Contracts are getting more complex every day, and your contract management processes need to keep pace. We recently highlighted three ways to improve your contract management workflow; check it out here if you missed it. Today, we’ll go over four more processes to take your legal team efficiency to the next level.
#1: Track Contract Status
Is your big sales contract still being drafted, or is it under review by the legal team? Has your new partnership agreement been redlined, or are we still waiting for feedback from the other parties? Has your new employee signed their offer letter yet, or is it still out for signature?
Answering these questions shouldn't take multiple conversations with multiple employees and departments. Instead, summarize it in a single contact status dashboard within your contract management software.
If you want to keep contract management on track, you need a high-level view of your contract pipeline available at all times. Your Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) should give it to you.
#2: Collaborate on Redlines
Most contracts are compromises, with multiple parties and stakeholders arriving at a consensus agreement by trading redlines back and forth. Nothing makes this process more confusing or error-prone than tracking down which version of a contract is the latest.
A good solution should maintain a contract version that everyone can mark up independently and collaborate on virtually. Every redline needs a name attached, so you can negotiate any changes with the appropriate person and lock an agreement once everyone has signed off on a final version.
#3: Store Contracts in a Single Place
Just as redlines need a single source file to work from, every aspect of your contract management workflow benefits from having a single source of truth. When all your contracts are stored in a single cloud-based repository, no lost laptop, hacked smartphone, or crashed server costs you a contract.
Every good contract management solution starts as a contract storage solution first. Any contract management solution you select should have an answer for where to store all of your legal agreements.
#4: Automate Due Diligence
With the help of modern artificial intelligence (AI), software can read, parse, analyze and categorize your contracts faster and more consistently than any human.
A solid contract management solution should harness this technology to help you identify – for example – which of your contracts falls into what governing law and how many have force majeure clauses that can be invoked during a pandemic.
With these features in place, you can automate large portions of your due diligence analysis of new agreements and effectively manage every existing contract in your portfolio. No contract management solution is complete without these features. You’re just wasting more time and money.
The best decision is to adopt an end-to-end CLM. Don't settle for anything less. If you're ready to check out the best CLM on the market, contact LinkSquares today.
