3 Benefits of a Contract Management System

Your CEO drops by your office to celebrate a surge in clients, company hires and external partnerships. You’re elated about the company’s growth, but begin to feel the impact of what this means for you and your team. At this rate, business is moving faster than you can keep up.

Tasked with the enormous job of creating an error-free, rapidly evolving, and seamless contract management system for your organization, you don’t know where to start. It’s important to understand the benefits of a contract management system (CMS) to help you evaluate which software best addresses your organization’s needs.

Contract management is a crucial skill used to maximize contract terms and deepen business relationships as you mitigate risks, optimize your financials and improve organizational efficiency. Sometimes called contract lifecycle management (CLM), contract management helps facilitate and manage the drawing up and execution of new contracts, such as Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs), Service Level Agreements (SLAs) and Procurement Master Agreements.

Now, before hopping onto Google to search for contract management options, ask yourself: “What are the stickiest issues my organization faces?” “Where could we be doing better?” “Which part of the process will help my organization reach its goals?”

Once you’ve answered these questions, here are three ways a contract management system can benefit your organization:

Find a contract management system that provides contract compliance. Most modern contract management systems offer a visible audit trail and strict compliance monitoring.

An efficient contract management system also automates supplier contract review to identify potential high-risk policy or regulation violations. In terms of data security, ensure your contracts are encrypted and permission-based so they get into the right hands. A CMS finds the points of friction early so you can avoid costly issues down the road.

Decrease discretionary spending, overhead costs, and communication snafus through automated time-saving CMS tools.

Modern contracting systems have customizable and automated workflows to expedite contract execution. Workflows can help increase contract visibility through a centralized single-truth source to ensure your team is working on the most up-to-date contract.

When you deploy a thoughtful contract workflow, you instantly gain control over all your contracts and templates — from creation, approvals and management to archiving. This will help you save time and you guessed it, money.

Become more efficient and work faster through seamless document management.

Contract management systems help create and store standardized contract language and templates. You can also sync with your favorite apps like Salesforce, Dropbox, Box, and Google Drive to create a frictionless integration. Get all teams up-to-speed to simplify contract execution — because as we know, more than just the legal team are involved in contracts.

Pick a CMS that works specifically for your organization so that you can rake in the high-yield benefits of a contract management system. Not all CMS’ are created equal nor will they help you solve your problems. Our Evaluating Contract Management manual can help guide your decision-making.