Contract Insights

Organizations in both the public and private sectors are experiencing an ever-increasing need to more efficiently manage their contracts as contract volume and contract complexity grow.  Each stage in the life of a contract becomes ever more critical as organizations embrace digital transformation to more effectively manage legal operations.  Before they can even begin to improve contract lifecycle management, organizations need to have a clear understanding of contract management objectives.  In this article, we provide a straightforward examination of the objectives of contract management - as well as how organizations can meet these objectives with user-friendly contract management software.

Contract obligations are – to put it simply – the contractual commitments that parties involved in a contract have agreed to entirely satisfy.  Successful contract obligation management requires organizations to ensure that they have met the obligations agreed upon in a contract in a timely manner.  Unfortunately, manual contract management methods can make the contract lifecycle – which includes contract obligations – confusing, disorganized, decentralized, and almost impossible to handle properly.  As such, key dates, milestones, payments, deliverables, and more can be missed.  Thus, organizations should avoid the pitfalls of contract management by ditching manual and outdated contract administration processes in favor of robust, user-friendly contract management software.

In order to get started with improving contract lifecycle management, there first needs to be an understanding of what exactly the contract lifecycle is - as well as how it progresses.  To that end, we have provided an illustration that shows the stages in the life of a contract - as well as descriptions that give more insight into how each stage involves and can be managed with contract management software!

The contract approval process can prove challenging for many contract management and contract administration professionals.  Without the proper contract lifecycle management tools in place, bottlenecks and human error can lead to longer contract lifecycle times. Delayed contract approvals may fail to meet business rules, business processes, and business and regulatory compliance standards - potentially leading to missed opportunities for time-sensitive pricing options and special terms.  The challenges and problems of inefficient contract administration are apparent, but what are the root causes of the issues with contract approvals?