Effective contract management requires a deep understanding of your obligations, an awareness of renewal dates, and certainty about compliance for your business and third-party vendors.
It is essential that you know all terms and conditions of your contracts.
If you are still struggling to achieve the above or your approach is not well-organized, you likely don’t have a centralized repository for contracts.
What Is a ContractCentralized Repository?
Many small businesses keep contracts in an ad-hoc manner. These contracts are stored in an individual’s email, on a shared drive, or in one laptop’s downloaded folder. Leading companies have moved their files to contract repository software over the past decade. This allows for efficient storage and retrieval and paves the way for new technologies such as workflow automation. Small businesses require strong tools to manage, redline, and store contracts. These tools are specifically designed for this job.
The contract repository allows you to organize vital business information so your team can excel in contract management. Click https://www.contractsafe.com/ for more information on how Contractsafe CLM software can help you streamline contract process.
Facilitate Improvements in Contract Workflow
Many platforms do more than just store and organize contracts. ContractSafe Contract Lifecycle Management tool supports best-practice workflows, which reduces risk and saves time. It refers to a single-directional cycle that starts with the initial request and continues through negotiations, signatures, authorizations, approvals, signings, obligation recording, compliance reports, and renewal. Experts in contract management say the order is crucial because it reduces double-handling and the chance of missing a step.
The contract lifecycle management platforms guide your team through the process and provide a single source for truth. This includes not only what the contract is used for but also where it is located in the process. This can save you time and money, especially for expensive legal departments. It also allows for frequently used clauses to be preapproved by lawyers in CLM and then dropped into a contract.
Data Extraction & Data Identification
Your organization can streamline and automate its contract management processes by having a contract repository supported by contract artificial intelligence. Your organization can trust a proven system for contract analysis. It transforms static documents into dynamic building blocks, which allows for better contract oversight, proactive opportunity identification, and pre-emptive risk mitigation.
Your organization can get the most from its contract repository using contract AI and machine learning in a robust contract management platform. Intelligent mapping of critical data from contract documents to the system can help you identify and map them to specific fields or other fields. Data in your contract repository can be organized, easily navigable, and searchable. Relevant documents are also attached for ease of access.
Effectively Track Contracts Through Complexity and Growth
Spreadsheets are a fast and easy way to track contracts. However, this manual approach will not be beneficial to organizations that have low volumes of contracts. Spreadsheets can be detrimental if your business wants to scale or take on more vendors.
As your business grows, teams that are already overwhelmed by contract administration will feel the strain. Metadata capture and input can be hampered by frustration, lack of time, and the need to balance contract work and achieve business goals.
Cloud-based contract management software will scale with your company, and some solutions can support unlimited contracts and users. Cloud-based contract management software allows you to use your contract repository for more than data storage. It gives you one secure and easily accessible place to track and manage all your contracts.
Create Efficiency for Overwhelmed Teams
What amount of time do you or your employees spend searching for contracts? Are you having difficulty finding specific information, such as key dates or clauses?
It is hard to find information quickly and efficiently when data is scattered, and contracts are kept in different places. It could be that metadata and contracts are missing because teams are too busy prioritizing required contract administration.
A central repository can replace manual spreadsheets and make it easy to find and search your contracts. This allows your teams, such as Legal, to concentrate on their jobs and achieve the company’s overall objectives.
Reduce The Risk of Non-Compliance
How can you be sure that your business complies with regulations if you don’t know the location of your contracts?
It’s difficult to see the whole picture when your data is scattered. This could expose your company to regulatory, financial, and reputational risk.
External auditors won’t approve your compliance efforts if you don’t have the certificates you need from suppliers.
You can create a complete picture of your company by centralizing your contracts in one repository. This will allow you to identify potential non-compliances and take corrective actions.
Final Words
A central repository is a part of a contract management system that gives your business more than just a place to store supporting documents. Contract repository software is the foundation of any mature con-tract management strategy. It can help you be more efficient, transparent, and accurate. The right solution will allow your company to stop just storing contracts. Instead, it can use them as strategic assets that will increase your business’s value.