7 Benefits of a Digital Contract Management System
To learn more, read our whitepaper on the Top 10 Contract Management Best Practices.
What Are the Benefits of a Digital Contract Management System?
In this article, we will focus on 7 benefits of a digital contract management system.
- Shorten Approval Times
- Increase Contract Visibility
- Improve Audit Preparation
- Never Miss a Renewal Date
- Ensure Contract Compliance
- Improve Document Management
- Improve Commitment to Completion
1. Shorten Approval Times
Contract management software is designed to completely automate your contract process. Customizable automated workflows expedite the review process and increase efficiency. By creating a dynamic workflow to-do list, you can quickly scan all contracts to have a better idea of the current state of affairs at your company. Based on this information, you can notify responsible parties via email to remind them about next steps or define escalation procedures.
2. Increase Contract Visibility
Unlike paper-based contract management systems, storing all files in one centralized, digital repository allows for optimum compliance and extensive reporting. By centralizing the contract repository, you can make sure your staff is working from the most up-to-date contract templates and using the latest clauses. Additionally, you can empower your mobile workforce by granting them access to the platform through a password-protected website. That way all the latest contract templates and clauses are available to all authorized staff members at any time from anywhere.
3. Improve Audit Preparation
Digital contract management software should offer a centralized portal with features such as audit trails that provide access to your entire contract history with the click of a mouse. Your business can maintain accurate contract history for auditing and keep a full audit trail for Sarbanes-Oxley or internal policy compliance.
4. Never Miss a Renewal Date
By archiving contracts automatically upon expiration and using alert notifications based on the rules you specify, you can increase renewal awareness. Contract renewal is the lowest hanging fruit for an organization, yet often the most missed opportunity. With contract management software, you can configure alarms using default settings or custom settings such as recurrence. These alarms will not reset until the next milestone has been reached by the assigned team member so you can be sure that action is being taken towards the renewal date.
5. Ensure Contract Compliance
A streamlined business process provides contract accountability. From request to approval, every contract is held to compliance standards. Contract management software such as our Express and Premium products work with Microsoft Word natively, so tracked changes by user and version control is done for you. This ensures no critical terms are deleted and that the right people have edited the document accordingly, giving you the control you need over your contracts.
6. Improve Document Management
No more outsourced document storage or messy filing cabinets! Employees can scan paper documents directly into the system using automatic image or optical character recognition (OCR) so that all documentation relevant to the agreement is available from a single location. Additionally, you can import electronic contracts from any type and display document status and other relevant details for each one of them. Plus, features such as version control allow your organization to keep better track of all contracts from a single platform.
7. Improve Commitment to Completion
Using authoring, review and approval phases with the systematic approach from our contract management automation, you will increase the contract lifecycle completion rate. Also offered is the ability to capture signatures on the go using electronic signatures. Now, there is no time wasted on getting that final sign-off – just sign the agreement electronically and you’re done, no paper involved.
Takeaway
Digital contract management is an essential part of any organization, yet many companies continue to operate with outdated, cumbersome paper-based contract management or a subpar digital version. These 7 contract lifecycle management benefits help explain why you need to make the leap towards better, more systematic and automated contract management.
