Contracts are the backbone of any business. These documents hold crucial information about how the organization relates to its partners, customers, suppliers and employees.
Contract management software (CMS) has been around for decades and has various segments of new technology that allow organizations to pull contractual data and analyze it so they may track their performance, grow their business and remain compliant with changing rules and regulations. With the right contracts tools, businesses no longer need to manually review contracts, a process that takes far too long and ties up time and resources.
Far too often, business leaders approach contract management without having a full understanding of the needs between legal and finance departments, and the key considerations that must be included to help them select the best solution to track and review key contract data in their organization. At LinkSquares, we do this for companies everyday so we thought it would be interesting to share the common themes we see when talking to many high-growth technology companies.
Here are the 4 key considerations to keep in mind:
1. Beware Legacy Products
Many contract tools in the market today are legacy products designed and build decades ago. Be careful when looking at any tools that have outdated technology and design. Our engineers are constantly building new features into the app and customers benefit from them at no additional cost. Legacy tools are mostly focused on servicing their existing customer base and are very stagnant in terms of technology build, rarely pushing new features.
2. Document Conversion Accuracy Using OCR
At LinkSquares, we have found that most standard OCR tools only convert documents at around 60-70% overall accuracy. OCR has about 11 spelling mistakes it commonly makes, for example converting the letter “m” into “nn”. In short, all documents that go through OCR should be checked for spelling mistakes. LinkSquares proprietary process does additional conversion and QA work to bring document onboarding closer to 99%+ accuracy so customers don’t have to worry about this extra work.
3. Long Implementation Process
Take some time to discuss implementation with each vendor. It’s not uncommon for us to talk with a prospect to find that they are coming up for 2nd year renewal and have still not completed implementation yet. LinkSquares platform includes easy, ‘hands off’ implementation in under 30 days while other products take 8-16 months. Many are not implemented on time or by the next renewal. LinkSquares does all of the work and backfill and simply provides you a login in under 30 days.
4. Complicated Pricing Structure
Lastly, make sure to discuss pricing structure. We find other tools will charge per-user and have hidden costs during implementation that can cost tens of thousands. LinkSquares has unlimited user access, premium support and simple predictable pricing from year to year.
At LinkSquares, we are big believers in common-sense solutions to real-world problems. We’ve seen firsthand the benefits companies can realize by using a more lightweight, easy-to-use approach that doesn’t take a lot of internal change or training to utilize. Creating documents and changing your contract negotiation process is out. Simple, easy to use tracking and analysis tools are in. And we think it’s about time! If this sounds like something you think could work for your company, contact LinkSquares today.
