In today’s business environment, contracts are a vital tool for organizations. They help facilitate transactions and agreements, protect the company from legal liabilities, and ensure that you get the best price for everything from services to office supplies. But despite their importance, it can be difficult to manage all the different contracts across your entire organization—especially if you have hundreds or thousands of them.
This is where contract lifecycle management software comes in. It helps companies streamline their contract management process by providing a secure platform to share information between legal and fufillment departments while also providing visibility into delays or holdups in negotiations.
Empower legal departments to streamline contracts
When it comes to contract lifecycle management, legal departments are often in charge of reviewing and approving contracts. They have access to a lot of information about the company’s needs and its budget, and they can use this knowledge to negotiate effective deals with vendors.
However, most legal departments don’t have an effective system for managing the contracts they create or those that come from vendors. This is where contract lifecycle management software comes in handy. It provides the tools needed by both parties so that they can get through negotiations quickly and easily while maintaining proper records throughout their entire lifespan.
Provide legal departments with clear data points
Once you’ve implemented contract lifecycle management software, it’s important to provide your legal department with clear data points on contract progress and visibility into delays or holdups in negotiations. Simply put, this means providing them with a bird’s eye view of all contracts being negotiated, reviewed, and approved.
It’s also helpful to use the platform to track what kind of contracts are most commonly held up in the approval process. This information can be valuable when it comes time for new negotiations: if certain types of contracts continually get delayed at the last minute, perhaps there is a need for better training on these types of deals or perhaps more oversight from upper management is needed so that everyone stays on task throughout the entire negotiation process.
Optimize contract management processes for fast approvals
Legal departments should be able to review, approve and negotiate contracts in a secure and streamlined environment. To Provide legal with clear data points on contract progress and visibility into delays or holdups in negotiations. CFOs must have access to this information. Through the use of contract lifecycle management software, they can help ensure that their company is getting the most from their investments—and it helps them better manage business risks (and costs).
Ensure faster turnaround times for legal negotiations
One of the most important things that you can do before starting on a solution is to define the problem. For example, if your company has not been able to negotiate contracts in a timely fashion, then this is the problem you should solve first. The next step is to set goals for yourself and your team that are both ambitious and realistic.
For example, you may decide that you want to improve turnaround times by 70%. However, if you have never had any form of contract management software in place before, it may be unrealistic to expect such an improvement right away. That’s why it’s important to start small and build up from there—it will enable you and your team members to get used to using the tool so they can see its benefits firsthand over time. It also gives everyone involved more motivation because they know exactly what kind of impact this process has had so far (and how much better things could be).
Once you’ve defined success criteria as well as concrete goals for yourself (and maybe even some friends), then it’s time for action. For these changes to happen correctly over time, we suggest setting up weekly check-ins about what steps need to be taken next toward reaching those targets. Then, according to what comes out in these sessions, you can spend some dedicated attention every week on implementing this software. This will ensure faster turnaround times for legal negotiations because everyone knows what needs to be done next instead of waiting until deadlines hit unexpectedly during busy periods.
Conclusion
You can streamline the contract negotiation process and reduce costs by leveraging digital tools and your legal department. The process of creating contracts is a highly regulated area, but with the right tools, it can be made more efficient for all parties involved. This means faster turnaround times for lawyers, less time wasted on paperwork for IT professionals, and more savings for your business.
