Contract Management Software

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Contract Management Software

• How it fast tracks Businesses

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What is Contract Management?

• Simply put, contract management software is any
  platform that assists you in moving contracts
  through their life cycle. Depending on the
  software you choose, you can use it to manage the
  creation, negotiation, signature, renewal, and
  analysis of your company's contracts.
• Contract management software makes it easy for
  your legal team to deal with each step of the
  process as a unified group. Many contract
  management systems allow you to streamline
  contract administration tasks, reduce business
  overheads, and provide a singular, focused view
  of each contract.
• To understand that let us take a closer look at
  the processes involved in a contract lifecycle.

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Processes in Contract Lifecycle
1 2 3 4
Authorization and Negotiation  Commitment Management   Contract Visibility and Awareness  Growth management  
Basic Management  Communication Management  Document Management  Contract Governance

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Contract Management System

• Imagine managing all those steps manually in a
  large organization. Even with a large team,
  things can go wrong. Because humans tend to make
  mistakes.
• A contract management system brings all of the
  contract documents under one centralized storage
  space and makes it easier for you to manage them.
• One major fallback of the conventional method of
  contract management is that all the documents are
  hard copy and are stored in a physical location.
• Using a contract management system brings all
  your contract documents under one storage space.

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Automated Contract Management Processes

1. Contract Creation In the conventional method,
   contract creation would involve someone typing up
   a draft for the contract. In a contract
   management solution, there are pre-defined
   templates for creating contracts. This would
   ensure that no data is duplicated and makes it
   easier to validate the data.
2. Collaboration A contract might need to be worked
   on by multiple users in a team. Contract
   management enables that by allowing users to
   access the documents simultaneously and
   collaborate on them. Approvals are also
   simplified by this method, using automated
   workflows.

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Automated Contract Management Processes

1. Approval/Signing With the conventional methods
   files might end up lying on the approvers' table
   for a long time waiting for them to be signed. In
   the automated solutions, they are integrated with
   E-signature capabilities, so that approvers can
   easily sign off on documents using their
   electronic signature.
2. Tracking Contracts During the lifecycle of a
   contract, multiple people might access it and
   several changes might have been made to it. With
   the organized and structured methodology of a
   contract management system, you can easily track
   the changes and audit trials associated with a
   document. And this would not take half the time
   it took for in the conventional method.

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Automated Contract Management Processes

1. Renewal The contract management process does not
   end at the signing of contracts, rather it is the
   beginning of a long process. The contracts need
   to be renewed at certain time intervals and it is
   important to remember those dates. With the
   automated notifications in contract management
   solutions, you can easily work on renewals before
   the deadlines. Renewals might also mean certain
   changes in the contract document, say a clause
   needs to be edited or a new clause needs to be
   appended, with the automated system you can
   easily make those changes and renew the contracts
   smoothly.

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Conclusion

• With the right contract management system and a
  proper understanding of the system, enterprise
  organizations can really fast track their
  businesses and grow them at the same time.
• If you are a company that signs more than 20
  contracts a month it is only the right decision
  to ditch the idea to manage them manually and
  invest in an efficient contract management tool.