In the dynamic business landscape of today, contract tracking software has emerged as a vital tool for organizations aiming to streamline their operations and maximize performance. As businesses increasingly recognize the importance of efficient contract management, statistics and data reinforce the significance of adopting contract tracking software. According to a recent industry report, inefficient contract management practices can cost businesses up to 9% of their annual revenue.
Furthermore, a survey conducted among companies utilizing contract tracking software revealed a 30% reduction in contract cycle times and a 20% increase in contract compliance rates. These compelling figures underscore the value of contract tracking software in driving productivity, mitigating risks, and optimizing business outcomes.
Are you looking to enhance your contract management process, but uncertain about the steps to take? How can you identify the ideal tool or software solution to efficiently organize your contracts and agreements, tailored to your specific business requirements?
In this blog, we will delve deeper into the reasons why contract tracking software is essential for modern organizations and explore its potential to revolutionize contract management processes.
Why contracts should be tracked?
The contract lifecycle extends well beyond the initial creation and signing stages. Contracts and agreements undergo a series of steps, making it crucial to have visibility into their status for successful project completion and initiatives. Tracking contracts enable you to identify the necessary tasks to progress an agreement and determine the responsible parties involved.
By utilizing software that securely stores contracts and their associated workflows, you can effortlessly monitor upcoming renewals and impending expirations. Furthermore, analyzing the details of your contract workflows provides valuable data to enhance future agreements. In fact, studies indicate that businesses that leverage contract data for future agreements witness a 10-20% improvement in contract cycle time. Therefore, you can identify bottlenecks in the process, understand the causes of delays, and implement improvements for subsequent contracts.
How Office 365 and SharePoint integrated software can play an important role?
Office 365 and SharePoint are powerful tools that can be used to create a comprehensive contract tracking system for modern organizations. With Office 365, organizations can store all their contracts in a central location, track their status, and manage their approval process. SharePoint provides several features that make it ideal for contract tracking, such as the ability to create custom lists and libraries, set permissions, and automate workflows.
According to a recent study by IDC, organizations that use Office 365 and SharePoint for contract management can save an average of 15% on their contract costs. They can also improve their contract compliance by up to 25%.
Related Article: 10 Reasons To Choose Contract Management Software On Office 365 Sharepoint
Here are some specific examples of how ConvergePoint software integrated with Office 365 and SharePoint can be used for contract tracking:
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Store all your contracts in a central location:
Office 365's document library feature makes it easy to store all your contracts in a single location. This makes it easy to find and access contracts when you need them.
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Track the status of your contracts:
SharePoint's list feature can be used to track the status of your contracts. This includes information such as the contract start date, end date, and approval status.
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Manage your approval process:
SharePoint's workflow feature can be used to automate your contract approval process. This can save you time and ensure that contracts are approved in a timely manner.
Related Article: 3 Ways To Speed Up Contract Approvals
If you are looking for a way to improve your contract management process, Office 365 and SharePoint are great options. One such software that can help you save time, and money, and improve your compliance is ConvergePoint software.
What key features should contract tracking software have?
Centralized storage
Contracts can be scattered across various platforms, including email, cloud storage, local file storage, and physical file cabinets. To ensure quick and effortless access for your legal team, it is vital to have tracking software that provides centralized storage. By consolidating all contracts and related documents such as scopes of work, cost estimates, proposals, and more in one accessible location, you can streamline your contract management process.
A dynamic contract repository goes beyond being a mere document library. It should also extract valuable metadata from each contract or document within the repository, simplifying the identification process.
With ConvergePoint software, our centralized repository significantly reduces the time spent searching for contracts to mere seconds. Furthermore, it empowers non-legal team members to find answers to their questions swiftly, eliminating the need to constantly rely on your contract professionals.
Real-time redlining
Redlining plays a crucial role in the contract management process, but if it takes too long, it can hinder important initiatives until negotiations are completed. To ensure a smooth and efficient process, it is essential for your contract tracking software to possess a seamless and real-time redlining function. By utilizing such a feature, you can accelerate the process and avoid compatibility issues that arise when using separate redline editors. This way, all stakeholders can access and modify the contract within the same software, eliminating any delays or confusion.
ConvergePoint software simplifies the task of contract redlining. It offers a user-friendly interface, seamless integration with common business tools, comprehensive tracking of every change, real-time updates visible to all contract viewers, the ability to tag colleagues in comments or changes, and many other advantageous features.
Reporting and analytics
Within your contract repository, you possess a wealth of valuable information that not only aids in locating contracts but also enables you to enhance your contract management procedures. However, to extract meaningful insights from this vast data, it is crucial that your digital contracting software offers comprehensive reporting and visualization features.
By utilizing the ConvergePoint Repository to store your contracts, agreements, and associated documents, you gain the ability to effortlessly export reports to Excel. Our software also provides insightful contract analytics, allowing you to track essential workflows and assess the time it takes to complete contracts. With these features, you can gain valuable visibility into your contract management processes and make informed decisions based on accurate data.
Advanced search options
Contracts and agreements contain crucial identifying details, including the counterparty's name, the requester from your organization, effective dates, and various other information. It is imperative for your Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) software to provide you with the capability to search your contract repository using any of these fields and apply filters to refine your search results effectively.
With ConvergePoint, you have enhanced flexibility in searching through your contract workflows. You can easily locate all the documents assigned to you, as well as filter for active and completed workflows. Additionally, our software allows you to apply additional filters to your search, enabling you to obtain more comprehensive and precise results. This advanced search functionality ensures that you can efficiently navigate your contract repository and locate the specific contracts and agreements you need.
Related Article: Contract Management: Advanced Search and Reporting
Role-based access
Ensuring that contract access is appropriately assigned and restricted based on individual needs is crucial. It is important to prevent unauthorized individuals from generating and sending out agreements. However, without Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) software that supports role-based access, your organization may encounter challenges where business users are compelled to email the Legal department whenever they require contract generation. Alternatively, providing unrestricted access to contract generation for business users and involving Legal only at the final stages can significantly impede the contract lifecycle.
To address these issues, your digital contract software should offer the functionality to establish user permissions based on various factors such as roles, departments, contract types, or other relevant criteria. It is essential to prevent scenarios where the sales team can access HR contracts, or vice versa. Hence, you need software that allows you to define specific parameters and assign access permissions accordingly, based on departmental distinctions. By employing such software, you can streamline the contract management process, maintain proper authorization controls, and ensure efficient collaboration between different stakeholders.
Conclusion
Organizations rely on a robust contract tracking system to optimize their contract management, mitigate risks, and maintain compliance. Organizations can enhance efficiency, minimize mistakes, and maximize the value derived from their contracts by comprehending the fundamental elements, choosing suitable software, and adhering to best practices.
To achieve optimal outcomes, the implementation of a contract tracking system necessitates meticulous planning, comprehensive training, and continual enhancements. The ideal contract software tool seamlessly integrates with your organization's unique contracting process. Don't hesitate to request a demo today to witness how ConvergePoint can cater to your specific requirements.