5 Ways Automated Contract Workflows Keep Your Business Processes on Track
By Karen Howe
How do we define “normal” these days? 2020 has certainly proved challenging, both in and out of the workplace. But following the natural cycle of the seasons, Fall has arrived on time just as predicted, and that predictability is somehow reassuring (though I for one dread the colder months to come).
If you were to look at your business processes, or more specifically your contracting processes, with a critical eye, would you detect a similar predictability? Not having consistent contract procedures and processes in place around what needs to happen and who needs to do it can lead to confusion, lost time, and potential risk. And the probability of this risk occurring is even greater when employees, customers, vendors, and partners are largely working remotely. One way to cope is by utilizing contract management software that lets you create automated contract workflows.
Below are 5 examples of how Contract Logix’ automated contract workflows and visual designer tools, a key feature of our contract management software, can enforce your business rules and help keep your contract processes on track.
1. Control the Contract Approval process.
Create an approval workflow that assigns approvals sequentially or in parallel and build branching scenarios for “Approved” versus “Rejected” responses, with appropriate email notifications for each response. Flexible choices when assigning approval tasks means you can design a workflow that requests approval from, say, a specific person (James in Finance) or whoever is currently in the role “Director of Finance” and sends automated email notifications to that approver. The workflow can automatically update the contract stage to “Approved” when it completes.
2. Manage tasks associated with Contract Renewals or Expirations.
Create a workflow that triggers off a Renewal or Expiration date. Automatically create tasks to guide users through the process of reviewing the current agreement to either get the ball rolling on a renewal or start the termination process.
3. Make it easy to design in the first place.
The Contract Logix visual workflow design interface is intuitive and easy to use when building automated contract workflows. Select from user actions like notifications or approvals, system actions like updating records, or workflow logic steps using If/Else to create conditional branching scenarios. As you build, you can zoom in to see step details or out to view the entire flow in vertical or horizontal format.
4. Simplify changes to the design later on.
The designer tool makes it easy to insert a step into the design or remove unwanted steps. Because, you know, change happens.
5. Create automated contract workflows to handle special “self-service” contract requests.
A very specific but not uncommon use case is the ability to let a user request a standard contract type like an NDA and, using a document template, have the system automatically generate and make available to the requestor a prepared contract ready for signature. Saves the Legal department time and effort!
Takeaway
Defining your contract processes and having predictable, repeatable actions is critical to avoiding confusion, lost time, and risk. And, it’s more important than ever in today’s “new normal” operating environment. Even better is taking the pressure off users to remember and act in accordance with every business rule, and wherever possible automating through workflow.
Interested in learning more about automated contract workflows? Speak with one of our CLM Specialists.
