Contract Insights

Find yourself searching for the same information over and over again in your contract management software? Consider creating a report, also known as a saved search, in your contract management system. Creating ad-hoc and custom reports is something we touch on often with our clients here at CobbleStone. Ad-Hoc and Custom Reports are tools that can save an organization time for common searches they do within the system.

CobbleStone Software's Contract Insight™ is a contract management software designed to help legal, sales, risk, compliance and procurement professionals manage contracts easier. From the beginning, we have strived to create a product flexible enough to meet the needs of multiple industries and organizations. Today, we continue to be a leader in the industry.

Creating a contract is not typically a cut and dry process. A contract may have to complete many internal processes before completion. These processes can be based on contract status, budget, and type to trigger a workflow in a contract management system. Without automated workflows, processes can be time consuming and mistakes can be made. Forget having to manually drop off a contract or make sure it is attached to an email, automated workflows are here to do that for you.

Electronic signature (Esignature) is not a new concept in business practice. In fact, telegraph signatures were once legally acceptable. Times have changed, of course. Even the traditional wet signature seems to be a thing of the past for many companies. In mid-2000, eSignature was ruled by Congress to ensure the same legal standing as a traditional handwritten signature. ESign even has its own national holiday, June 30^th, if you plan to mark it on your calendar.

When reading magazines, advertisements, or even this blog post our brain begins the process of recognizing the patterns that make up the characters.  Our computer is able to do the exact same thing. Image-based documents can be converted into a language the computer understands for it to be able to read the document we need it to. This is where the Optical Character Recognition (OCR) tool comes into play. An OCR tool should be simple to use within a business software system that, in the long run, can save a company time.

Not every contract is meant to be viewed by every set of eyeballs in an organization. Organizational controls must be defined to determine if all contract management software users should be able to have free reign over the system or if permissions should be established within the application. Most contract data stored in a CLM system is confidential to specific departments and should only be viewed by certain users. Converting to digital contracts means no more locking important data in a file cabinet in an associate’s office.

No matter the industry your organization is in, contracts are a major component of daily operations. Contracts are created for business partnerships, labor, vendor transactions, customers, and more.  Restaurant owners hire vendors for various produce and animal products. Human resources personnel create contracts when they hire employees and when there are changes to the employee handbook. Educators create contracts when enlisting the services or products of vendors.

Contracts are a part of doing business. Whether we're referring to a contract with a supplier, an employee, or a business partner, every single contract must be created, recorded, and stored. Before automated contract management software became a viable option, businesses, education institutions, and other organizations had to rely on filing cabinets and other means to store these contracts.