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contraxawaresoftware-blog · 6 years ago

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How Does Automation Improve Contract Management?

Companies have long used software to organize and store contracts for review, but to effectively manage these documents in the twenty-first century requires a more comprehensive approach. The rapid growth of contract management automation speaks to the need for increased effectiveness in this area.

Firms around the globe are paying attention as reputable sources publish the statistics. Harvard Business Review reports that contract inefficiencies cause firms to lose 5% to 40% of value on individual contracts.

Companies interested in long-term growth are turning to cloud-based software that integrates AI for the purpose of increased efficiency and productivity.They’re also attracted to its ability to protect them from the issues of data loss and other liabilities.

Benefits of Automated Contract Management Solutions

There are five primary benefits of using automation in your contract management:

Improved access and organization

More efficient template standardization

Easier to monitor workflow in real time

Access to data from anywhere

More secure storage and data protection

Improved Access and Organization

Companies of all sizes routinely need to identify a specific agreement or piece of data and usually invest valuable time to access the information they need. Contract management software allows these organizations to not only organize their contracts, but also search and sort based upon specified criteria across the entire platform. The result is expedited data extraction, reduced staff hours, and the virtual elimination of “lost” contracts.

Efficient Contract Template Standardization

The legal department wants to eliminate undesirable contract variations across various templates. Where appropriate, it’s imperative that a level of consistency exists amongst all its agreements and individual provisions. Contract management automation allows firms to easily generate and update contract templates both individually and collectively in a centralized location, providing consistency and control.Modernized and standardized templates immediately lend protection and credibility to the company’s agreements.

Contract management software also makes it easier to personalize contracts when necessary, without introducing unwanted variations into the templates.

Monitor Workflow in Real Time

Contracts are the life-blood of a company, which makes tracking status and dates a top priority for the proactive professional. Automated contract management software analyzes data and uses reports to inform users concerning the status of all contracts, including approval, renewal, or required signatures. These systems also alert users to critical dates regarding contract expiration, renewal, and related obligations. Automated contract monitoring drastically minimizes associated legal and financial risk in the area of contract fulfillment.

Mobile Data Access

Emergencies happen, and urgent matters can’t always wait until a more convenient time. Contract management software provides remote capabilities to every permitted user, allowing secure access to contracts and data from any mobile device. Mobile access allows your organization to stay ahead of problems and to provide instant client support when needed.

Secured Data

Data loss is devastating to everyone involved, and even with professional IT support, system errors and breaches remain a continuous threat. Contract management automation provides high-level security with features such as:

Offsite, cloud-based storage

Frequent automatic backups

Data encryption

Admin-controlled user permissions

Multi-level user authentication

The ROI of Automated Contract Management

As contract management automation decreases document related man-hours, your team spendslesschasing down papers and hunting for files. Instead, they can focus on following up with potential customers and vendors.

This increased productivity allows you to close more deals, take advantage of new opportunities, and avoid disputes caused by miscommunication. The return on investment will come both in the forms of higher profits and reduced costs.

#Automation Contract Management

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contraxawaresoftware-blog · 6 years ago

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How Better Contract Management Can Improve Your Bottom Line

Many companies view contract management as an administrative headache. But, with strategic processes and implementation of best practices, contract management can become a competitive advantage.

How Better Contract Management Can Improve Your Bottom Line

Many companies view contract management as an administrative headache. But, with strategic processes and implementation of best practices, contract management can become a competitive advantage.

In fact, with the right system, contract management can add as much as 15% to your bottom line.

Contract management can help you both control costs and increase revenues.

Expirations, Renewals, and Renegotiations

Companies that lack a strategic approach to contract management leak money all over the place. Contracts with important customers expire without follow up, bad contracts with vendors automatically renew because of a lack of notice, and the company fails to re-negotiate for better terms.

If you had a cloud-based contract management system, you would receive automatic alerts about critical contract dates. You wouldn’t have to rely on someone checking the spreadsheet at the right time or someone remembering that an important contract expires sometime in the next few months.

A strategic approach to contract management allows you to proactively follow-up with important clients. You can easily stay on top of cancelling bad deals with vendors.

Contract management software also gives you easy access to data. You can leverage that data to secure better rates with vendors and your strategic partners.

Litigation Risk Avoidance

Nobody wants to get tangled up in a lawsuit. Even if you are in the right, a breach of contract dispute is expensive and time-consuming. It can cause you to miss out on other opportunities, and you may never recover damages you are owed.

Contract management software can help prevent contract disputes. Because you have easy access to the contracts, automated alerts, and powerful reporting features, you never have to miss a contractual date. You never find yourself accidentally in breach of a contract.

You also have the chance to see if a customer or vendor is failing to keep up their end of the bargain. You have a chance to reach out to the other side before things reach a crisis point. A good contract management system gives you the ability to see negative trends and to react before things get worse.

Compliance

Contracts are becoming increasingly complicated. Often organizations miss out on contractual bonuses or end up getting fined for failure to comply with certain contractual terms within the deadline.

Some companies have entire teams devoted to contract compliance issues.

A cloud-based contract management system powered by AI and machine learning can simplify compliance efforts.

You never have to miss a critical date again.

Automation

It’s no secret that automation is a powerful driver of lower costs and increased revenues. Contract management is no exception. Thanks to new advances in machine learning, contract management software is now more powerful than ever.

You can now automate basic contract drafting tasks, workflow, alerts, and much more.

Automation decreases errors and allows your team to work more efficiently. Instead of handlining simple, routine tasks, automation allows your team to work strategically.

Contract management isn’t about shuffling papers or busywork. It should be a part of your overall business strategy. If you have the right tools, contract management can make you a more agile, and more profitable business.

In fact, with the right system, contract management can add as much as 15% to your bottom line.

Contract management can help you both control costs and increase revenues.

Expirations, Renewals, and Renegotiations

A strategic approach to contract management allows you to proactively follow-up with important clients. You can easily stay on top of cancelling bad deals with vendors.

Contract management software also gives you easy access to data. You can leverage that data to secure better rates with vendors and your strategic partners.

Litigation Risk Avoidance

Compliance

Contracts are becoming increasingly complicated. Often organizations miss out on contractual bonuses or end up getting fined for failure to comply with certain contractual terms within the deadline.

Some companies have entire teams devoted to contract compliance issues.

A cloud-based contract management system powered by AI and machine learning can simplifycompliance efforts.

You never have to miss a critical date again.

Automation

You can now automate basic contract drafting tasks, workflow, alerts, and much more.

Automation decreases errors and allows your team to work more efficiently. Instead of handlining simple, routine tasks, automation allows your team to work strategically. Contract management isn’t about shuffling papers or busywork. It should be a part of your overall business strategy. If you have the right tools, contract management can make you a more agile, and more profitable business.

#Better Contract Management

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contraxawaresoftware-blog · 6 years ago

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How to Audit Your Contract Management Process ?

Successful contract negotiation is critical for the long-term success of your business. When big deals are on the line, even a small misstep can lead to financial loss.

But contract management is tough because most businesses have too many contracts to keep up with. PwC found that most companies manage between 20,000-40,000 contracts. With such a high volume of contracts, problems are bound to occur.

It’s important to regularly audit your contract management process. A quarterly audit will help you identify bottlenecks and areas where you may be losing money. And most importantly, it’ll help you maintain strong customer relationships.

How to Audit Your Contract Management Process

A quarterly audit is the best way to root out any problems in your contract management process. This process looks different for everyone but here are five areas you can start with:

Accessibility

Where does your company store contracts and how easy are they to access? Too many B2B companies still rely on a shared folder in Google Drive or worse, a filing cabinet to store their most important contracts.

The problem is that at some point, one of your employees will need to access a document and they’ll waste valuable time searching for it. You should evaluate how your contracts are stored and how easy they are to find.

Templates

Contract templates make it easier to draft and revise contracts. But if your company is relying on outdated templates, then you’re exposing yourself to possible financial and compliance risks. You want to make sure your templates are up-to-date, accessible, and easy to use.

Compliance challenges

Compliance issues are a common problem in contract management. And they should never be ignored because they can affect your bottom line and hurt your relationships with your customers.

Did you run into any compliance challenges during the previous quarter? Where are these issues occurring and how you can avoid similar bottlenecks in the future?

Chain of command

Most companies have 7-9 steps in their contract management process. There should be a standard chain of command for contract negotiation to ensure nothing gets missed. But nothing disrupts the chain of command like having key employees leave the company.

Have any staff members recently left the company? Have any other significant changes taken place that could affect the chain of command and slow down the contract negotiation process?

Systems

During every audit, you should evaluate whether there are any new systems you can implement. Let’s say you realized during an audit that your company is storing contracts inefficiently. Is there any new software or system you can use to improve this process?

Final Thoughts

In the past, contract management often varied among departments with different employees following different guidelines. The final contract was usually paper-based and stored in the company filing cabinet down the hall.

If this sounds familiar, then the best way you can improve your contract management process is to automate it. Updated workflows can make your contract management process easier to manage once they’re done.

One of the most painless ways to improve your contract management system is by implementing a cloud-based contract management system. This will make everything from storage to automation easier. Plus, once you have implemented the cloud-based system, auditing your contract management process can be done with less effort and in less time.

#How to Audit Your Contract Management Process

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contraxawaresoftware-blog · 6 years ago

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How to Improve Contract Collaboration ?

In order to increase your organization’s potential revenue, it is incredibly important to be able to close deals quickly. However, organizations often run into delays due to conflict and lack of collaboration between the sales team and the legal team. Sometimes things also break down when different people unknowing begin working on two different versions of the same agreement.

It’s important that you make it easy for all of the relevant stakeholders to collaborate during the drafting and reviewing of contracts.

While sales staff members understandably push for contracts to be completed as quickly as possible, the legal team needs the time to accurately and effectively review contract details. Closing deals is a major factor in maximizing potential revenue; however, you can’t afford to cut corners when reviewing contracts.

So, how do you improve workflow and collaboration without cutting corners? Consider implementing these strategies to help your sales and legal team members work together more efficiently.

Storage and Version Control

One of the easiest and most efficient ways to improve workflow is to store and organize documents in a manner that lets both sales and legal find them when needed.

Rummaging through file cabinets to find contracts is very inefficient and can cause excessive time to be wasted. Instead, contracts should be stored and edited in a single place. This allows legal to make changes to contracts without having to send updated versions to sales staff. Meanwhile, members of the sales can easily check and manage contracts without disturbing anyone in the legal department.

Using a digital contract management system is a great way to store and organize contracts so that any authorized personnel can be easily manage them.

Contract management software can also eliminate the problem of having multiple versions of the same document in the file. Instead, everyone always sees the most current version and authorized personnel can review the audit trail to see who made what changes to the document.

Coordination

Contract reviews require that both sales and legal team members are always on the same page. If either party notices something incorrect or a detail that might present risks, they should be able to contact the other party to clear things up.

It’s also important that contract related communications all be kept with the draft contract. This is cumbersome if you are using Excel or your email service as a contract management system. But, if you have a cloud-based contract management system, everything from the sales team notes to emails to the draft contract are kept in one place and are easy for anyone to find with the click of a button.

Accessibility

When it comes to collaboration between two departments, accessibility should be a number one priority. As sales and legal staff members need to have access to the same contracts for different purposes, they should be able to quickly and easily access contracts and any supporting documents.

Taking steps like tagging contracts with keywords and organizing them based on contract type can make searching for contracts much easier for everyone.

These three steps seem very simple. However, they can make an incredible difference in improving collaboration between your sales and legal departments. Implementing these procedures will help speed up the contract review process and allow you to begin serving your customers sooner.

#Contract Collaboration #How to Improve Contract Collaboration

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contraxawaresoftware-blog · 6 years ago

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ContraxAware is a complete end-to-end Contract Management Solution to streamline your entire contract management process.

#Contract Management Solution

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contraxawaresoftware-blog · 6 years ago

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5 Key Contract Management Procurement Terms Facilitating Modern Businesses

The parties to a contract need to define its terms and conditions ahead of all other things. A proper definition of the terms determines the success or failure of a contract. The parties arriving at a contract must understand the terms from all sides. Therefore, all parties that are negotiation the transactions bound by the contract must find it explicable. Specific administrative controls have to be in place for relating the performance and payment. Besides that, a contract needs to describe the responsibilities and roles of all the parties very clearly.

Likewise, a procurement contract must share an oversight, which is backed by a suitable management plan. Most importantly, the contract management procurement terms may vary depending on their preset objectives. They aren’t governed by any set of rules. A manager needs to pick a procurement contract after considering all the driving factors. This is because the procurement terms determine the structure of the bonding between all parties. The fact that it’s meant for the entire duration of a project often turns it complex. The future may not seem so promising following a wrong decision.

Check Out the Various Types of Procurement Contracts as Mentioned Below:

Fixed Price Contracts

Lump sum contracts are fixed-price contracts. For all services, the service provider and buyer arrive at a fixed price. This is because the buyer doesn’t experience any risk with this type of contract. However, it’s highly risky for a seller. Most importantly, the costs and time involved in a project are more than this fixed price. A fixed-price contract must set the scope of work in details. The expectations of a buyer are highlighted by it against a pre-agreed price. Therefore, the seller must complete the task after signing the contract. On the contrary, he must experience a breach of contract or deliver all goods as decided.

Cost Reimbursable Contract

More easily modifiable or vague scope of a project forces you to consider a Cost Reimbursable contract. This is because the cost-disbursing paperwork is crucial for a high-risk project. Most importantly, a seller creates work for a specific period of time. Thereafter, he charges more for enhancing profit once the work is finished. Therefore, the performance metrics determine the value of profit under these contracts. The overall contract cost isn’t calculated until the job is finished. That’s one reason why only a handful of businesses utilize this contract.

Time and Materials Contracts

Labor is the key deliverable of this type of contract. The seller achieves an hourly rate with it. Besides that, the contractor receives specific hourly rates based on the direct labor cost. Apart from that, a pre-determined add-on or the actual cost of using equipment or materials covers the profits and overheads of a contractor.

Check out the efficient contract terms and ensuring a sound plan:

Defining Scope: All the areas of opportunity have to be identified and an execution plan has to be in place. Besides that, the responsibilities of all parties should be entirely identifiable in a contract. Most importantly, it must measure and assess the end objectives.

Contract Management: Developing a plan is essential for managing transactions following a deal. This is because all parties don’t want the contract to be filed and closed. Besides that a timely execution of the contract clauses is important. Most importantly, it needs to abide by the remedial steps and rights till completion.

Reporting & Controls: The directives must govern controls and report for protecting a transaction. Most importantly, it will secure accountability throughout the entire span. This includes the tenure of warranty, construction, and delivery.

Sufficient Rights: Most importantly, the terms must include the rights of all parties. The parties are quite motivated by this step. This is because it helps to keep them focused and invested on the returns.

Competitive Rates: A Contract Management Plan must reflect favorable competitive pricing. The full life-span and all-in cost viewpoint determine such pricing. Therefore, you can meet your specific project objectives by utilizing it.

A sound contract management plan defines specific roles for all. Specific roles are set for executive leaders, risk assessment dept., legal dept., insurance provider, and the whole supply chain. It lays a strong foundation for the contract and abides by its clauses. A strong CMP forms the basis of an effective procurement contract.

#Contract Management Procurement

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