While contract management is a necessity these days, adoption of digital processes across the business remains a challenge. At a time when data breaches and increasingly complex regulations are becoming the norm, organisations can’t afford to keep tradition contract management processes. Not only is tradition contract management inefficient, but manual, paper-based processes expose the business to risk and overspending.
In this post we examine five common myths legal departments have about contract management to set the record straight: it’s time to take the contract out of the filing cabinet and put it in the cloud!
Myth 1: My contracts aren’t going to be secure.
Your contracts (or any legal documents for that matter) are more secure in the cloud where they are protected by passwords or other additional layers of security designed to prevent data breaches. Unlike hard copies, which can be easily lost, misplaced or stolen, storing contracts in a secure cloud system ensures that a copy can be accessed anywhere, anytime, by authorised people only. In the age of GDPR, you really cannot afford take chances with how you store or share contracts with personal data.
Myth 2: I can manage my contracts just as successfully with manual processes.
A survey by Exari revealed that 76% of General Counsel were still using “cut and paste” templates during the drafting process. Manual processes are time consuming (delaying deals!) and can result in errors if you cut or delete a key term.What’s more, if other departments are manually creating contracts using outdated templates, you don’t have control. Contracts are complex and sophisticated documents that take a wide range of possible situations into account. Contract management systems can help you define rules and workflows for creating contracts, share standard templates and term libraries that can be used by the business, and stay in control of contracting at each stage. Word processing programs and filing cabinets were not designed for collaboration and visibility across the organization.
Myth 3: I won’t have visibility into my contracts.
Cloud-based legal management software allow employees across the organization to access information in one central place so they can find the information they need quickly. It offers insights into the responsible party, alerts for renewal dates and e-signatures. In contrast, when your contracts are scattered everywhere, staying on top of due dates or obligations is challenging, increasing risk.
Myth 4: It will take me longer to access my contracts.
Think of the amount of time it takes to locate a contract in the filing cabinet or print a contract every time a new version is drafted. And that is if you know where your contracts are! Using cloud-based contract management guarantees a consistent system to store, find and track versions of contracts and information quickly.
Myth 5: I won’t have control over my contracts.
Cloud-based legal management software increases the control you have over your contracts because it is so structured. With manual processes, contracts are stored in random ways, difficult to locate and complicated to determine who is responsible for which contracts. This results in contracts with no accountability. Cloud-based software helps you to manage your contracts proactively and stay in control, even as the volume of contracts you manage increases.
Takeaway:
Now that the myths have been debunked, hopefully choosing cloud-based contract management doesn’t seem so intimidating. Armed with the correct information about what contract management offers, organizations can save time and money while increasing their control.
