Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the (loved and feared) buzzword around technology advancement, organizational growth, and career stability. In this article, you'll discover what the future looks like for contract managers and contract administration.
The technology evolution is almost faster than the speed of light (and shows zero fatigue), so as we get ready to bid farewell to 2018, forward-thinking organizations in the government sector, commercial businesses/government contractors, state and local government agencies, professional services, academia, military, and non-profits are preparing to better leverage contract management software for contract ROI.
Unwavering commitment to process improvement through people and technology will allow organizations to reap the benefits of contract management software with a secure repository, version control, configurable permissions, contract process tracking, workflows, streamlined collaboration and negotiation, shortened contract timelines, and improved visibility and compliance.
As a contract management professional, you may have set the goal to increase your skills and improve your value so you can excel in your current role or step into the next level of your contract administration career. So, what will it take to achieve your goals? You must not only adapt to contract management AI, but embrace and leverage it to stay ahead of document transformation.
Robots Don’t Want Your Job
Resistance is futile. AI is here to stay, and adoption will soon become a requirement (if it isn’t already) for most organizations and industries. Rest-assured, the intent of AI is not to eliminate employees from their roles, but to take over manual, error-prone tasks.
When it comes to contract management, now is the time to take a proactive approach to redesigning your role, by shifting your focus to more efficient tasks and strategies that will exponentially improve the overall contract management process.
Say Goodbye to the Mundane
Day-to-day, contract management professionals juggle tasks from drafting to execution. The challenge is that time-consuming tasks take up most of their time but provide little value (remember the Pareto Principal?). When contract management software with AI is leveraged, contract managers position themselves to no longer be viewed as an organizational expense, but rather a value-added asset.
The Face of Contract Management AI
Contract Management Software with advanced AI reduces risk, makes opportunity identification easy, and helps mitigate risk by automating data entry, conducting risk assessment mapping, providing statistical data analysis, and making recommendations based on real-time data.
Imagine how much more you can achieve when you no longer need to manually import field data, waste time finding risk based on language and rules-based sentiment, analyze positive or negative facts about contracts, or pull data to elicit contract visibility.
CobbleStone’s VISDOM℠ Theory Calculator lets users know when contract values are not in alignment with goals. Automated alerts identify when tasks take longer than time budgeted, agreement values exceed historical value, contract amount is greater or less than anticipated, and more.
Better Careers Backed by AI
In a 2018 CIO article, Erik Brynjolfsson, Director of MIT’s Initiative on Digital Economy and professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management said, “The one thing that is certain is that there is going to be a lot of disruption over the next five to 10 years as these technologies work their way through each of your companies, through each of your industries and through each of your geographies, “But if we understand better those effects and if we work to reinvent our business processes, we're going to be able to take advantage of these technologies to create a lot of wealth, a lot of benefits for lots of different people.”
The hours you reclaim in your day will allow you to recalibrate your efforts to:
- create and build internal and external relationships
- augment relevant technical knowledge, contract management strategy, and team member mentorship initiatives
- effectively manage important and complex contracts while meeting objectives around contract formation, administration, negotiation, processes, and policies.
People, process, and technology are power players in all industries and will continue to hold steady in 2019 and beyond. Commit to staying on the cutting edge of document transformation.
In closing, in an HBR article , Beverly Rich, J.D. said,
"...Similarly, the role of contract management professionals will shift. Whereas contract compliance was previously done by an entire team, AI tools enable a well-designed software platform – coupled with a few employees – to do the job. Rather than organizational skills being key to the role, contract managers will need more technical and process flow expertise to work with the software.”
Contract management professionals should take advantage of this remarkable career opportunity to improve the contract management lifecycle, thus benefiting your career, your coworkers, your organization, your business partners, and your customers.
