Digital Contracting in Business: See the Potential

Modern software empowers your business to streamline business contracting.

Contracts are the lifeblood of a successful business. This is true across every department, whether HR, Legal, or Sales. Contracts make deals and generate revenue. But contracting in business is often bogged down by inefficient processes or time-consuming negotiations. Advancements in contracting software make it easier to execute contracts, reduce negotiation, and streamline the contract acceptance process.

Effective contract management software lets you easily track, use, and modify business contracts and focus on revenue generation. You can automate contracts and simplify contract execution at every stage.

Businesses enter into many contracts every year. These contracts bind users or other businesses to terms and define the rights and obligations between the contracting parties. Common business contracts may include, but are not limited to:

• Sales contracts
• Vendor agreements
• User agreements
• Master service agreements
• Terms and conditions
• Employment contracts
• Nondisclosure agreements

This wide variety of agreements requires an effective contract lifecycle management system to slash contract turnaround time. A system that automates contracts can dramatically reduce the time it takes to win acceptance—sometimes from weeks to minutes. Contracting in business does not have to be time-consuming and cumbersome anymore.

Digital contracting refers to cloud-based contract management that can streamline contract creation and management. It allows a business to digitize every stage of contract management. It also empowers your business with tools like:

• A platform to streamline negotiations
• Automated contract generation through templatable workflows
• Multiple signing options, including clickwrap agreements
• A digital repository for storing contracts and metadata
• Workflow and communication alerts
• Artificial intelligence to automate repetitive tasks

Digital contracting tools far outstrip the capabilities of legacy CLM platforms. Business contracting requires the latest technology and a system built to handle high-volume contract management needs. The right digital contracting software boosts Legal’s business agility while minimizing risks by optimizing operational efficiency.

Benefits of digital contracts for business contracting

Digital contracts offer several benefits to increase your business’ contracting effectiveness.

• Enhanced team collaboration: Digital contracting breaks down communication barriers between your business, departments, and counterparties. Effective software has a centralized storage hub to share information with other departments. It even permits you to draft, manage, and execute contracts within a single system.
• Increased automation of contract processes: Contract processes have a reputation for being slow and wasteful. They often require a lot of employee action that isn’t really needed with today’s technology. Digital contracting and workflow design lets you build and launch contract generation and approval processes in minutes. You can even create contracts from templatable workflows instead of from scratch each time.

• Actionable data metrics: Digital contracting gives you actionable insights through process metrics reporting. It lets your business track key data points like the number of contracts launched per month, how long it takes to complete certain types of contracts, and what tasks delay contract acceptance.

Executing an agreement is an essential part of business contracting. After all of your business’s hard work negotiating, it is time to get the contract signed and fulfilled. Until the contract is signed and implemented, your business does not gain the full benefits of the transaction. Executed contracts generate revenue, new business, and so much more.

This is often nerve-wracking. One misstep could lose a deal worth millions, and errors could cause costly legal battles and lost business. Sophisticated contract management processes can make executing a contract easier by automating processes and providing effective signature methods to get the job done.

Digital contracting software provides other tools that can streamline how you do business. You want to focus on creating new relationships, making more sales, and engaging more customers—not waste time with ineffective contract management.

Create self-service contracts

A self-service contract utilizes workflows that let your departments negotiate and execute contracts without taking up Legal’s time. Self-service contracts are especially helpful for high-volume, low-value standardized contracts. Automated workflows within digital contracts allow you to create legally binding agreements without extensive efforts by the legal team.

Form contracts can use flagged fields that allow you to modify contract terms or party information easily. Self-service contracts limit these modifications to keep contracting simple and effective.

Utilize artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence coupled with deep knowledge of legal workflows gives you a suite of smart CLM capabilities. This AI works right out of the box, without the need for years of “training” other AIs need before returning on the investment.

The AI can focus on key touchpoints to minimize busy work. This creates a seamless experience that significantly reduces the time it takes to execute and approve contracts. The technology can even assist with classifying contracts and identifying key data points within those documents.

Use an editor to increase collaboration

The days of emailing different contract versions back and forth can finally end. You can use editing software to collaborate and negotiate in one place. It allows you to redline and revise the document without forcing counterparties to do the same. You comment on, edit, and track changes in DOCX files, all while staying connected to colleagues within your business.

You can easily loop in others with @mentions and internal comments to streamline the editing process further. This ease of communication is key to reducing contract turnaround time to drive revenue. Instead of wasting employee time on tasks that a computer can perform, your workers can focus on revenue-generating activities instead.

You are no longer limited to the systems of the past. There are advanced options with countless benefits for your business contracting processes. You can streamline contract acceptance through advanced data metrics, effective signature methods like clickwrap, and artificial intelligence. You can even access key data from the centralized repository to make informed choices about improving your contracting and increasing revenue.