This whole process is known as the lifecycle of a contract and is a critical business process. The contract lifecycle management process is time-consuming and if something goes wrong the result can be huge - lost revenue, lost sales, breach of contract, and unnecessary risk.
Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) exists to simplify this entire process. Organizations use CLM to secure, standardize, streamline, and automate contract initiation, creation, negotiation, and execution.
How Does Contract Lifecycle Management Work?
Each and every stage of the contract process involves repetitive and drawn-out steps. Using tools like email, word, paper and ink, or storing contracts on shared drives or desktops make contracts hard to keep track of.
Contract lifecycle management (CLM) makes each stage very simple. There are no repetitive tasks involved with a CLM. With MaxAgreement contract management software, you can cut your contract process down from three weeks to three days.
Here is how you can use a contract management software like MaxAgreement to automate each stage of the contract process, with sales as an example:
Contract Generation:
Salespeople often have to build contracts from the ground up. This process might take several hours but with CLM, this can just take few minutes.
The best contract management software gives the power to salespeople so that he/she can quickly generate contracts using pre-approved templates. CLM eliminates the repetitive processes involved in building contracts.
Contract Negotiations:
Contract negotiations are the one thing that delays the contract because it involves other players outside of Sales. The contract has to be accessed by the legal people and they need the ability to edit the document and share it with other stakeholders.
Stakeholders usually send contracts via email each time they edit it, thus creating unnecessary risks like losing the actual contract document or using an outdated version.
CLM makes this process transparent. Contract changes can be done easily and shared with all in a cloud platform application. This reduces the risk involved in emailing the contract each time a revision is made. Often, salespeople need to know the status of negotiations and the changes made without needing to reach out and potentially disrupt the process so that they can understand when the deal will be closed.
Reliable Approvals:
Next step in contract management lifecycle is getting the contract signed which is also a time-consuming process. Tracking down the right approver is a big trouble for salespeople. The right approver can be on a vacation or could be out of the office for some other work. Sometimes, scheduling a meeting with them can be hard for the salespeople.
CLM can be accessible by the approvers also so they can sign it when it’s their turn, eliminating the salespeople’s need to hunt for the right person. A good CLM will be integrated with electronic signature capabilities, allowing the contract to be signed from a mobile device wherever they are.
Reliable Contract Renewals:
This is the last - but most crucial - stage of the contract process, because it will decide if future revenue will be attained from this deal.
A good contract management software can help make this process easier, by setting automatic reminders to renew contracts well ahead of their renewal date. Leveraged with a CRM, all the contract terms and customer information can be stored and easily accessed, providing a head-start if the contract has to be reviewed again before renewal.
By automating these steps using a CLM software, you’ll also save time and shorten the sales cycle. To see contract lifecycle management software in action, Click here
