Unlocking the Contract Management Lifecycle

The contract management lifecycle may hold the key for increased efficiencies in your business. By understanding this cycle, you have the potential to optimize this crucial piece of the sales and business process.

Contract administration and management processes create data — and evaluating that data can lead to a better understanding of your business’ contract management lifecycle, from creation and authoring through the final audit and report. Contract management lifecycle evaluation enables a company to prevent unnecessary losses and avoid legal and financial risks.

From inception to completion, the contract management lifecycle typically contains three key areas of focus — contract creation, negotiation and approval, and post-approval execution and contract administration. Within these areas of focus are nine steps to the lifecycle:

• Request for contract
• Authoring
• Negotiation and redlining
• Approval
• Execution of the contract
• Obligations management
• Amendments and modifications
• Auditing and contract reporting
• Contract renewal

Each stage of the contract management lifecycle offers an opportunity to evaluate and optimize the process. For example, key stakeholders can reduce redundancies in the authoring process with a centralized repository for all contributors to view a shared, secure, working contract.

Organized, visible contracts. Because Ironclad’s Dynamic Repository houses contracts in one accessible location, team members can easily search and find real-time contracts without digging through email chains. Eliminate the input of redundant information and take control of versioned contracts. Our contract management software is designed for collaboration.

Workflows and accessible templates. Ironclad’s Workflow Designer enables companies to create easy-to-use templates with powerful conditionality. By standardizing the contract authoring process, team members outside of Legal can easily dive into the process. Access self-servicing contracting for business users with conditionality that supports any type of contract.

Streamlined negotiations. This stage of the contract management lifecycle is where contract cycles may start to lengthen. Contract management solutions like Ironclad bring all team members to the same document, reducing the need for multi-version documents saved in different locations. Reduce time spent redlining in negotiations with a simplified process where all team members and stakeholders revise and view the same living document.

Automate processes. From approval to amendments to the contract, receive automatic updates when stakeholders approve or amend a contract, or when specific milestones are reached through the obligations and execution of the contract.

Reporting made easy. Contract management software like Ironclad enables business leaders to evaluate and report on the contract management lifecycle to find efficiencies, remove roadblocks and improve the contract process.

Ready for greater efficiency and streamlined processes through the contract management lifecycle? Ironclad provides users with key reporting functions, a dynamic repository and automation to optimize the contract management lifecycle. Learn more about our user-friendly contracting solution by asking for a demo.

Finally, explore the history of Contracting Lifecycle Management here.