Attain maximum productivity with Contract Management

There are numerous approaches to contract management and the technology used to make your processes easier and more efficient.

Some businesses choose to develop internal solutions by customizing existing technology to address contract management issues. Others use simple, purpose-built software to quickly and affordably streamline key contracting needs like storage, tracking, and reporting. Some companies also invest in custom offerings designed to meet more in-depth needs such as contract requests and intake, complex workflows, and so on.

A few key factors should ultimately determine your path, including

Create a centralized source of truth for your contracts.

Once your contract management solution is up and running, the first task should be to ensure that all of your organization’s contracts are uploaded into your central repository — often as simple as dragging and dropping your existing files and folders into the software. This will allow you to immediately begin taking control of your contract situation, allowing you to develop a thorough understanding of your contract portfolio. With all of your contracts in one place, you can begin reviewing them and using metadata tags to capture details such as obligations, contract values, key milestones, and high-risk contract terms.

Set milestone reminders to stay on top of important dates.

You can set up automated alerts and email notifications in advance of major events like end dates, termination notice windows, and renegotiation opportunities by tagging key dates and milestones in your contracts. Artificial intelligence features such as auto-tagging in software solutions will significantly reduce the time it takes to get started.

Not only will milestone alerts help you reduce the risk of allowing contracts to lapse or renew automatically, but they will also provide decision-makers across your organization with the time and information they need to take action and make contract changes as needed.

Create custom reports to keep stakeholders updated.

Custom reports, in addition to milestone alerts and emails, can provide stakeholders with routine updates on the information they care about the most, such as contract values, high-risk clauses, auto-renewing agreements, and more. Reports can be created once and then scheduled to run on a recurring basis to ensure that they always capture current data.

This is especially useful when reporting on information that is constantly changing, such as agreements that are set to expire in the next 90 days. These reports can also be shared automatically with any internal or external stakeholders, allowing the legal team to keep cross-functional colleagues informed without increasing your workload.

Access to relevant contracts should be granted to appropriate teams and individuals.

Establishing granular user roles and permissions so cross-functional teams can access and manage their own contracts is one of the simplest and most important things you can do early on with your contract management system. Corporate legal teams are frequently in charge of managing all contracts for the company, but this self-service system allows others throughout the organization to access key contract information while retaining ultimate control and oversight.

This is especially important for sales teams, who must frequently refer to customer agreements. Sales can now quickly access information about their customer contracts without having to go through Legal every time. Furthermore, by configuring custom roles and permissions, Legal can restrict access to only the relevant files and folders, reducing the risk of teams gaining access to confidential documents such as HR and Finance files stored in the same repository.

Run reports to identify low-hanging fruit.Running reports that help you identify immediate opportunities to impact expenses and revenue is another way to generate quick wins with contract management software. Consider running reports that answer questions like, What contracts are worth more than $25,000? Which of our contracts automatically renew?

Which contracts are set to expire in the next 90 days?
What contracts are worth more than $25,000?

With this information, you can prioritize making changes to contracts that are about to expire or renew soon, or that represent significant costs to your company.

By selecting a simple, low-cost contract management solution, you can generate results quickly, add value to your organization, and demonstrate the ROI of your software. EffiGO is right here to provide the most optimum solutions like such.