Major and Minor Benefits of a Contract Management System

If you’re having difficulty staying on top of contracts, consider using a contract lifecycle management (CLM) platform. CLMs are software applications that enable you to get the most out of your company’s contract management process. They help companies monitor, edit, execute, and manage contracts. A good CLM can help you maximize operational and financial performance while minimizing risks.‌

Without a contract management system, you will find it very challenging to manage your contracts, particularly if you’re managing a mid to large-sized company that has thousands of active contracts in effect at any given time. If you have a large number of contracts to manage, manual approaches and spreadsheets can be limiting. On the other hand, a CLM can provide you with essential functions such as a searchable data repository, a Workflow Designer, and contract reminders.

Ironclad is a CLM with all of these functions and more. Built for in-house legal teams, Ironclad allows you to boost business agility with its intuitive no-code Workflow Designer, DOCX native platform, Dynamic Data Repository, and more.

Read on to learn more about how high-quality CLM like Ironclad provide a variety of benefits that can transform your business.

1. Reduce risk

Most modern CLMs providers offer strict compliance monitoring and a visible audit trail. They do this by allowing you to quickly locate important contract information and set automated reminders to make sure all deadlines are met on time.

Put your contract metadata to work

With tools such as searchable data repositories and workflow designers, CLM software allows companies to quickly locate important contract information such as due dates for signatures, deadlines for filing or responding to lawsuits, and clauses that need to be updated.

Without a CLM, it would be much more difficult to find this information. Since contracts often end up in many different locations, it’s not uncommon for information to get lost. This can lead to delays, miscommunication, and even lawsuits.

With a CLM like Ironclad, you will be able to place all of your contracts in a centralized digital hub that you can make accessible to anyone who needs access. Known as the Dynamic Data Repository, our searchable centralized hub makes the process of locating important contract metadata faster than ever.‌

With Ironclad’s Dynamic Repository’s advanced search functions, you’ll be able to find the contract you’ve been looking for and see what it contains without having to read a word of legal jargon. You’ll even be able to build reports that give you a better understanding of your organization’s contract data as a whole.

Set automated reminders to save money and prevent revenue leakage

With so many active contracts, it can be challenging to stay on top of deadlines. Fortunately, CLM platforms give you the ability to set automated deadline reminders based on contract information.

Using Ironclad’s Dynamic Data Repository, you can send weekly automated emails or SMS alerts to remind essential parties to review contracts. This will help you improve efficiency while breaking down the barriers between your team members and your contracts.‌

2. Ensure compliance

A CLM will also allow you to hold every contract to compliance standards.

For example, Ironclad runs on a platform where you can comment on, track, accept, and reject changes by all stakeholders. This function makes editing and collaborating much simpler. It also ensures that everyone gets to edit and approve the most recent copy of the document since everything is done in real-time.

Ironclad’s Workflow Designer will also help you make sure contracts comply with legal requirements and organizational policies. Equipped with approval routing and guardrails on clauses, Workflow Designer ensures compliance without manual review.

3. Encourage collaboration

Another key feature that most modern CLM provide is a platform for real-time collaboration between different parties. This helps to ensure that everyone involved in the contract is on the same page about what needs to be done before the contract can be executed.‌

While most CLM providers limit users to a choice between desktop plugins and basic in-browser editing like Google Docs, Ironclad Editor provides a DOCX native platform. This means there’s no need for converting your contracts to Google Docs or another format to work in real-time. Just upload your DOCX files onto Ironclad to start collaborating.

Our platform also comes with @mentions and internal comments, which you can use to loop in colleagues with just a few clicks. Without a quality CLM, you would have to do the following to get a colleague’s opinion on a contract:

• Save your contract in Microsoft Word
• Attach it to an email to your colleague
• Wait for their response‌

Not only is this method inefficient, but it’s also prone to error:

• You can easily forget to include a colleague’s email address, particularly if you have to email a long list of people
• You can accidentally email your colleagues an older version of the contract
• Your colleagues can fall behind on their emails and confuse an older version of the contract with the most recent version

4. Gain Efficiency

CLM software is specifically designed to increase the contract lifecycle completion rate. By providing tools like templates, workflows, and AI-powered automation, a CLM will kickstart your contract writing process and help you meet deadlines with ease. You’ll also be able to save time you would have otherwise spent writing clauses from scratch.

Scale using Workflow Designer

Most modern CLM platforms have automated and customizable workflow designers that you can use to scale your business. Ironclad is no exception — we have a powerful Workflow Designer that you can use to:

• Build and customize contracts in minutes
• Craft workflows without the need for manual review
• Enable departments and employees with special expertise to take active roles in managing contracts. This reduces or eliminates the need to train other employees in contract management.
• Create and modify templates for all types of contracts
• Ship updates instantly

A self-serve tool with a simple drag-and-drop user interface, Ironclad’s Workflow Designer is perfect for setting up contract workflows. With a couple of clicks, you can create a contract by uploading a template, tagging fields as needed, and adding signers and approvers — no coding required.

Stop wasting time on manual tasks

Ironclad is powered by the world’s most powerful AI technology, Google Cloud AI. As the only CLMs to partner with Google Cloud AI, Ironclad has powerful automatic contracting features. 

Our AI can help with the most manual tasks that come with any type of business contract, allowing you to attend to tasks that require your expertise. 

Now that we’ve covered the major benefits of using a CLM, let’s take a look at some of the minor benefits of deploying contracts with a CLM. While these are not as game-changing as the major benefits covered above, these benefits can still make your day-to-day work as a contract manager or in-house counsel much easier.

‌1. Digitize contracts for storage and security purposes

While it’s true that there are many ways to digitize contracts for storage and security purposes, using a CLM to store all of your contracts on a centralized hub will keep them safe and secure.

‌2. Assess contracts on an ongoing basis

By digitizing your contracts and storing them on a CLM database, such as Ironclad’s Dynamic Data Repository, you’ll be able to review your contracts at any time. Simply start Ironclad and type keywords or key dates to locate the contract and contract data you need. Ironclad automatically extracts contract metadata for you, so you won’t have to rely on overworked employees to extract and share it.

Ironclad is a premier CLM for maximizing financial performance. Built to reduce risks, it provides major benefits such as ensuring compliance, encouraging collaboration, and boosting efficiency. Additionally, Ironclad provides minor benefits such as helping you digitize contracts for storage and security while also letting you assess contracts on an ongoing basis.

If you’re interested in trying Ironclad out, you can request a trial here.