Contract Insights

Electronic signature (Esignature) is not a new concept in business practice. In fact, telegraph signatures were once legally acceptable. Times have changed, of course. Even the traditional wet signature seems to be a thing of the past for many companies. In mid-2000, eSignature was ruled by Congress to ensure the same legal standing as a traditional handwritten signature. ESign even has its own national holiday, June 30^th, if you plan to mark it on your calendar.

When reading magazines, advertisements, or even this blog post our brain begins the process of recognizing the patterns that make up the characters.  Our computer is able to do the exact same thing. Image-based documents can be converted into a language the computer understands for it to be able to read the document we need it to. This is where the Optical Character Recognition (OCR) tool comes into play. An OCR tool should be simple to use within a business software system that, in the long run, can save a company time.

Not every contract is meant to be viewed by every set of eyeballs in an organization. Organizational controls must be defined to determine if all contract management software users should be able to have free reign over the system or if permissions should be established within the application. Most contract data stored in a CLM system is confidential to specific departments and should only be viewed by certain users. Converting to digital contracts means no more locking important data in a file cabinet in an associate’s office.

No matter the industry your organization is in, contracts are a major component of daily operations. Contracts are created for business partnerships, labor, vendor transactions, customers, and more.  Restaurant owners hire vendors for various produce and animal products. Human resources personnel create contracts when they hire employees and when there are changes to the employee handbook. Educators create contracts when enlisting the services or products of vendors.