Contract Insights

Organizations across every industry are responsible for tracking, managing, and storing their contracts and agreements with vendors, clients, and partners.  For many companies with contracts and committals with vendors, tracking the sourcing of those agreements is essential.  Whether agreements with vendors are reached with simple or complicated procurement processes; a software suite with full procurement and contract lifecycle management can be enormously beneficial to any organization.

Electronic signatures are a must to streamline your contract management process.  They allow organizations to create efficiencies that expedite preexisting processes and reduce financial costs.  However, there are still individuals and organizations that question whether or not contract electronic signatures are legal and whether eSignatures will hold up in court.  The question is valid; potential litigation is a serious threat to any organization.  Judicial decisions and legal precedent in the United States have left very little ambiguity on whether or not contract electronic signatures are equivalent to handwritten signatures.  Organizations that use eSignatures should take comfort knowing that the courts have been on their side since 1869.

Revenue generation is the front line for all for-profit organizations.  The less efficient an organization’s sales team is, the less customers an organization will acquire; the less customers, the less revenue.  Most companies have goals oriented around maximizing revenue.  In order to maximize revenue, companies need to maximize their customer or client acquisitions.  The best way to help reach those goals is to have the most efficient sales team possible.  Contract Management Software can make any organization’s sales team more productive and more profitable by leveraging these tools:

Paralegals are key resources for lawyers, law offices, corporations, government agencies, and many other organizations.  As a paralegal, you may typically be tasked with storing the documents related to corporate matters, tracking key dates, reaching out to business owners for next steps, and more.  Managing those responsibilities is crucial to both your personal, and your organization’s, success.  Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) Software is a tool that can be used by paralegals to make your job easier, you more efficient, and you more effective.

The Physician Payments Sunshine Act was passed by the United States in 2010 in an effort to increase the transparency of the fiscal relationships of drug manufacturers, medical device producers, and biological and medical supplies companies with health care providers.  The institution of the Sunshine Act demanded pharmaceutical organizations with relationships to Medicare, Medicaid, and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) to collect and track data relating to their agreements with entities such as physicians and teaching hospitals. 

Procurement processes are crucial to the overall success of an organization. Sourcing goods and services effectively can have a noticeable positive impact on a company’s bottom line. Contract management software can enhance an organization’s procedures by allowing for internal contract visibility, managing rules-based contract requests and requisitions, and ensuring the tracking of vendor performance ratings.

The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) is great if you don’t work in government and believe that, as a citizen, you should be entitled to knowledge of your government’s actions.  On the other hand, if you are a government contract administrator, complying with FOIA can be a time consuming process.  Especially if you are responsible for tracking the seemingly never ending supply of public records or determining if a contract record is, or is not, exempt to FOIA. 

The decision to “build or buy” contract management software in the healthcare industry is a huge step in the process towards greater organizational efficiency.  Decision makers for hospitals, medical centers, and health plans must make this choice for a wide variety of software types including but not limited to: contract management software, billing and invoicing software, customer relationship management software, human resources software, or identity management software.