5 Benefits of Cloud-Based Contract Management Software
Every prosperous business relationship starts with a successfully negotiated contract. The process of arriving at this point depends on the complexity of the agreement. Simply moving from a sales proposal to finally signing the contract can require multiple redlines, legal review, and involves everyone from the Account Executive to the In-House Counsel and Procurement Manager. A modern and effective way for organizations to streamline these complex legal processes is using cloud-based contract management software.
Different business units (BUs) have unique commercial, procurement, and recruiting processes. Cloud-based contract management will streamline every aspect of your current contract lifecycle management (CLM) by speeding up each phase and supporting all your BUs across the organization. With an increasingly complex governance and compliance environment, having a reliable, centralized, and controlled contracting solution in place can reduce risk and alleviate the burden on all your staff.
Cloud-based contract management software can help you navigate new concerns like GDPR, CCPA, and DPA while drafting, negotiating, and executing new SLAs, SOWs, MSAs, merger agreements, or employment contracts quickly and efficiently.
Benefits of Cloud-Based Contract Management Software
The capabilities of cloud-based software-as-a-service solutions like contract management software from Contract Logix continue to disrupt almost every industry with new products and services hitting the market daily. The days of custom-built, in-house IT applications are rapidly being replaced with more economical, secure, reliable, and out-of-the-box cloud-based offerings. This is especially true for contract management as organizations move from managing legal agreements with shared drives and spreadsheets to purpose-built and cloud-based contract management software platforms.
Here are five big benefits of adopting cloud-based contract management software in your organization.
1. Improved Collaboration Between All Stakeholders
Historically, buyers and sellers, vendors, suppliers, and contract managers have had to work together using email and shared network drives or intranet portals to share, review, and store legal agreements. Most documents traveled by email, creating never-ending correspondence that usually required a finalization meeting before the team could draft the final document.
Today, with the use of cloud-based contract management software, any edit to the agreement can trigger an electronic notification to other team members, ensuring the final draft receives all necessary feedback. In addition, all comments, redlines, and messages between parties (both internally and with third parties), can happen in real time within the software without needing to email versions of a contract back and forth. Then, once the document is ready, electronic signatures enable execution of the agreement from anywhere on any device. Cloud adoption is changing the technology landscape for finance, sales, procurement, legal, and project management with contract management being an intricate part of all these processes.
2. Deploying In-House CLM Processes Quickly
Building an effective contract lifecycle management (CLM) model can be time-consuming and resource-intensive for many organizations. Once you have the ideal CLM processes in place, it’s easy to hesitate to adopt a new cloud system where there is a possibility that your technical expertise would be lost. Organizations no longer have to fear timely implementation stages or complicated customization costs when switching to cloud-based contract management software.
You can recreate any of your existing processes in a cloud-enabled CLM system using specific and easy-to-configure workflows, role-based access, and templates that match your existing contracting models. Organizations can model complex workflows that support contract models and manage the entire lifecycle of the agreement in cloud-based contract management software.
3. Centralized Data in a Secure Repository
Giving access to the latest version of a document from a secured, centralized repository that doesn’t require a VPN to protect information means quicker responses, faster turnarounds, and greater accuracy. It’s also a much more secure and effective way to store legal agreements than shared drives or folders. A curated clause library standardizes your legal language and ensures you reduce the draft, negotiation, and approval phases.
Teams have access to all reference information in the same system from anywhere, helping you orchestrate resources from around the world. Each person or department in the process has granular access to information, ensuring you maintain compliance while controlling the disclosure of sensitive information. Since all of your contracts and contract data is stored in the repository, it can be easily searched and reported on. Cloud-based contract management software enables you to realize benefits quickly, enforce the necessary control, and collaborate effectively at every stage in the process.
4. System Integration and Scalability
Legal constraints make integration of contract management systems and financial or accounting software a key concern for organizations. Often, this leads to contract teams operating in silos and limiting access to the system from other departments. Without cloud-based software to manage your contracts, it doubles or triples the effort required to move one piece of information between systems.
Cloud-based contract management software like Contract Logix uses an API to communicate with other systems, allowing you to automate administrative tasks like populating vendor information, tracking contract progress, or alerting buyers about a looming renewal. Integration with ERPs, CRMs, and other business-critical applications allows you to scale your CLM as required and lets everyone in the company benefit from the integration features in cloud-CLM solutions.
5. Access from Anywhere and Support for Remote Work
With a cloud-based contract management software, you can provide unified access from a range of devices to all parties with predefined roles and granular permissions. In addition, the cloud reduces the IT resources required to manage business applications and with “no code” configurable cloud-based CLM systems like Contract Logix, end users can be very self-sufficient in configuring the software to their specific needs without requiring developer or third-party help.
Your team can stay up to date with all the latest developments while working from home (or anywhere) using a cloud-CLM and respond to issues on any type of device. Workers are also able to have appropriate access to agreements, check the history, add comments, and approve changes using a modern cloud SaaS CLM platform.
Implementing Cloud-Based Contract Management for Your Teams with Contract Logix
Contract Logix is data-driven cloud-based contract management software that gives you the ability to automate and streamline your processes easily, control access centrally, and collaborate daily. Teams contribute according to their roles while the draft agreements and supporting documentation continue to mature in a single, accessible, and secure repository. Once all parties agree, electronic signatures complete the pre-execution phase of the lifecycle.
All subsequent legally binding correspondence, supporting documents, and any records related to contracts can help assess the performance of vendors and suppliers. You can evaluate your internal resources while the data will highlight any deficiencies in your processes. Workflows enforce consistency while analytics provide you with valuable insights that you can use to find greater efficiencies in your new CLM platform.
Cloud-based contract management software is reshaping the commercial, procurement, and employment processes around the world. To learn more, contact Contract Logix.