Contract Insights

Managing various documents across business processes can be difficult. Without document controls and a development process for the management of business documents, your organization can expend valuable time and effort chasing down paper documents and those within disorganized digital storage. Without easy accessibility, your organization can suffer from document loss and misplaced versions.

Fortunately, your organization can compartmentalize the stages of a document lifecycle to better understand the document management process. To that end, let’s explore the three stages of the document lifecycle!

Oh no!  It happened: contract lifecycle process failure.  Something went wrong during contract lifecycle management - resulting in contract failure.  But fear not; as a contract management professional, you are a worthy investigator.  It is time to put on your detective hat, grab a notepad, and piece together the clues as to why your contract lifecycle process failed.  You can also inspect how this tragedy could have been avoided with contract management software.  Let the investigation begin!

Managing documents within an unorganized and insecure document repository can slow down your document management processes and leave your organization exposed to undue risk. Relying on manual and disparate systems - such as shared drives, emails, and spreadsheets – can cause you to fall into document mismanagement pitfalls.  Considering how organizations ranging from small businesses to global enterprises leverage document repositories daily, discover how contract management software can empower you with secure yet flexible document repository tools.

Contract drafting can be a multi-faceted and tremendously tricky process. This difficulty especially holds true for those new to corporate law and contract management. Before we can get into how to draft contracts correctly, we must know what we should avoid. As such, here are four examples of lousy contract drafting – followed by four ways to draft contracts better.

CobbleStone Software's in-person user conference will be hosted in Austin, Texas, from Wednesday, October 12th, through Friday, October 14th, 2022.  The 2022 CobbleStone Conference will include engaging breakout sessions and dynamic speakers to enhance your contract management software experience.  Considering that the 2021 CobbleStone Virtual Conference received tremendous positive feedback, we eagerly anticipate continuing our successful user conference track record by engaging with CobbleStone Contract Insight users and prospective users in person soon!  Prospective CobbleStone users can register for a one-day-only complimentary contract management conference on October 13th. The 2022 CobbleStone Conference is proudly sponsored by Four Business Solutions. Read on to see what you can expect to gain from the 2022 CobbleStone Conference, so you can secure your seats before registration closes on October 1st, 2022!

The age of digital transformation has forged a path of opportunity for analyzing vital information to improve business processes. This phenomenon strongly applies to contract data as well. Unfortunately, many businesses managing contracts fail to maximize contract data points to learn from mistakes and improve contract processes. As such, they fail to reduce risk, optimize contract terms and language, proactively recognize growth opportunities, strengthen the contract review process, and more.

Thankfully, you can avoid falling victim to contract lifecycle process failure and stagnation with contract management software.

Contract clauses and contracts themselves are built into the identity of the United States and so many other great nations. With the help of historic Supreme Court rulings, the contract and the contract clause were weaved into the cultural fabric of US society.

Utilizing manual sourcing methods - such as gathering item prices in spreadsheets, corresponding with prospective bidders individually via email, leveraging paper-based RFPs, and collecting numerous data separately from pontential suppliers - can cause you to face a time-consuming challenge in sourcing quality and cost saving goods or services.  Without the proper tools, sourcing professionals within your procurement team could fail to determine formal bids, RFPs, budget allowances, stock levels, current contracts, and contingencies in purchase order releases.  Fortunately, you can utilize the following seven essential eSourcing software tools for seamless source-to-contract management success.

In April 2022, we announced CobbleStone's exciting million-clause initiative to nourish and enhance VISDOM® AI - CobbleStone Software's proprietary contract intelligence engine with machine learning.  In June 2022, we announced that 330K contract clauses had been fed to VISDOM contract AI.  Now, we are thrilled to announce that over 500,000 clauses have been "fed" to VISDOM thus far!  This stage in the momentous 1,000,000 contract clause project is just one of many testaments to why CobbleStone® has been hailed as the leader in contract management software.

With new advancements and options for effective contract management continually evolving, we’ve detailed five essential tools contract managers must empower themselves with to navigate the ever-changing landscape of contract management best practices going forward.