Deliver Control, Compliance and Savings with Five Key Functions

Every year, devastating losses are being made in businesses from missing crucial contract deadlines. The process of negotiation, drafting, reviewing and managing contracts across the company is becoming more of a challenge as day to day work tasks become blurred. Managing multiple contracts and being in control of thousands of documents need to be properly and proactively managed; missing key deadlines or failing to proactively enforce contract terms can be costly and time consuming.

We understand businesses are manually trying to keep track of all their data surrounding contracts; their contract managers are exhausted with the old processes and are looking at ways to reinvent their actions to be more efficient for their team and cost effective for their company.

Five key functions you need in your new contract management system to control your contract managers pain problems.

1. Contract managers can’t locate relevant contracts and need an integrated way to manage both paper and digital documents.

Contract managers can be overwhelmed with the number of contracts they have to handle as multiple contracts exist in numerous locations. Contracts may vary from print and digital formats that complicate the workload even further. Dispersed contracts data and relevant documents housed in filing cabinets and various digital systems means they cannot interface with each other to provide a clear understanding of the scope of information available.

The ability to locate relevant contracts can be solved with a contract management system that has the capacity to organise all contracts, both paper and digital copies in one central location. A system that acts as a secure central depository for contracts and its relevant documents provides a house that is easily accessible to all users and helps contracts managers improve efficiency and implement a fast and painless process to reduce search time.

By integrating both document forms and managing their locations in secure processes which include relevant tagging and fieldname inputting, every page and amendment to a contract is readily available at a click of a button.

1. Contract managers can’t gain access to relevant and required information across their universe of documents.

A common challenge for contracts managers is locating and cross referencing a contract with other relevant data. Professionals find locating such information becomes time consuming and drains internal resources, because of segmented document repository.

Using an efficient contract management system that has central location for document storage would enable complete search functionalities across the entire data; equipping the user with clear visibility on the most up to date information and documents. Complete search functionalities and integration software provides a pivotal platform that will solve document version controls.

A system that can manage the relevant and required information within a central repository for the team grants an electronic trail on all contract activities.

1. Contract managers constantly worry about missing key deadlines or milestones.

Missing a contract deadline can be disastrous. By missing a deadline or overlooking a contract it can cost a company a significant amount of money, time and hinder negotiation opportunities to gain better terms on goods and services.

You should never miss a thing in regards to your contracts; your new contract management system should help you be compliant by having a calendaring function with combined alerting tools. A tied in calendar and alert functions help prioritise and call out expiring contracts and other key dates across the entire document database.

Seeing important information should be easy. With a contract management system users should be able to review at a glance all their key dates to create sufficient preparation time to meet upcoming deadlines.

1. Contract managers need and want more control and insight into their existing contracts and tracking spend for their company.

Reporting functions that are customised to your requirements of contract analysis are key to improving the old manual processes. Manual review and reporting can neglect hidden or obscured data that may affect the business.

Reporting functions that helps you stay compliant and control spending should be part of your contract management solution. Powerful analytic and reporting tools designed to relay your information in a format most valuable to you and your team improves the speed, accuracy and efficiency of the contract review and spend forecasting.

With integrated data, contract alerts and reporting functionality, contract reviews become more thorough and more effective as it creates the best possible strategic and financial decisions for the business. Gaining complete control over all the information associated with a contracts life cycle by using a contract management system allows users a helicopter view over all contract data and spend reports to in turn reduce overall risk to the business.

1. Contract managers fear over extra cost, additional work and ramp-up time involved in moving to a new contract management solution.

Transitioning to new ways of working through adopting a more robust system can be challenging and stressful, which is why most businesses are hesitant to have an overhaul on their contracts management process.

All you need to do is to find the right contract management solution that will make your hesitations disappear. The right contract management system would be designed to make the transition easy, simple and seamless for you and the rest of your team.

The right system, from the right company that provides quality service means there will also be no impact to internal resources, as they will be completely relieved of the responsibility of the additional work and ramp-up time. The service team behind the functions of the contract management system is equally important to a more efficient and cost effective work environment. A highly skilled team that ensures quality and integrity to the maintenance of your system will manage your emergence to a new solution.

Conclusion

Identifying the pain problems around managing contracts and thousands of documents is the start for contract managers. Finding the right contract management system with the capabilities and functions which can implement your new business process and strategies is where the development begins.

Through better data management and establishing your key management functions, contract managers and companies can deliver control, compliance and savings.