How to Make Your Contract Request and Submission Process Easy and Efficient
By Justin Perkins
John needs a contract but he’s not all that familiar with your organization’s contract management process, so what does he do? He sends an email, he picks up the phone, and he runs around the office looking for the people he needs to help him. Unfortunately, John doesn’t know all the information required for the contract request to be properly submitted which results in more running around and in the end a lot of confusion and wasted time. He finally gets all the correct information together but now must sit and wait without any idea what is going on with his request. Has it been received? Where is it in the process? How long will it take?
Does this situation sound familiar? I’m sure a lot of us have been on at least one side of this scenario before making it a story we can all easily relate to and appreciate. Rather than allowing poor John to waste his valuable time (and ours), what if we could instead streamline this entire process, making it more intuitive, easy, accurate, automated, and efficient?
Read our eBook What is Contract Management Software to learn more.
That’s where contract management software and Contract Logix’s concept of a requestor/submitter user comes into play. Our contract management platform offers your colleagues like John a simple method to begin the process of asking for either a brand-new agreement or submitting third-party paper for review. It allows a business to decide what information must always be provided by these individuals upfront and captured by the system via an online intake form, all before a request or submission can ever be formally initiated.
This means you know all the key details about contract requests so you can provide timely and accurate responses to questions like “when will my contract be ready” or “who is working on my contract.” It also eliminates the need for whoever is managing the contract to have to circle back with requests for additional information which saves time. These request/submitter users will now have constant insight into the stage and status of their individual requests through the entire approval and review process. They don’t need to make any phone calls or send any emails. They can simply pull up their request in the contract management software and see where it stands and when it will be complete.
By also leveraging our business process management tools, these requests are correctly routed to the specific reviewer, legal staff, or approvers based on your criteria driven processes. This means that there won’t be any guesswork about who is responsible for which submission because the second a new request comes into the system it gets routed into the hands of the correct party to review and push forward.
Takeaway
With contract management software, the days of John running around and making things more difficult for the team are over. Instead, he simply logs into an intelligent contract management platform, sees exactly what information he must provide to request or submit a contract, and begins the process. He also has the full ability to track and report on every request he has raised via the Contract Logix system.
This allows you to easily manage the queue of contract requests and know which items are outstanding or pending as an organization. Not only is this more efficient and self-service, it helps with prioritization as you will have all the key details you need to know about each request at your fingertips. The result is a more streamlined process that’s faster and easier for everyone involved.
About the Author
Justin Perkins is a Solutions Engineer with Contract Logix. For the past 3 years, he’s worked with hundreds of customers to help them find the right CLM solution to digitize their contract lifecycle management processes. In addition to helping people solve their CLM pain points, Justin is huge fan of going to see the next big movie in theaters or just spending time experimenting with cooking meals for families and friends at home.
Skills/Knowledge: Contract Lifecycle Management, Salesforce Administration, NetSuite Administration, CRM, ERP, E-Commerce.