If your team is constantly inundated with high volumes of contract reviews and wants to be more efficient, then contract management software can make your job a whole lot easier. Contract management software streamlines and automates the most laborious parts of the contracting process, while also helping you improve compliance and reduce risk. But how do you choose the best platform for your business, and what factors should you consider? Here are four questions that can help.
1. What is Contract Management Software?
Simply put: Contract management software is a series of programs and tools used to manage legal documents with vendors, customers, employees, investors, and other stakeholders. It enables you to streamline administrative tasks and reduce overhead by providing a comprehensive view of your contract workflows. By reducing corporate litigation costs and preventing revenue leakage, contract management software ensures that your company operates efficiently and cost effectively.
From creation to execution, this software accelerates the contract lifecycle and captures data throughout the process. With contract management software, you can process new contract requests and create agreements that comply with legal and corporate standards. Additionally, you can facilitate the review and approval process, maintain audit trails, and use eSignatures for efficient contract execution. Contract management software also enables your company to stay on top of post-execution opportunities, such as tracking renewals, adding amendments, identifying areas for improvement, and more.
2. Is it an End-to-End Solution?
An end-to-end contract management solution offers all-inclusive features, equipping you with exactly what you need to get your job done. It handles each aspect of the contract lifecycle and eliminates the need for other legal technologies. Ideally, you want a solution that includes implementation services and integration capabilities to ensure seamless adoption.
End-to-end solutions offer:
- Increased operational efficiency through streamlined workflows
- Optimized costs since you’re only paying for one solution (versus paying for multiple tools)
- Faster resolutions because systems are connected and typically easier to fix
- Smoother user adoption because there’s only one system for your staff to learn
- Enhanced visibility across your organization
End-to-end solutions focus on holistic outputs of the entire contract management process. They don’t charge unnecessary fees based on usage, number of workflows, or number of eSignatures. Additionally, an end-to-end contract management platform is backed by a team of experts. Ultimately, look for a solutions team that’s reviewed thousands of agreements across various industries and can offer contract management best practices. This will ensure a smooth implementation and easier user adoption.
3. Do You Get Complete Visibility and Control?
Your contracts contain your obligations, opportunities, and risks; therefore, visibility within and across contracts is paramount to your firm’s success. Contract management software allows you to put proper controls in place, ensuring compliance and reducing risk exposure. Here’s how contract management software increases visibility for your firm:
Searchable contract repository
Spot areas of risk in contracts and discover opportunities for negotiation with the ability to search data within and across contracts.
Standardized Template Creation
Ensure consistency and compliance across contracts with the ability to standardize templates and catalog approved contractual language.
Contract Creation Wizard
Enable self-service contract generation on legal-approved contract templates.
Favorability Ratings and Approval Workflows
Trigger approval workflows when terms deviate from your legal team’s standards. Instead of managing approvals via email, workflows automate the approval process for all stakeholders involved.
To learn more about the must-have capabilities of contract management software, check out this blog.
4. Is It Powered by AI and Machine Learning?
Contract management software with artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) capabilities can identify and extract metadata (i.e. key terms and clauses) within contracts, boosting your team’s productivity and efficiency.
- ML can identify, extract, and analyze key terms and clauses.
- AI helps firms keep terms and usage consistent throughout all their contracts.
- AI can identify contract types based on pattern recognition in how the document is drafted.
- AI can search more effectively and efficiently, allowing legal experts to promptly spot areas of risk, identify opportunities to renegotiate terms, and report trends.
When it comes to streamlining the contract management process, your company can choose from a plethora of tools. However, the key is finding an end-to-end platform that reduces risk, optimizes every part of your contracting process, boosts efficiency, and improves productivity. At the end of the day, your legal team should be able to seamlessly create, negotiate, sign, manage and analyze contracts—so they can do impactful work, not busy work.
Want to see how IntelAgree can help streamline your contract management process? Schedule a demo now to check it out!
