contract management service will help free up countless [working] hours and automate countless processes associated with managing a contract, thus creating more value for a company.
This guide is intended to educate you about what contract management is, what are the best practices in managing your company’s contracts and selecting a solution that will automate the process.
Before you embark on a search for a solution to automate contract management, it’s essential that you understand what contract management is, the various terms associated with the contract management process, how your current management system works, and the pain points and gaps in that process.
When two companies wish to do business with each other, a contract specifies the activities entered into by both organizations and the terms through which they will each fulfill their parts of the agreement.
Over the years we have worked with corporate legal departments of all sizes. Based on our industry experience and knowledge, below is what we think are the most important factors when searching for a contract management system.
♦ Ease of access
♦ Ability to restrict access
♦ Solution simplicity
♦ Paperless system
♦ Ability to create and store contract templates
♦ Ability to share documents with other parties (s) during contract creation, revision and amendment processes
♦ Standardize and streamline contract requests, reviews and approvals process
♦ e-Signature
♦ Central location (repository) to store contracts, associated e-mail, other correspondence and notes
♦ A central place to store contract metadata
♦ Robust and dynamic global search functionality
♦ Automated workflows for routing and approval
♦ Obligation management or compliance monitoring
♦ Critical dates monitoring and alerts
♦ Performance monitoring (SLAs)
One of the first questions it’s important to ask when considering the purchase of any technology is, “What value do you want this technology to deliver to your organization?” Of course, you want all the features and promises above.
Most CMS software/solutions will provide these functionalities. The differentiating value lies in how the product and services are delivered. For example,
♦ Will the system integrate with other solutions you currently have or in which you may be investing in the future, such as Microsoft Office 365 ( Excel, Outlook, SharePoint, Word)
♦ In what type of implementation process will your team be participating?
o What is involved, who is responsible and how long will it take?
♦ What type of training, if any, will be necessary and who will provide it?
o What is the average length of the learning curve?
o Will the vendor train everyone or just the internal designated trainer?
♦ Online or On-premises-based solution?
o Online provides 24/7 access from anywhere, on any device
o Online creates opportunities for collaboration with other parties to the contract
o Online storage is more secure than physical files or on-premises software
♦ Transparent and affordable pricing model and affordable
We hope the guide has answered some of your questions and raised others that we would be happy to answer. Contract management software may be the most productive purchase your department makes this year. Below is a summary of what we believe are the most important benefits of a contract management system.
♦ Automated ability to track and manage contracts, agreements, renewals, and deadlines
♦ Secure contract creation and editing
♦ Simplified contract document search and report access
♦ Improved contract management workflows for approvals routing and compliance controls
♦ Complete contract visibility and control (e.g., bottlenecks, renewals, price increase dates, penalty avoidance)
♦ Full contract data utility and easy system extraction and analysis
♦ Flexible and secure SaaS, cloud or on-premise deployment options
♦ Accessible anytime, anywhere and from any device
