Streamline and Manage Contracts Throughout Review & Approval
When speaking to a prospect we always ask why they are looking for a contract management system. One of the main reasons we hear is that they are looking for a better way to streamline and manage contracts throughout their review and approval processes.
The fact is if you are juggling multiple contracts through the review and approval process, it can be easy to lose track of where these agreements are within these processes. It can open up the possibility of slowing down incoming revenue from sell-side agreements or potentially holding up internal projects related to buy-side agreements.
To meet the goals of the company, the initiators of these agreements on both the sell-side or buy-side, are relying on the legal department and/or the contract management department to get through the review and approval process as quickly as possible. It can get even more complicated if your organization has different levels of approvals depending on type, value and risk of a contract. The more layers these processes have, the more likely there is to be a break down in the process steps, and/or someone may not follow the appropriate procedures.
Listed below are some of the criteria that some organizations use to determine the level of review and approval required to better streamline and manage contracts:
- Is this a Buy- or Sell-side contract?
- What type of contract is it (NDA, Service Level Agreement etc. )
- What is the value of the contract?
- Who are the parties involved?
- Have we done business with this contracting party before?
- Was the contract created using internal preapproved legal language?
- What are the milestones of the contract and are they within corporate guidelines?
- What are the risks or compliance issues related to contract?
Review & Approval Workflow Automation
If your organization is still using email and outlook calendars to manage these processes, then you are well aware of the disconnection these types of systems can have, and the manual intervention needed to efficiently stay on top of your processes. You are probably thinking to yourself – there has to be a better way! Well you are correct, there is.
Workflow automation is the key to automating and streamlining these processes, and the Contract Logix contract workflow functionality has a tightly integrated, highly functional set of tools to accomplish this.
This functionality enables you to quickly and easily; design, initiate and manage your review and approval processes. Think of a workflow as; a set of tasks and actions that are assigned to specific people, performed in a specified order, and are based on contract elements (contract type, value or whatever you would like). The workflow designer allows you to setup reusable processes or tasks which will be triggered based on the elements within an agreement. For example, if you have a service agreement and it’s value is above $50,000 you may have one set of tasks that must take place, however; if this service agreement is under $50,000, there might be a different set of actions or a completely different process.
