The strength of an organization’s contract lifecycle hinges on a healthy contract strategy. An ironclad contract procedure helps departments within an organization come to a universal adoption of contract processes that improve contract performance. A contract strategy that leverages leading contract management software equips organizations with advanced tools for organized, cost-effective, and efficient contract management. As such, here is how organizations can employ a winning contract strategy for future-minded, AI-based contract management.
Manual Contract Management Doesn't Cut It
Depending on contract volume, document complexity, and an organization’s approach, contract strategy development may require significant time and resources. This fact holds especially true for processes that require the tedious copying and pasting of individual contract clauses from a myriad of agreements and giving explanations of the language used, fallbacks, and typical objections to a clause.
Without the assistance of leading-edge contract lifecycle management software, organizations are left to review past contract clauses and contract performance trends manually. All clause instances in which a template has been deviated from need to be accounted for. Next, contract administrators must determine why these deviations might have occurred, create potential fallbacks, and keep relevant departments abreast of the entire process using emails and spreadsheets.
Additionally, organizations are required to have a chain of approval established for how to proceed when a counterparty does not agree to standard terms or fallbacks. This approval process may involve phone calls, emails, and other possibly inefficient communication methods. Next, risk and reward are balanced out in the interest of deciding how to proceed with these contracts. This process often calls for error-prone and tiresome analysis and calculation.
Finally, plans for a manual signature process may commence. These processes are often paper-based and slow – likely wasting administrative money (i.e., mailing fees) and time. Antiquated signature procedures that rely on printers, paper, wet signatures, mail, and regular follow up can result in contract execution bottlenecks and a compromised organizational reputation.
A Contract Strategy with Contract Automation
Thankfully, virtually all of the money- and time-wasting inconveniences and challenges detailed above can be evaded. Organizations can quickly create a reliable contract strategy for present and future contracts with the aid of robust and scalable contract management software!
For improved clause management and analysis, AI-based contract management tools help teams create a pre-approved clause library. This unified repository of standard, alternative, and fallback clauses can be utilized for swift inclusion during contract writing. It can also help with contract negotiations, permitting approval personnel to access, edit, and insert standard, alternative, and fallback language as redlines with ease. Watch the video below to learn more about contract intelligence.
Straightforward and user-friendly rules-based clause inclusion helps organizations stay aware of where and when within an agreement a specific clause should be inserted and when to use fallback clauses and alternative clauses.
Clauses can be designated as negotiable or non-negotiable. Clauses that are designated as non-negotiable can be set to restrict editing within the system. Therefore, rather than manually keeping track of which clauses can and can’t be amended, organizations can lock specific clauses instead.
A contract strategy reliant on contract management software can remove the need for spreadsheets, email, and other potentially inefficient communication about contracts that need to be edited and analyzed for risk. Contract intelligence helps organizations in assessing and mitigating risk; with the help of fuzzy language matching, can identify clause language and provide alternate recommendations.
Intelligent clause extraction and clause identification improve and expand machine learning. The tool finds standard clauses within a contract document when that document is added into a contract management software system. Users can add text from clauses to an organization’s training data for continuous machine learning – such as improving future clause recognition!
After that, a simplified review of possible risk areas takes the place of manual scanning of a document for keywords. A dynamic, intelligent visual aid – such as a risk assessment matrix tool – can equip organizations with the tools needed to visualize and analyze potential risk outcomes rapidly.
Risk management tools can save time, but they can never replace the care and attention of live, human employees. As such, they should be utilized and included in a contract strategy – which these tools help to streamline significantly.
Once a contract strategy is put into place for contract generation, contract negotiation, risk analysis, and more, organizations must apply this same foresight and preparation for electronic signature processes. Luckily, with trusted electronic signature software, organizations can set up a procedure that allows for signing essentially anywhere and anytime. With secure one-off signatures, rapid signing, and a rules-based process, organizations can have a method that works in-office or remotely to expedite eSignatures and approvals. Rules-based chains of approval, configured alerts, and fully electronic signature templates add up to an automated process for contract strategies that is easy to adopt and comprehend. Watch the video below to learn how to decrease send-to-sign time.
Optimize Your Contract Strategy Today!
As previously detailed, proper contract strategy is paramount for adequate contract management. A contract strategy supported by AI-based contract management software that supports contract automation fosters a user-friendly, easy-to-follow, streamlined, and cost-effective procedure. The contract management software solution that your organization needs is CobbleStone Software’s Contract Insight®.
Contract Insight is CobbleStone’s celebrated source-to-contract management software platform. With CobbleStone, organizations can employ a plan that streamlines contract lifecycles, controls cost, saves time, reduces bottlenecks, and unifies departments in their organization’s process.
Discover why thousands of organizations within both the public and private sectors use CobbleStone to execute a successful contract strategy. Book a free demo today!
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