Business went digital, contracts didn’t.
Over the past 15 years, business underwent a digital transformation. Sales got CRM. Procurement got cloud ERP. Teams got Slack, Zoom and collaborative docs. As a result, the pace of business is faster than ever.
But contracts haven’t kept up. They’re still slow, disjointed, and inscrutable — causing friction for businesses that need agility more than ever.
Why were contracts left behind?
Contracts have proven hard to digitize. Here’s why.
- Contracts vary, a lot. Software works well on deterministic problems; contracts have a ton of variation. It’s a challenge to capture all those variations in a single system.
- Contracts are multiplayer. Contracts are the product of complex collaboration between stakeholders across the organization. It’s a challenge getting all these people to use the same tool.
- Contracts are hard to understand. Contracts can be inscrutable to humans and computers alike — we need legal professionals to interpret them. Digitization is constrained by the amount of time these professionals can spare.
The false promise of CLM
Since the 2000s, legacy contract lifecycle management (CLM) tools have promised faster, more efficient contracting. But all have failed to deliver value. They’re time-consuming to implement, difficult to use, disconnected from systems and people, and unable to manage a variety of contract types. Why? They address the symptom of analog contracting — not the underlying challenge.
The power of Digital Contracting
Digital Contracting empowers businesses to achieve mission-critical goals. It unlocks operational efficiency, streamlines cross-functional collaboration, and minimizes risks with its core features:
Every contract, every process
Digital Contracting supports all types of contracts, from sales to procurement to marketing and HR. But it goes far beyond what’s in the contract — Digital Contracting also facilitates every process required for contract generation, negotiation, approval, signature and storage.
Agile and adaptable
Business moves fast. New contracts and processes need to be launched and updated in minutes, not months. Digital Contracting enables agile, adaptable support for contracting across the business. Ironclad’s no-code Workflow Designer makes it easy for any team to design and deploy automated approvals and business processes.
Learn more about Workflow Designer ➙
Broadly collaborative
Scattered emails and communications are major blockers in our increasingly interconnected world. Decisions involving multiple stakeholders need to be made quickly and with the latest shared information. Our Digital Contracting Platform makes collaboration and negotiation frictionless and productive.
Learn more about Editor and Collaboration ➙
Searchable and reportable
What nonstandard terms did we agree to with the client? Which of my vendor contracts renew next month? Digital Contracting enables businesses to not just store, but unlock the critical business intelligence that lives within contracts. With our centralized, searchable Dynamic Repository, teams can answer questions about their agreements in seconds.
Learn more about Dynamic Repository ➙
Designed for the modern user
The era of clunky, hard-to-use contracting software is behind us. Modern users across the business demand consumer-grade UI and UX — otherwise the software just won’t get used. Digital Contracting offers simple and intuitive experiences at every touchpoint for business users and administrators alike.
Integrated across the business
Contracts touch every part of the business. Digital Contracting enables deep integration with systems of record in sales, procurement, finance, cloud storage, eSignature and more.
Learn more about our integrations ➙
