This piece is featured in the Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC) Tampa Bay chapter’s newsletter series.
Now more than ever, digital transformation should be at the forefront of everyone’s mind—including legal teams.
COVID-19 continues to raise questions about the enforceability of contracts, forcing legal teams to quickly review and understand contractual obligations. By mid-March of 2020, nearly 60% of businesses reported moderate to severe impacts on their contracts, according to the International Association for Contract and Commercial Management (IACCM).
On top of that, a surge in remote work mandates is creating another set of contract management challenges. The standard daily operations of face-to-face conversations, sifting through file cabinets to reference previous terms, or tracking down colleagues for wet signatures are suddenly unfeasible.
In these unprecedented times, one thing is certain: Yesterday’s approach to contract management cannot keep up with today’s legal demands. For legal teams to thrive in this new normal, digital contract management is no longer just a nice-to-have—it’s a necessity.
What does it mean to digitize your contract management? It’s securely storing and managing your contract portfolio from the cloud. And it’s automating each aspect of your workflow to improve efficiency and reduce risk.
With a cloud-based contract lifecycle management (CLM) platform, you can create, negotiate, sign, manage, and analyze contracts from anywhere at any time—without sacrificing compliance. Real-time contract data can be at your fingertips in seconds, and the best part? You won’t ever have to question data integrity or validity because the CLM platform is your system of record.
Plus, CLM platforms with artificial intelligence offer even greater efficiencies. They make it easy to identify and analyze what’s important in your contracts, enabling you to reduce risk exposure and prevent revenue leakage. In fact, poor contract management accounts for 5-9% of revenue leakage, according to a study by the Abderdeen Group. Meanwhile, companies with more efficient contract management had revenue leakage at just a fraction of that, the study reported.
A cloud-based CLM platform offers everything you need to get your job done, no matter where you and your team are working from. Here’s how to digitize your contract management.
The process of manually drafting a new contract is plagued with inefficiencies and inconsistencies—and this only intensifies in a virtual workplace. With a CLM platform, you no longer need to worry about colleagues using outdated templates or drafting sub-optimal terms. Your legal team can maintain standardized templates and store approved contractual language in a clause library for easy access. Users from sales, finance, procurement, and operations can generate legally-compliant contracts with speed and accuracy—a nearly impossible feat without technology.
Too often, contracts get stalled in the ‘awaiting signatures’ phase, delaying contract cycles and potential revenue. eSignatures streamline this process, making it easy for your busy executives to securely sign contracts from any device. But that’s just one of the many benefits of a CLM platform with unlimited eSignatures built in. By the time a contract is ready for eSignature, you can execute it without hesitation knowing the agreement has passed all major checks and balances in your workflow.
Without real-time collaboration and transparency, your team’s productivity could suffer or even worse—you could be vulnerable to risk. A contract management platform supports real-time collaboration, enabling users to add comments, attachments, and store relevant notes for future negotiations. Additionally, automated approval workflows ensure a faster negotiation process by routing approval requests to the right people at the right time. You won’t have to worry about approvals getting buried in emails or stalling with one person.
Generally, once a contract is executed, it’s filed and forgotten. When this happens, how do you monitor contract performance and ensure you’re maximizing its value? A contract management platform with an AI-driven searchable repository enables you to do just that. Within seconds, identify key terms, clauses, and dates to make faster decisions and manage risk. Find what you need when you need it to better understand obligations, opportunities, and commitments.
Some of the world’s most efficient companies have cut one-third of contract costs by adopting contract management solutions. Are you ready to join them?
IntelAgree is the AI-driven platform that can accelerate your end-to-end contract lifecycle management. That means increased efficiency, reduced risk, and improved compliance.
But what really makes us different is our AI. Here’s how it works:
So, are you ready to accelerate your contract management? Schedule a free demo with us to get started.