Solving Contract Management
Build a workflow-based, scaleable contract management system to meet your needs today and in the future
Lawyers at high-growth companies face increasingly complex and variable responsibilities than ever before while finding themselves stretched to manage an expanding landscape of contract demands and needs. The General Counsels and Chief Legal Officers of nearly 9 out of 10 companies struggle to manage high volumes of low complexity contracts. Over 50% report that inefficient and outdated contract processes result in revenue delays and lost business. Meanwhile, the manual contract review process is less aligned with most organizations’ digital transformation strategies and ambitions.
There is a better way forward - legal departments can solve contract management by implementing a scalable, end-to-end automated solution for tracking and managing all contract-related activities. The benefits of adopting a digital solution are numerous such solutions:
Are more cost-effective than implementing standalone point systems;
Can leverage and integrate with technology tools used across your organization;
Provide detailed reporting and capture meaningful metrics while documenting audit trails;
Create a centralized contract repository of drafts and contract-related communications, which reduces emails and internal e-discovery costs;
Use data to help predict demand for legal resources based on internal business activities and timelines; and
Provide process transparency which promotes increased confidence in and support for the capabilities and functioning of legal departments.
Implementing an automated contract solution will allow your legal team to focus its valuable time and resources on strategic legal activities to address business priorities while effectively managing foundational legal activities with minimal legal intervention.
An effective contract management solution pairs an automated workflow-based technology solution and a right-sourced contract review. Here’s how it works:
Step 1: Automate contract intake and review.
Use your organization’s tech stack to centralize intake and automate workflows that track contract-related activities. If your company doesn’t yet use automation technology, choose one that can digitize and automate workflows throughout the organization (versus only contract-related work).
This allows you to build workflows based on customized internal requirements rather than conforming your processes to a contract management software’s standard configurations. The first phase of your contract-related digital workflow involves sending third-party contracts through AI-powered contract review software to automate metadata extraction and initial contract review.
Step 2: Automatically review contracts and collect data
A contract is a collection of valuable data, including dollar amounts, milestones, and obligations. AI-enhanced contract review software systematically reviews contracts, clause by clause, extracting data such as dates, contract type, and contract value along the way. It can also compare and track revisions against pre-approved clauses and terms according to your company playbook to:
Identify errors and non-compliant and contradictory language;
Suggest your preferred fallback positions and acceptable alternate language; and
Identify and highlight language that requires further scrutiny
The next phase of your contract workflow will route contracts to a trusted legal service provider for human review.
Step 3: Outsource for human contract review.
AI-driven contract review is highly accurate. Yet, until you feel fully confident relying solely on AI-enabled contract review, you may prefer to have human eyes reviewing each contract. Supporting AI with a layer of human review will provide you with the highest possible confidence and peace of mind while still saving you time and money.
Providing your contract review software and your legal service provider with your parameters for contract escalation enables them to flag contracts for legal team review when elements fall outside established boundaries, pinpointing the specific issues to be addressed for the maximum efficient deployment of lawyer resources and time.
Contract management with convenience, choice, and compatibility.
Using outsourcing and technology costs less than ongoing contract lifecycle management software licensing fees. You can construct automated workflows to perform a plethora of contracting tasks, including:
Routing contracts and ensuring review and approval tasks stay on track;
Preventing the acceptance of a contract before required approval sign-offs;
Inviting all parties to sign a contract electronically and confidentially;
Enforcing the order of signing and ensuring all parties receive a signed copy; and
Providing a defensible audit trail documenting contract creation, review, and signature.
By leveraging your organization’s automation software, you can customize and tailor workflow without third-party vendor intervention and cost. And your contract data lives alongside the rest of your company’s data, making it much easier to include in meaningful analyses.
Build workflows to connect your existing array of technology tools to contract processes.
Continue to draft contracts in the word processing program of your choice.
Use your preferred e-signature solution and document repository.
Enable push notifications to keep contract tasks out of crowded inboxes.
Experience convenient contract management that offers you flexibility and compatibility.
Enjoy end-to-end, companywide contract management.
Set up a self-serve portal that empowers procurement, sales, HR, and other colleagues to enter required metadata and generate contracts. Develop custom templates for low-negotiation contracts such as NDAs, vendor agreements, and employment letters for colleagues to choose from. The system uses standard data to fill in details and route the contracts accordingly. You can also use it to send amendments en masse automatically.
A single contract routing system gives you much greater awareness of legal demands and priorities. With all your contracts tightly controlled in a digital framework, you can swiftly pinpoint what’s in your contracts at all times and:
Search large volumes of contracts to answer specific questions efficiently.
Quickly assess levels of risk exposure and liability while also identifying cost-saving opportunities.
Improve contract enforceability and resolve disputes faster.
Optimize and scale your contract management success
Track contract workflows and establish KPIs to assess workflow efficiency. Metrics reveal workflow bottlenecks and help identify tasks that can be automated, eliminated, or outsourced to achieve the most benefit.
In implementing this solution, you also establish the foundation for an internal due diligence tool. Review the contracts of a potential acquisition using your contract management solution. The fundamental requirements for both processes are similar, and the cost savings could be significant.
Contract management is no longer a problem with the plethora of stable technology solutions available. Let’s solve this problem together!
Let's talk so we can free your legal team to generate greater value for the company while optimizing many of your existing resources.