Why go fully digital for contract management?
Digitalising the contract lifecycle is becoming increasingly important for legal departments of all sizes and across all industries.
By using a contract lifecycle management (CLM) software solution to manage contracts digitally, legal departments are streamlining processes, saving time and costs, improving collaboration within the business and mitigating risks.
Furthermore, having a centralised location for all contract-related activities makes it easier to find and track contracts throughout their lifecycle, gain better visibility and accuracy, and thus accelerate contract negotiations and approvals among multiple stakeholders.
Key solutions to manage contracts more efficiently
With rising workloads and risks associated with managing contracts manually, a contract management software becomes become “critical to survival” and is the key to managing contracts and reducing risk.
Here are a few examples of handy tools that enable in-house lawyers to streamline their contract management lifecycle:
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Legal ticketing platform for contract request or self-service contract
The legal department’s workload is overwhelming. Monitoring and fulfilling requests from the business, can become a serious bottleneck and put additional pressure on the legal department. To address this issue, the legal department can offer a legal ticketing platform to colleagues in other departments.
The ticketing platform enables the colleague to specify the type of contract they need, the parties involved, the duration, the amount of the transaction, and any specific terms and conditions required. With all information in one place, the risk of errors is limited.
Once the colleague completes the contract, the legal department will receive a notification to review the document. After review and approval, the legal department can notify the relevant parties to sign the document. Once signed, the document is stored in a secure repository accessible to the requester and other authorised parties.
Whether it is to better control incoming requests or to offer employees the possibility to “help themselves”, a legal ticketing portal allows legal departments to process contracts efficiently.
- Document automation and collaboration tools
With manual processes, mistakes are bound to happen, leaving the company exposed to unmitigated risks. An effective document automation tool significantly reduces effort and risk associated with manually drafting contracts and legal documents.
A document creation and collaboration tool can empower the business to self-serve and streamline approval workflows, while you stay in control.
For instance, stakeholders can make edits to a document at any time, even simultaneously, without documents having to be checked out or sent as email attachments, which minimises delays and allows the legal department to focus on more strategic tasks.
Conclusion
With CLM solutions, you can increase efficiency by automating contract processes and routine tasks and free up time for more strategic work.
It should be noted that digitising the entire contract lifecycle at once is overwhelming. It’s best to take a more incremental approach.
With an all-in-one solution, such as Legisway, legal departments can start with basic functionalities and add more features and capabilities as they analyse the department’s efficiency and identify areas for improvement.
Want to learn more about digital tools to optimise your contract lifecycle management?
Check out our dedicated whitepaper and learn how technology helps you become a strategic business partner.
