Organizations should be equipped with contract management software that is easy-to-use, reasonably priced, and whose features are aligned to their needs. When these criteria are not being met, organizations risk encountering issues such as contract lifecycle bottlenecks, wasted time, increased costs, and lost revenue. These are issues that require making a switch to a better solution. With that said, here are three things to consider when making the switch to a leading contract lifecycle management software platform.
#1 - Easy to Use Contract Management Software
When organizations need to select the best possible contract management software for their needs, they need to ensure that they are choosing an option with a user-friendly interface and a user experience that streamlines processes, saves time, and increases adoption rates. These essential benefits can be realized with an easy-to-use solution combined with excellent customer service and support resources. Leading source-to-contract software offers fast implementation, comprehensive training, and professional support.
With the help of highly skilled implementation specialists supporting a fast set up, software users can soon enter their organization's contracts, vendor records, customer records, and employee records after purchasing their contract management software suite. Organizations with more complex, specific business rules can leverage professional services for implementation and system configuration. Contract management software providers should assist with the setup of user-defined fields, workflow, and automated alerts based on an organization's needs.
Once an organization has its system implemented and configured, it can continue to increase its contract management ROI through the education of its system users with contract management software training. Training can benefit new users in need of guidance, seasoned users who require enrichment and refresher sessions, and advanced users looking to handle some of the more complex areas of contract management.
In addition to training, leading contract management software providers should offer options for system maintenance and support tools that can help clients take advantage of the features and benefits their chosen contract management solution provides. Subsequently, organizations can respond and adapt to changes in how they perform business and drive value through contracts.
Organizations can maximize their software ROI, improve productivity, and leverage contract lifecycle management features with the help of implementors, training experts, and support specialists that work to help enhance the contract management processes.
#2 - Diverse Software Hosting & Permissions Options
The level of cost-effectiveness of a contract management software solution depends on how much an organization is benefiting from their software investment. Reliable solutions can help maximize an organization's contract management software ROI by providing them with hosting options and secure document storage.
Software suites that provide organizations with virtually unlimited document creation and storage are critical to the formation of a secure and unified contract repository. Also advantageous is the ability for organizations to perform bulk imports of legacy contract data that was created before the purchase of contract management software. File conversion and data extraction services can transition paper-based documents and contract records into a digital format to be stored in a consolidated, secure, and easily searchable location. Thus, organizations have fewer encounters with costly lifecycle bottlenecks, misplacement of crucial documents, and missed key dates and milestones.
Cutting-edge contract management solutions provide options for hosting as well. They offer both web-based (SaaS) and deployed (on-premise) hosting, depending on an organization's needs. Systems can be hosted in the cloud, at the software provider's data centers or installed on-premise on the client's servers. SaaS hosting does not require on-premise software installation and it can support easy and comprehensive management, backup, and fast access to essential data.
Flexible user permissions help organizations manage user licenses and assign them by user roles, access levels, and user groups so that permissions are arranged per the needs of an organization's user base. Additionally, many leading solutions can provide named, concurrent, levels, traditional, volume-based, and other licensing options.
With multiple hosting options and permissions options, organizations can select the software provider that can best meet their requirements.
#3 - Robust & Aligned Contract Management Software Features
Leading source-to-contract management software can equip organizations with scalable functionality and features for an experience that can help meet their needs. Contract automation can unify contracts, committals, agreements, obligation records, risk documents, and much more. Flexible software can allow organizations to integrate with mission-critical applications seamlessly. Organizations can intelligently write documents with their pre-approved clause library and track contracts in the office or on the go.
Powerful contract request facilitation keeps organizations on task with prompts for employees, external software users, and counterparties to submit requests with supporting documents. Contract managers and teams can:
- configure the required data fields.
- attach crucial contract documents.
- route approvals via intelligent workflow automation.
- track approvals.
- receive email reminders.
- approve contract requests.
- convert documents to records without needing to manually key in data.
Contract analytics and comprehensive reporting can help users create contract monitoring reports based on key dates, data fields, and contract financials. Organizations can configure automated notifications to remind team members of contract key dates, high-risk vendors and contractors, compliance, and more, to reduce risk and the likelihood of missed key dates and lost opportunities.
Collaboration with vendors, customers, and business partners can be simplified when organizations securely negotiate, share documents, attain electronic signatures, and send out bulk signature invitations. User-friendly contract performance and status dashboards can help organizations track contract management KPIs against established organizational expectations. Additionally, comprehensive risk management tools can help hold organizations accountable for proactive mitigation and analysis.
Artificial Intelligence
Furthermore, there are many additional useful utilities offered by leading-edge source-to-contract management solutions. With contract management artificial intelligence, organizations can leverage advanced AI tools to create contracts easily, automate data entry, enhance data identification and protection, increase organizational accountability, and mitigate risk. Watch the video below to learn more about AI-based contract management.
Compliance
Integration between OFAC search data and contract management software allows organizations to check vendor, customer, and employee data against search entries in OFAC's (The Office of Foreign Asset Control) national sanctions lists, while providing crucial vendor risk analysis snapshots at a glance.
Easy Contract Creation & Signing
MS Outlook integration allows organizations to perform a myriad of essential contract management tasks straight from their desktop email application. Proven electronic signature software enables organizations to confidently sign, send documents out for signatures, and collaborate in the office or on the go.
Easily Switch Your Contract Management Software
Now that you have a comprehensive explanation of how your organization can benefit from a robust, scalable, leading-edge contract management software solution, it's time to make the switch to CobbleStone Software's Contract Insight®.
Contract Insight can help organizations of many sizes and industries. It can be rapidly deployed, easily maintained and supported, and generate measurable contract management ROI. Contract Insight Enterprise offers many easy-to-use features for enhanced contract management, sourcing, procurement, purchasing, vendor management, and much more. Since 1995, CobbleStone has been beloved and trusted by organizations in the public and private sectors as a winning solution.
Learn more about why your organization should switch to Contract Insight by reading our success stories, then book a free demo today!
