Evaluating Contract Management Software

To say that contract management is a minefield would be understating the service somewhat. It is a difficult package to get your head around, and realising the capabilities of certain software and matching that up to what you need can be a very difficult task.

Luckily, there is a checklist that can be worked through to ensure that you evaluate your contract manager software correctly.

Maturity

The first thing to consider when looking for a contract management tools is your organization itself, and how much technology it uses to begin with. Any feature rich, high end solution should only be seeked if you already support contract processes massively in this moment. From getting it through necessity , to moving upwards to aid efficiency and finally reaching the last level of transformation, there are steps to take and incremental changes that each organisation will need.

Discovery Through Audit

Figures have shown that around three quarters of companies struggle to find as many as 10 percent of their contracts at a certain time . This is a great issue because you need to be able to source milestones and contracts as and when you want access . Ahead of getting ready for deploying your system be sure to know the amount of contracts you have, where they are, the archive formats and what milestones are in them. Ultimately, find your contracts, audit and classify them before migrating them to the new software .

Authoring

After you know how you want it to be set up, you can take advantage of some of the features found to streamline contract management. Through doing this, contract cycle time can be significantly reduced thanks to the help with templates, assembly and all that sort of thing. Clause libraries and process automation also tend to be on offer to keep you at the top of the game.

Internal review

When a contract is taking shape, it tends to have to go to many different people in the office and what this means is that extra copies can be made and time can be wasted waiting for peer approval and review. To speed up this process, contract management software uses electronic workflow to make sure that everyone works with the same document - and can access it at the same time.

Negotiation

It's not only internal viewing that's improved, but also external. Due to the use of electronic workspaces we can stop with emails and postage to speed up the process. Some sellers allow a collaborative system so that two parties can work on the same document.

Reporting and alerts

A huge plus when it comes to efficient contract management software is the fact that dates and milestones are inputted and you are told ahead of time. This ensures that you don't lose track of obligations and can easily see what's going wrong or right within the contract. Basically, this means that any claims or disputes can easily be dealt with.

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