Contract Insights

There are many moving parts involved with a contract, and it can be easy for your organization and counterparties to get mixed up at some point in the process.  This is why a contract checklist is an essential part of the commencement of a contract.  Your organization can utilize a contract checklist as a contract roadmap.  Read this blog for an overview of a contract checklist – as well as what solutions your organization can leverage to navigate that contract checklist successfully.

Clause libraries have proven incredibly useful for advanced legal operations and contract lifecycle management – if appropriately implemented.  Unfortunately, your organization can mismanage your clause library with antiquated technology, manual clause tracking and clause storage, and the lack of an expeditious way to leverage clauses during contract authoring and contract negotiation.  Luckily, you can supercharge your clause library with user-friendly and robust contract management software.  Here's how.

This blog post was updated on March 30th, 2021

Contract lifecycle management requires a thorough strategy, careful planning, and the right technology.  Without all three elements, managing contracts can not only be challenging for contract management, sourcing, procurement, vendor management, and legal professionals; it can prove difficult to maximize contract value.  Contracts require tremendous pre-award and post-award investment.  Without a suitable contract management system in place, you can find it difficult to maximize ROI.  Too many organizations are missing end-to-end contract management that provides a clearly defined process, actionable insights, and accountability - ultimately negatively impacting productivity, profitability, risk exposure, and compliance.  Read on to learn how you can master contract lifecycle management.

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.

Proper contract management is vital for the health of an organization’s contract lifecycle.  Despite the importance of forming a solid foundation for contracting, most organizations do not use a contract playbook.  Considering that these tools for contract procedure establishment are instrumental in helping many departments within an organization to share a universal understanding of standard contract processes and improve contract performance, this is surprising.  When a contract playbook is paired with leading contract management software, organizations are equipped with powerful tools for efficient, cost-effective, and organized contract management.  Given the importance and under-use of contract playbooks, here is how organizations should establish them for next-level, automated contract management.

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.