Leveraging technology for contract management is vital if you want to streamline operations, ensure compliance, and just generally run your business in a way that makes you and your employees more efficient and productive.
However, there are many different systems and so many options that choosing one can be a real challenge, especially if you aren’t sure exactly what your business needs.
With that in mind, here are a few important features to consider when you’re trying to identify the right contract management system (CMS) for your organization, or you can learn more at Ironclad.
Automated Workflows and Alerts
Manually managed contracts tend to take up a lot of time and can be rife with mistakes. A CMS with automated workflows can help streamline several processes deriving from contract management, such as getting contracts approved, having them reviewed, and renewing them.
A system with automated alerts in place can also help with missed business opportunities and the associated problems that can derive from them. And, in saving time, a CMS also helps with operational efficiency.
Customization and Scalability
Every enterprise has distinctive requirements, so a contract management tool that’s suitable for one may not be for another. Even if you think a particular system is perfect for your current situation, you have to ask yourself how likely it is that you’ll find it equally perfect 5 or 10 years down the line.
These are two really important issues for growing businesses; customization and scalability. The right CMS will grow and adapt to your expanding needs.
Integration Capabilities
An effective CMS should integrate effortlessly with the other tools and software your company depends upon, including customer relationship management (CRM) platforms, enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, and e-signature tools.
By integrating these and other essential business systems, you can significantly reduce the number of data silos within your organization. That means you have a better chance of getting the right information to the right people at the right time, which also translates into a better user experience.
Analytics and Reporting
Insights into your contract management processes are gained through the use of analytics and reporting capabilities. A CMS should provide you with the ability to create and view reports that give you the information you want about what’s happening with your contracts.
These reports can show you how well your contracts are performing, whether or not they are complying with pertinent laws and regulations, and how many of them are up for renewal in the near future – basically, an all-inclusive overview of how you’re managing your contracts.
Implementing Contract Management System Solutions in Your Company
Choosing a suitable management system for your contracts is no trivial matter, as doing so allows a company’s critical operations to function significantly better. To that end, our first recommendation to find a system that works for you is to know what sorts of standard operating procedures your company would like to automate.
Most organizations almost always benefit from a combination of features, such as analytics and reporting tools, automatically generated workflows, and a high degree of customization (to fit the unique ways that different companies operate).
