Contract Insights

As a regular old consumer and - perhaps - a part of a successful business, you know that technology evolves so speedily that it is sometimes overwhelming. Adopting new technologies follows distinct stages that can influence an organization’s competitiveness and growth. These technology adoption lifecycle stages, often categorized into innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggards, provide a bell curve framework for understanding how technologies diffuse across markets. Here, we explore each stage and outline a robust adoption strategy to navigate them effectively.

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.

You’re in need of contract lifecycle management software. You’ve found a product that is a good fit for your organization. However, some of these products are offered as a SaaS deployment, some products are offered as a local deployment, and some products can be offered as both a SaaS or local deployment option; and you are unsure which option is the most beneficial for your business. Do not worry. Your questions, concerns and uncertainties about which deployment option is right for your business will be answered in the reading that follows. Before you make a decision, the benefits of both the SaaS and locally deployed option should be outlined.

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:

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. 

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. 

Cyber-security has become a huge concern for businesses today.  More and more organizations are falling victim to cyber-attacks due to improper handling and storage of sensitive data as well as lower security precautions. Our modern dependence on the convenience and connectedness that technology allows has made organizations more vulnerable to security risks. These threats have become so widespread that President Obama issued an executive order earlier this year mandating stricter cyber-security regulations and imposing stricter sanctions on organizations that engage in cyber-attacks that threaten national security and infrastructure.