Contract Insights

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 potential 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.

Procurement departments can encounter procurement workflow inefficiencies without the proper procure-to-pay tools – especially when implementing inefficient and disjointed contract management processes throughout parts of the procurement process.  You can avoid risk, unreasonable vendor pricing, and vendor non-compliance by leveraging contract management processes in procurement that centralize processes, technology, and people.  Read on to discover how you can implement effective contract management in procurement that results in maximized collaboration of various roles and responsibilities, managing cost effectively, and more fruitful business relationships.

Managing contracts from requests to renewals can prove difficult when relying on primarily manual processes. Your organization could be sacrificing accountability, visibility, a clearly defined strategy, and actionable insights. As such, you can find yourself running into compliance issues, minimizing contract value, and encountering other setbacks. 

But it does not have to be this way. Modern advances in contract management technology can allow your organization to scale with success.

Read on to learn how to manage contracts effectively and how leading contract management software can support each of the contract management best practices below for efficient contracting processes.

Collecting, analyzing, and tracking contract management data with manual and disparate processes throughout the contract lifecycle can prove challenging. You can waste time and energy without readily accessible contract management reports for the following.

• Contract Financials
• Contract Terms
• Workflows
• Budgets
• Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
• Vendors
• Contract Compliance Data
• & Other Essential Contract Data

Fortunately, leading contract management software can provide you with contract reports for optimizing contract performance management oversight.

Do you have many contracts to extract data from and organize within a centralized, web-enabled contract management software suite?  Extracting contract data with a manual process - especially from hundreds or thousands of legacy contracts - can seem overwhelming and time-consuming. However, it doesn’t have to be.  Read on to learn how CobbleStone's automated contract data extraction can help streamline your contract data extraction process in three easy steps.

Contract negotiation can create the difference between a strong or weak contract, which can directly impact the bottom line of an organization and the health of mutually-beneficial business relationships. As contract negotiation processes evolve at the speed of technological innovations, discover how leading-edge legal technology can empower your negotiation processes - including the use of robust version control, document collaboration, rules-based clause ownership, redlining software, and more.  While contract negotiations can take their necessary time, automating the process of negotiating agreements and contract terms where possible allows you to focus more on contract negotiation strategy and bargaining power.

Did you miss any of our blog posts from June?  Don't worry; we have outlined each of them for you.  Stay up-to-date with industry topics, real-world case studies, and contract management software and procurement best practices in July by reading the latest CobbleStone® content.

As ESG (environmental, social, and governance) variables continue to play an integral role within organizations and serve as a prioritized component within business decision-making, ESG clauses in contracts are increasingly at the forefront of contract negotiations and compliance. 

Without the right contract management tools, ESG contract clause language can elongate negotiations and cause post-award compliance tracking difficulties.

Fortunately, AI-backed contract management software offers unique tools for reducing pre-award and post-award ESG contract clause bottlenecks so your team can address ESG principles and ESG goals. Read on to learn how.