Your Guide to the Best Contract Management Solutions
With procurement, contract management solutions play an integral role in how business is conducted. According to research conducted by DocuSign, when contract management is inefficient, it can take quite a toll on ROI, affecting up to 9.2% of revenue each year.
Additionally, 63% of sales professionals reported reworking contracts and proposals due to human error. With this taken into account, implementing a contract management system that is efficient is imperative in procurement. Of course, in modern times, everything is digitized, so finding the best contract management tool for your organization matters. Read on to learn a little bit more about contract management 101, the features of a contract management system you should be looking for, and the role of contract management software in procurement.
Contract Management Solutions: Contract Management System Requirements
It’s likely that you already have a contract management solution in place, but is it the right one for your needs? The best contract management systems have certain standout features that should be included in any software suite when it comes to contract management in procurement. Some features you should look for when it comes to procurement contract management systems include:
- Contract searching on key metadata fields
- Automated reminders on key contract dates
- Streamlined contract drafting
- Contract approval automation
- Document storage and security
- Ability to track contract approval time
- Automated contract communications
- Ability to measure KPIs (key performance indicators)
- Risk management features
With contract management, these are the basics. You may want more robust tools on your contract management dashboard, depending on the nature of your business, but these are the bare necessities for a streamlined contract management system.
Contract Management Solutions: What Will Improvements Provide?
Saying that the implementation of new procurement and contract management software will improve efficiency is rather vague. Instead, we can look at individual benefits to help provide the efficiency that improves ROI at the end of the day. Some individual benefits of contract management solutions include:
- Flexible workflow. With the right contract management procurement process, you can tweak it to your own needs.
- Real-time contract changes. Keep in mind it is a vendor contract management system, so you both can make real-time decisions, changes, and approval, keeping the process speedy and streamlined. This includes E-signing.
- Visibility. Your team and your suppliers have much better visibility regarding the dashboard and contract management, which allows for better collaboration.
- Custom forms. Even with a simple contract management tool, you can create custom forms, save them, and revisit them without having to create new documents for each contract.
- Simple management. Good contract management solutions allow for overall collaboration, not only with your team but with your suppliers as well.
Contract Management Solutions: Further Digitization
There are other options for contract solutions that you may want to consider beyond the basics if you’re looking for further digitization. If you write many contracts, you may want to explore software that has one-click document creation, which is a very handy tool. Also, some software has automatic change detection if a contract or document is revised. It’s a great feature to update documents in real-time, but what you don’t want is documents being updated without your knowledge or approval. Finally, look for software with automated tracking that makes everyone accountable—both you and your suppliers—which will further
streamline the process. This will also make it easier to run analytics when it comes time to process reports.
To learn more about contract management solutions or schedule a software demo, contact EC Sourcing Group today at 973-936-9672. We want you to re-imagine the way you think about procurement.