The recent pandemic forced the world to go digital and got businesses to rethink how they participate in commercial transactions digitally. And while the pandemic seems to be on its way out, having a digital business footprint is here to stay for the long term.
Completing business transactions digitally means that department heads, whether Sales, Procurement, HR or Legal, have the right tools for collaboration. And to ensure there is a digital audit trail to track all business transactions, organisations would benefit from a purpose built tool to manage all business contracts. That’s where having a Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) software comes in. Managing your contracting doesn’t have to be overwhelming, CLM includes tools that can assist throughout the entirety of the contract lifecycle. A smart CLM helps corporate legal departments to
Let’s take a look at the key features and benefits offered by a CLM:
Full visibility is crucial for in-house lawyers who have to manage multiple contracts simultaneously. Without a proper system for keeping track of contract volume and status, legal will inevitably be overwhelmed by contract requests from other departments. With Contract Lifecycle Management, contracts are stored digitally and securely. This allows much greater ease of access for all legal contracts, saving time and increasing efficiency.
At times, working with several employees within an office can be challenging especially when Legal teams depend on email communication for contract review. Back-and-forth email communications between employees and stakeholders make the approval process unclear and leave contracts lying in inboxes for far too long. A collaboration tool allows team members to work on the same contract version. They can keep track of changes to the contracts and related documents more accurately. The legal team can also coordinate with procurement, sales, and other departments, regardless of location or contract complexity.
Avoiding missing renewal or termination dates should be a top priority for legal departments. Contract management software is a great solution to reducing this risk as using such a powerful tool, legal teams can see all of the contracts set to expire, those that need to be renegotiated, and have clauses that need to be reviewed. This not only makes legal teams’ work easier but reduces financial risks associated with not knowing the terms and conditions of other parties, as well as renewal dates.
E-signatures are legally recognized in most jurisdictions across the world, they are also a great alternative to traditional pen and paper signatures. Choosing e-signatures over traditional signatures has several benefits, including lower costs and time, and being more environmentally friendly. hen signing contracts in person is not feasible, a secure electronic alternative is critical. A task that used to be cumbersome is now completed in seconds with a time-saving E-signature tool.
A clause library provides a selection of pre-approved language and terms that can be automatically included in contracts. Trying to find clauses and keywords in contracts can be time-consuming. With the power of AI, the template and clause library drive automatic inclusion into the draft agreement of appropriate language based on key business or legal terms. The clause library greatly simplifies and expedites the contract creation and approval process, while mitigating compliance risk from rogue contract terms.
Contracts are kept all together under one secured and organized storage facility when automated contract lifecycle management is executed. It is time-consuming to search for the right version of a contract or to manually create contract reports on excel. With Repository, you have easy access to key contract data at all times. An AI-powered contract repository enables the automation of contract storage, search, extraction, and analytics. This helps reduce manual effort in managing contract records while ensuring effective risk mitigation and improving value realization.
Contract versioning is critical to online contract enforceability. When working with an agreement, it is important to know that the version you are working with is the proper version, whether it is the most recent iteration, the final version, or a previous one. Many companies fail to enforce their agreements because they cannot prove what agreement was signed, when, and by what customer. Organizations that handle lengthy and complex documents that require frequent review cycles, for instance, are best suited for tools with version control. The ability to track contract versions allows users to easily see what has changed, version to version. The importance of completing a document comparison is heightened at the point where a document is ready to be signed, mitigating the possibility that the document content you reviewed and approved previously is the same document you are now signing.
Scribe Zero’s AI-enabled contract management solution
Scribe Zero’s CLM offers the ability to create, collaborate, share, track, store and manage contracts under one roof. And we are delivering this capability by leveraging AI and machine learning to help make the contracting process extremely secure and easy to use. Our CLM provides all the above-mentioned tools for contract management under one roof, and what’s more, it saves time, is cost-effective, and is the best out there.
