Contract Insights

As we step into 2021, CobbleStone Software’s Executive VP – Mark Nastasi – reexamines contract management software technology trends in the wake of the many challenges of 2020.  He provides expert insight into how organizations can move forward into more future-minded, automated, and user-friendly contract management in 2021 and beyond.  Read his considerations and suggestions below.

As a lawyer, you manage a variety of contracts that involve ranging stakeholders and processes.  Yes, you may have help from paralegals and legal assistants to coordinate the contract groundwork.  However, when it gets down to the nitty-gritty of negotiations, approvals, signatures, and post-award contract management processes, you need a trusted and streamlined system in place to grant you optimal control over your contact management process.  Read on to learn how you and your legal team can significantly improve legal contract management software procedures.

2021 is rapidly approaching and, with it, innovations and enhancements to contract management automation.  To that end, here is a list of user-friendly, future-minded, and industry-advancing contract management software features, processes, and best practices that organizations can empower themselves with to successfully and confidently navigate the evolving landscape of contract management through 2021 and beyond.

Vendor risk management can be daunting for risk management professionals and financial contract management teams.  In many cases, the process of sourcing a suitable vendor or partner is hard enough on its own.  However, a risk or vendor management professional must also understand a business's requirements and solicit vendors, contractors, and other partners to engage in business with to ensure they are qualified.  Add to the mix the financial responsibility of ensuring compliance under OFAC, or the Office of Foreign Assets Control, from the United States Treasury Department.  Clearly, the duties of reviewing the vendor onboarding process, agreement terms, and clauses can be a time-consuming set of tasks.  Leading contract management software, however, can streamline these processes with seamless OFAC search integration.  Read this blog by CobbleStone's Founder and Executive VP, Mark Nastasi, to learn how.

CobbleStone Software's newest release – Contract Insight® Enterprise Version 17.7.1 – has arrived, bringing forth new features and enhancements to improve your contract management software suite!

As was detailed in our recent blog on CobbleStone’s PC Helper App for MS Outlook, contract generation is a multi-faceted process.  A unified procedure for contract collaboration, contract writing, and contract negotiation can be hard to come by.  The “track changes” feature that comes with MS Word out of the box can help make the contract negotiation process easier with redlining.  However, version control issues can arise when contract stakeholders work on different computers in disparate locations.  In turn, documents that are saved locally can easily get lost – potentially resulting in more work for involved contract stakeholders.

To avoid issues such as lost document versions and contract lifecycle bottlenecks, CobbleStone Software’s latest release of its celebrated contract management software – Contract Insight® 17.7.0 – offers a PC Helper App that seamlessly integrates with MS Word. Here’s how to use that functionality.

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.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is positively impacting organizations across a vast array of industries.  Developments in AI are proving incredibly valuable as they apply to contract management software systems.  Contract management AI can transform static documents into dynamic assets for better contract lifecycle management.  Here’s how to step into the future of contract management with powerful contract intelligence.

CobbleStone Software’s latest release – Contract Insight® Enterprise Version 17.7.0 – is here, bringing with it many new features and enhancements to enrich your contract management software platform!

Process, unity, and efficiency are essential for proper vendor management.  A vendor management process that relies upon disorganized documents, emails, and spreadsheets for vendor key data, contract data, certificates of insurance, and vendor performance data may not be enough.  These methods may lead to failed compliance, missed deadlines, agreement breaches, overlooked volume discounts, insufficient payments, and poor vendor selection.  These manual and time-consuming processes should be replaced in favor of an organized and streamlined one.  Thus, here are six tips for better vendor oversight with vendor management software.

As technology evolves and organizations shift to adapt, business process changes should increase productivity rather than hamper it.  Contract managers who primarily utilize manual methods with their team may encounter difficulties in efficiently managing contracts.  Contract mismanagement can decrease productivity, hinder communication regarding task responsibility, and increase avoidable inefficiencies.  As contract administration changes for the future, organizations can attain greater control over their contract management processes by avoiding the following pitfalls of contract mismanagement.

Organizations should be equipped with contract management software that is easy-to-use, reasonably priced, and whose features are aligned to their needs.  When these criteria are not being met, organizations risk encountering issues such as contract lifecycle bottlenecks, wasted time, increased costs, and lost revenue.  These are issues that require making a switch to a better solution.  With that said, here are three things to consider when making the switch to a leading contract lifecycle management software platform.

Contract management AI is not something to be intimidated by.  Its goal is not to eliminate jobs or replace valuable employees.  Instead, it can add value to contract management software processes by transforming contracts and documents into building blocks for enhanced contract oversight, improved risk mitigation, and more proactive opportunity realization.  It can lend a competitive edge by shifting the responsibility of employees from tedious data entry to valuable contract analytics.  Organizations that embrace AI-based contract management can maximize growth opportunities and increase their software ROI.

CobbleStone’s latest release, Contract Insight^® Enterprise Version 17.5.0, has arrived with many new features to enrich your contract management platform!  Innovations like CobbleStone’s numerous artificial intelligence improvements, simplified E-Signature options, an enhanced dashboard experience, enriched vendor/client gateway functionality, template improvements, and more can equip your team with the tools to succeed.  Get started today with better usability and governance over your contract lifecycle management system!

CobbleStone Software will be exhibiting AI-powered legal document management solutions at the Legalweek New York 2020 Conference.  This highly anticipated legal technology event takes place February 3-6, 2020, at the New York Hilton in Midtown Manhattan. 

Creating Contract, Request, Bid, PO, Employee, and Vendor Records is unprecedentedly streamlined with Contract Insight's latest update.  Drag and drop record initiation is now available out of the box that lets users easily import files from a variety of locations!  This tutorial serves as a step-by-step guide to aid in the initiation and configuration of records in Contract Insight’s leading source-to-contract suite.  Get started today with better usability and governance over your CLM system.

When implementing contract management software, organizations often have copious amounts of contract data that needs to be searched, analyzed, and populated into their new contract management system.  Data extraction is a tedious task that can be time-consuming and overwhelming for contract management professionals.  Leaving this task to software professionals who are familiar with data extraction, and who use AI technology to streamline data extraction processes, will allow for a better, faster implementation process.  Discover five reasons why your organization should choose contract data extraction services.

Organizations that make data-driven decisions position themselves for long-term success. Their culture, tools, and abilities are centered around the common goal of collecting quality data and analyzing it quickly and accurately to make informed business decisions. When managed effectively, quality contract data translates to contract analytics, providing the insights necessary for organizations to decrease contract cycle times with sharpened control, governance, and visibility. Learn how to turn contracts into a pivotal source of business intelligence that supports strategies, tactics, and goals.