5 Tips to Streamline Your Contract Management Processes

In a world that everything was due yesterday, you need to take advantage of every single opportunity to make your contract lifecycle more efficient.

We can take a cue from some of the most successful and busiest business executives in the world. Here is a collection of the top 5 tips to streamline your contract management processes.

1. Limit How Many Times You Check Email

Business author and entrepreneur, Tim Ferriss recommends that your email be checked only twice per day. Studies show that we spend about 28% of our workweek checking, reading, and answering emails. This amounts to about 650 hours per year! Email can be a major time-sucker so that is why you need to limit how much time you spend on it. By following Ferriss advice you could decrease your weekly hours spent on email from 14 to 5. A great way to achieve this is through the use of automated email alerts through your contract management system.

2. Protect Your Golden Hours

Many managers boast about their open door policies. However, too much of a good thing is never a good idea. You need to block those times at which you are at your top level of performance so that you can tackle the biggest and hairiest tasks of the day. Consultant Tom Searcy provides a great tutorial on how to pick and protect your top 2 hours.

Also, take a cue from one of the youngest persons to become a billionaire, Dustin Moskowitz. With a net worth of over $6 billion, Dustin Moskowitz knows a thing or two about savvy business decisions. He believes that one of his best lessons in management is having “No Meeting Wednesdays“. The idea is to empower yourself and your employees to have a day in which you can fully dedicate to your tasks without interruptions.

3. Run Better Meetings

This is one of the most controversial topics and business executives have plenty to say. Here are some of the top pieces of advice:

  • Google Founder Larry Page demands that every meeting needs to have a decision maker. If there is no decision maker, no meeting is needed.
  • Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg keeps a strict agenda of action items. If you can cover an hour-long meeting in 10 minutes, finish the meeting.
  • Apple’s Steve Jobs kept meeting as small possible. His rule: “small groups of smart people“.
  • Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman makes time for one-on-one meetings. By investing the time in meeting with one of his direct reports every week, he believes that he has lower employee turnover and he can prevent issues from escalating.
  • Author of “Less Doing, More Living”, Ari Meisel recommends the use of calendar sharing tools, such as ScheduleOnce, to set up meetings.

 4. Use E-Signatures to Execute Documents Faster

Here is an usual scenario: a group of 150 managers and consultants across 64 locations and a call center needed to process document signatures faster. The Project Manager of Special Events at Dave & Buster’s was facing this challenge and opted to use e-signature technologies to streamline contract management processes. By skipping the paper-and-snail-mail process, the Dave & Buster’s group accelerated speed of payment and saved personnel 20 minutes of manual processes per contract.

Paired with contract management software, an e-signature feature is a powerful combination for paperless contract execution. When evaluating a system, look for one that has full integration with platforms and software, such as EchoSign, Docusign, and Sertifi.

5. Delegate More Often

An “I-have-to-do-everything-myself” attitude is not only chaining you to your desk, but also hurting your bottom line. One of the busiest CEO in history, Jeff Bezos, is well known to delegate tasks at the speed of email with a simple question mark. Take a cue from Amazon and start delegating tasks to people that are the closest to the issue at hand. Not only will that cut down your operational costs, but also build the confidence of your subordinates. They will appreciate the vote of confidence in that they are able to handle a situation.

Takeaway

You can streamline your contract management processes by checking email only twice a day, blocking your most productive hours, running meetings more efficiently and effectively, using e-sigantures to cut down on operational costs, and delegating tasks more often.