Each contract your business has – including customer contracts still in negotiation – will impact the bottom line. In certain sectors, contracts can make up 90% of the value of the business. However, many companies do not manage their contracts in a way that they can capture their full value.

Think about how our business manages its contracts? What are we doing to maximize value throughout the contract lifecycle? Are you strategically using your contracts? Do we know the exact location of our contracts and what stage they are in their existence? Most likely, the answers to these questions inevitably conclude that your contract management system is not working.

Even the contract lifecycle management system is excellent, and you’re, in fact, managing contracts instead of just storing them. There are indications that your system may require some improvement, and investing in more efficient systems like ContractSafe online contract management software is essential, particularly when any of these issues seem familiar.

Here are the top signs that you should adopt an effective contract management solution.

You’ve Missed a Key Renewal

It could significantly impact your business, especially in the case of renewal with a major supplier. You may have a contract with an auto-renew provision, and if you don’t keep a close eye at the time, you don’t have the opportunity to cancel the contract or negotiate.

A key contract may have been cancelled, which leaves you vulnerable to the risk for business arising from it not being in force. It’s simple to have this occur when businesses don’t have a centralized method to manage contracts.

If you’re managing contracts with spreadsheets, email accounts or Sharepoint, or even filing cabinets, you’re exposing your company to risks.

The Contracting Process Can Take Forever

When it comes to drafting agreements, are you an organization slower than molasses in winter? Do you find that requesting even a basic contract, such as an NDA, takes several weeks or more? In the same way, making sure that the contract is in order and that all required departments have ratified the terms and language is essential; you do not necessarily have much patience to sit around waiting.

It is possible that you need to sign an NDA with a prospective customer or investor, for instance, but if you are required to wait for ten business days to get it, you might miss out on the chance. Implementing a platform for contract management with self-service contracting using an intuitive wizard interview and templates can speed the process. It also ensures that contracts are secure, compliant and supervised through your legal department.

Not Enough Time to Sign Papers

Signing contracts with ink was the norm for signing contracts. If you’re still wasting time mailing, printing and other manual processes associated with outdated practices for signing and procedures, you’re wasting resources and slowing contracting processes.

In addition, the delays that come from manually signing contracts can create additional risks in the contracting process since delays and stalls could increase the chances that an agreement is never signed. Electronic signatures, on the contrary, can be as legally binding as contracts written in ink. Because they permit contracts to be signed instantly and executed instantly, they lower the risk of delays and allow your company to reap the benefits of its contracts faster.

 

There Are Mistakes During the contracting Process

When you’re contracting, there’s an absence of room to make mistakes, but it’s common. In the event that contracts can be shared through email or on shared drives, it is easy for mistakes to be made. Imagine that you download the incorrect draft of the contract and edit it before transmitting it to the recipient – only to discover you’ve made a mistake and have to start over.

This is not just costly but also raises the risk of faulty contracts that can be costly for your business. A contract management software ensures that everyone is working with the same document version and that all modifications and redlines are recorded to ensure a complete and current audit trail.

You Are Not Privy to Your Contracts.

Do you completely understand the risks your contracts pose to your business? Are you able to identify the contracts that contain specific clauses or clauses? Most of the time, looking over contracts for specific details can take weeks or even months of manual effort, during which your legal staff looks at each contract to determine the needed details.

It is expensive as well as time-consuming and susceptible to mistakes and omissions. With a contract management system incorporating AI-driven insight, you can quickly analyse your contracts and gather essential data in just a few clicks, allowing you to gain the most significant worth out of your contract.

You’re Bombarded with Requests for Contact Information

While centralizing the administration of contracts and storage could help enhance efficiency, this strategy can lead to bottlenecks if your team has to be the primary gatekeeper to the company’s contracts. Suppose all requests related to contracts from all departments and teams have to be handled by the contract management group.

In that case, your work might be primarily focused on meeting everyone else’s needs instead of paying attention to the demands of your job. One way to streamline the contract administration is to make certain elements self-serve by creating digitally-stored contracts and setting user access rights. This ensures that employees can get the exact contract or forms of contracts they require without the need to contact contracts management.